Clouds can look beautiful and majestic or like cute animals. Other times clouds look ominous, like they could unleash a storm from hell. ☁️ Thoughts are the same. Some thoughts are friendly, fanciful and fun. Some are just odd. Others terrify us. You don't have to do anything to make a dark scary cloud go away. And you don't have to do anything to make a dark scary thought go away. ☁️ Clouds can come and go quickly, like they’re late for a date with a cute cloud far away. Sometimes clouds linger for a while, filling up the sky so you can’t see the sun. Yet regardless of how many clouds there are or how long they last, if you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of the sky, the best strategy available to you is simply to wait. ☁️ Thoughts work the same way. If we’re hoping for a calm, peaceful mind, trying to achieve it by eliminating or forcefully quieting thoughts is an unfruitful strategy. That’s like trying to smooth rough water with your hand — you’ll only create more waves. Clouds always leave if you let them. Just like thoughts. ☁️ We cannot control the clouds. Thoughts are similar. At first this might sound like bad news. But on the other side is a massive sigh of relief. Truly seeing it means the behavior stops making sense. And when we stop trying to do something that can’t be done, it frees up loads of energy to accomplish things that actually can be done. ☁️ Clouds stand out more than the sky. On a day when the view is 50% cloudy and 50% clear, we notice the clouds. And that’s not a bad thing. They stand out. But if we spend enough time only noticing the clouds, we stop seeing the sky completely and think there are only clouds. ☁️ Yet everyone knows how tremendous a clear blue sky feels. It’s splendid, and makes you want to sit outside until the stars appear. And then clouds return, and we focus on them again. ☁️ On the journey of life, we can rediscover the wisdom, peace, and wellbeing that are always inside us, and we do that by learning things about the nature of thoughts – which happen to be pretty similar to clouds. Thoughts continuously arise but are impermanent. When their grip weakens, we regain a magical ability. ☁️ We stop focusing just on thoughts, and develop an organic fascination with the thing that makes thoughts possible: the space in which they occur. We see the sky again. When separation grows between us and thoughts, positive change happens spontaneously because thought is the only thing that can obscure our true nature. When thoughts stop mattering so much, we get in touch with who we are underneath them. It doesn’t require effort, willpower, intention, or repetition. It happens by understanding the nature of thought for yourself. ☁️ We are not our thoughts. We are the sky in which they happen.
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