Yogas chitta vritti nirodha. 

‘Yoga is mastery of the modifications of the mind’.

From Patangali’s Yoga Sutras.

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There is an impulse behind every thought that drives us onwards in the belief that mind is real and that WE are Mind.  If we withdraw from the dialogue and dispassionately watch the impulse that generates that dialogue that we identify as My Mind, thoughts that can be so intrusive and so damaging at their darkest simply vanish as if they were smoke. This applies to all thoughts – happy or sad.  There can be no distinction. So what was mind?  The more one practices this the more of a habit it will become.  Slowly, like a blessing, a peace emerges.

Q – Quite so; but just what is the impulse referred to?

A –It appears that there is a tiny wordless impulse behind every thought.  We are so habitual of being in the dialogue that we don’t see the wordless impulse.  Its so quick. Impulses are generated from external or internal stimulation.  Environment, body or imagination.  We habitually run with them and therefore mind is constantly noisy and busy.  Single sentences become volumes of rhetoric.  The impulse occurs due to Ego.  Mind is a ghost projected by Ego.  When we realise that we are thinking and not watching, the act of putting our attention on the sensation withdraws our attention from the dialogue and the dialogue dissolves.  The impulse is then replaced by another and we watch that too.  It too disappears.  In therapy we can use the dialogue to access the sensation but in the end that process is not necessary.  It becomes our habit to be permanently in the Seer.   Hence to quote my teacher, ‘Be a Seer not a Thinker’.  The Seer is the Self.