Here is a simple instruction: do nothing.

The physical part is simple: don’t move your limbs, don’t scratch your itches, etc. The mental part is more tricky: don’t think.

Can you prevent thought? Where would your attention go instead of thought? As a simple experiment, try to attend only to your breath. Maybe this is the feeling of air through your nose, the rising and falling of your chest, or the sound of your breathing.

It is not long before you are distracted. More precisely, two events take place:

1. First, your attention drifts (from the breath to some thought)
2. Second, you notice that attention drifted

OK, now return back to the breath.

…

Once more, you find yourself distracted. This happens again and again, and soon you grow frustrated. So you tell yourself: “Do not think!”. You apply force. You suppress the thought. But the more you try to kill a thought, the more you end up engaged with thought. To react to thought is another activity of the mind. It soon becomes apparent that applying force on the mind is useless.

What is the more intelligent response to thought? Just being aware. Notice the thought without getting caught up in it’s contents. Hold the posture of knowing that you are thinking. Without getting involved, let one thought morph into the next.

Actually, thought buffets all experience—not just meditation. But we are so blind to this in daily life. We are so consumed by the content of the thought that we lose sight of the bigger picture.

Do we get to choose the contents of our thoughts? Or, when/if they appear? When I look at my direct moment-to-moment present experience, the answer is no. I find no place where I can command the mind.

I can only find the next thought, appearing.

If you can persist for several minutes, the activity of the mind naturally relaxes. It exhausts itself. When thought does rest, what are we left with? What is the space before thought interrupts? How would you describe this space? It’s a little hard to define.

After meditating a few more times, the line between meditation and daily life starts to vanish. I find that I am always consumed by thought, but during certain moments (like meditation) I can become aware of it. As you progress, awareness of thought bleeds into all experience. This state is always accessible to you, at will.

You just have to turn attention on itself. And see for yourself: you are lost in thought, once again.