One of the most important things I have realized is the understanding of the voice in our heads. You can call it ego, psyche, sympathetic nervous system activation, protector, chatty annoying roommate... It is all of those things.
That voice talking to you is not you.
You, your soul, are the awareness of that voice.
The ego voice talks, narrates, warns, worries, judges, criticizes all day, every second of your day, unless you are sleeping or purposely directing your focus. When you are purposely directing your focus in a positive way, you are in the present moment where you are RECEIVING positive thoughts and solutions, not generating negative thoughts and expanding your problems. As you know, what you focus upon expands.
None of the things the voice is saying are real. They are interpretations of data that have been filtered through your belief system, most of which you formed erroneously before you were 7 years old. (If this happens, this must be true, for example)
The voice is trying to protect you, in a similar way that a horse runs away when seeing a trash can for the first time. He is having an emotional and then physical fight or flight response to a perceived threat.
The difference between you and the horse is the horse's recovery time. The horse needs to save his energy, and since he wasn't eaten in that moment, his parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and within seconds he is perfectly calm and content again.
You, when you hear a troublesome thought (see a trash can) will follow the train of thought and become emotionally caught up in the thread. You then think "what will I do?" in the face of this problem.... Your sympathetic nervous system is activated and remains so until you change the subject. But you find it hard to change the subject because after only 68 seconds you have built up substantial momentum in a negative direction. Your sympathetic nervous system is overactive. But it can be trained to relax and come back to the present moment where all your peace resides.
Most problems go away by themselves when you take your attention off of them. Some problems require some action on your part, but what action? Only inspired action will bring the results that best serve you.
Inspired action is an impulse to act which you receive when you are back in a calm and relaxed state.
The calm and relaxed state is called the receiving mode.
In order to learn to be the observer of the chatty voice, rather than the reactor, meditation is key.
Meditation is allowing yourself 15 quiet minutes per day to practice being aware of the voice and re-focusing on a sound. Over and over and over, until the gaps between the voice-thoughts get a little wider and you begin to feel in control of your focus.
Over time you will begin to feel a peaceful sense of detachment. Your body may twitch and tingle and to go pleasantly numb. You may get to a place where you can no longer feel the chair you're sitting in.
Eventually you may begin to hear the real you, saying lovely brilliant uplifting things. Or you may hear the answer to a question.
For me the answers pour in not during meditation, but later, while doing something mundane like brushing my teeth.
Now, having worked your focusing ability in meditation, you will have the skill to ignore the unhelpful chatter in your daily life, which will allow you to stay in the present where you feel good, and you are able to receive all the solutions and answers you need.
