The Space Between Thoughts — A Meditation on Stillness for Anxiety, Stress and Overthinking

Think about your favourite piece of music.

It is made of notes. But it is also made of silence. The spaces between the notes are not empty. If you remove them and you no longer have music; you have noise.

And yet when we listen to music we never think about the silence. We simply experience the whole. 

What if our minds work exactly the same way?

Our experience of life is made of thoughts. But also of the spaces between thoughts...

In this short meditation, I invite you to slow down enough to notice what has always been there. The silence between the notes. The space between the thoughts. The stillness that exists underneath everything your mind has been doing.

It takes a few minutes. And it changes the way you experience life.

Please let me know if you enjoyed this session: sylvia@sylviaingle.com

And if today's meditation has stirred something in you, a curiosity, a longing, a quiet sense that you are ready for more, I would love to support you further.

Visit www.sylviaingle.co.uk to find out how we can work together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome. Think about your favourite piece of music. It doesn't matter which one, any. Now think about what it is actually made of sounds, which are notes of vibrations moving through air. But there's also something else. The silence. Those spaces between the notes. Those tiny moments where nothing is sounding, and yet the music is still present. Those spaces are not mistakes, they're not empty, they are not absence of music. They are very much part of the music as the notes themselves, as the sounds themselves. If you remove the spaces, you've no longer have music, you've just have noise. And yet, when was the last time you listened to music and thought about the silence? We simply don't. Because we just experienced the whole piece as one. Notes and silences together. So I'm just curious, what if your our minds worked exactly the same way? Our experience of life is made out of thoughts, one after another after another, loads of them being created as life unfolds. But is it actually continuous or is it like music made of both notes and spaces, thoughts and tiny gaps in between them? It looks feels like a stream of thinking, but what if you we slow down long enough to notice that it's not a stream, continuous stream, but there is silence in between in between thoughts. And what if that silence is there? What what's in it? What lives in it? Let's find out. Find a comfortable position and let yourself be settled and allow your eyes to close. Take one slow brief breath, deep breath, let it go, and take another deep breath in, let it go, and we will do something very simple. We are simply going to watch our thoughts without following them, without engaging with them, without trying to control them, stop them, change them. Simply watch. The very way you might sit beside a river and watch the water moving. Not trying to stop the water or jump into it, just watching, observing. Your thoughts are the river. You are the one sitting on the bank of it. Take a deep breath in and let's begin. Arrives. An image, a feeling, it might be a thought. I don't know what to do here. I don't know why I'm doing this. Which is it itself is a thought. Notice that now. And watch it pass because there's another one coming. Like a note sounding and then fading. Now wait. In the space after that thought, before the next one arrives, what is there? Stay in that space for a moment. However brief it is, however unfamiliar. Simply watch. This is the silence between the notes. Another thought comes. They always do. Watch it arrive and begin to fade. And again, see the space after it. That gap, that pause, that moment of pure quiet. Before the next next thought stirs. It might be very brief at first, a fraction of a second. But it's there. It's always there. Stay with the next space a little longer, deeper. Let your awareness rest in it. Not trying to hold it, just simply noticing that it exists. There's something in this space that's different from the thoughts. And this is it. The thoughts come and go, they rise and pass. This one, the next one, and the next one. But the space, this space is always the same. It does not change. It simply is quiet, still, present, and you're aware of it. Which means that you, the part of you that's noticing, are not the thoughts. You are the space that notices them. Breathe that in for this moment. You are not your anxious thoughts. You are the awareness that watches them arrive and go. You are not your worried mind, you are the stillness in which the worry moves. You are the silence in which the music plays. Stay here for a moment in the space, in the quiet, in the awareness that has always been here, underneath every thought you have ever had. Even on the most anxious days, underneath all of it, this breathe in and allow yourself to rest in this space. Breathe out and let the thoughts come and go without following them. In and the space opens, out, and the quiet deepens. Stay here as long as it feels right. For as long as it feels right, simply noticing, simply being the awareness that's always been here, waiting to be found. Begin to bring your awareness gently back now. Let your thoughts return to their normal pace, let the river flow again, but carry this with you the knowledge, the knowledge that underneath the flow that space is always there, the silence between the notes is always here, and you can return to it any moment simply by pausing long enough to notice the gap between one thought and the next, between this thought and this thought. It takes a single breath, a single moment of noticing. The music of your mind will always play, but now you know about the silence, and the silence is yours. When you're ready, gently open your eyes. Welcome back.