This shift to insight meditation occurs in the relationship of our awareness to our thoughts. Ordinarily our thoughts compel us: our loathing or self-loathing generates one set of feelings and actions; our romantic fantasies quite another. But with strong mindfulness we can experience a deep sense in which self-loathing and romantic thoughts are the same: like all other thoughts, these are passing moments of mind. We don’t have to be chased through the day by our thoughts—they are a continuous series of short features, previews, and outtakes in a theater of the mind.
