I feel like recently I’ve been using my thinking mind a lot to understand the origins of different emotions and what some of my core beliefs are.
This does seem to require lots of thinking on my behalf to understand where all this conditioning came from and what I need to resolve it.
For example, I’ve been experiencing a lot of jealousy lately when hanging around my partner’s family.
I can feel the sinking feeling in my chest and so I attend to that and I could just leave it there.
But when I spend some time thinking introspectively I see the origins come from my low self worth and also because I’m comparing to my own family.
It took a lot of time thinking about this and I didn’t know whether that was counter to what mindfulness is about , as I’m going off on a story in a way and letting my thinking mind take over a bit.
Should I just be attending to the sensations and forget about what they mean?
Keep going, you are going in the right direction.
Your mind will bring up feelings and thoughts when meditating.
Understanding these and where they come from enable you to change and grow as a person.
In your example, discovering where the jealousy of your partner’s family comes from allows you to change how you think and feel about this.
You can transform something that was initially negative into a positive.
Attend to sensations and find out what they mean.
Edwin Leo 