having a lot of thoughts is not your own personal pathology. Our mind secrets thoughts like our body secretes enzymes. It's part of our evolutionary design to be thinking a lot. It's part of our impacte as a species for better and for worse, as we know. Mostly it is not our fault.
We are rigged to scan for danger, plus we have a default network in our brain where if we're not oppupied with a formal task, we automatically start scanning the past and the future to keep orienting us in time and orienting us in our narrative of self to stabilize us, to orient.
So learning to include an awareness. The play of thoughts in not about trying to stop them. As Jack described with including feelings and emotional states, it's really cultivating a wise relationship with what's happening. It is really a key part of this whole training the attitude we bring to this. You might sense, "How do I relate to thoughts?" Because, as I mentioned, it's very easy to think we shouldn't be thinking, and then go to war with them. If you're at war with your thoughts, you'll be at war for the rest of your life. The moment of recognizing and waking up out of a thought is a pivotal moment in this training. It's full of potentials. You can either feed the old habits of thinking that thinking something bad was happening, judging it, trying to control your mind. Or you can cultivate a new way of being that's really focused for newness and curiosity.
There is a monkey in my mind swinging on a trapeze, reaching back to the past or leaning into the future, never standing still. Sometimes I want to kill that monkey, shoot it square between the eyes so I won't have to think anymore or feel the pain of worry. But today I thanked her and she jumped down straight into my lap, trapeze still swinging, as we sat still.