Sayadaw: You’re not like an ordinary yogi. You’re in the fight – you have got to really work and practice continuously.
For you, the attack is imminent and you have to be mindful continuously.
Yogi: You say to watch the tiny depression, and if I don’t manage to do that, to watch the feeling of fear. Aren’t they the same, in a way?
Sayadaw: They are different – one is the depression that wants to come to you and the other is the reaction, the fear that it will increase. They are slightly different in nature, but in your experience they might be stuck together.
Watch whichever is more obvious. The little depression that wants to come, it is not really a problem if there is no fear. It is the fear that feeds it.
For you, try to be mindful moment to moment; not thinking about or analyzing the experience. Stay with the present moment and not dwelling in the past or future.
And, if you stay in the present moment like that continuously, thoughts will stop coming in so much.
The source of your problem is too much thinking. The thoughts are very complicated and not very helpful or useful. To stop the obsessive thoughts, acknowledge them and come back to your object.
It doesn’t matter that they don’t stop – they do their job, and you acknowledge and come back to your object. You do this repeatedly.
It is important for you to understand that there is no need to believe those thoughts at all especially when the mind is in an unwholesome state, every thought is a wrong thought and shouldn’t be believed. That is why the mind feels so bad.