When the mind appears every morning, don’t jump to the usual conclusion, ‘This is me; these thoughts are mine’.
Instead, watch these thoughts come and go without identifying with them in any way.
If you can resist the impulse to claim each and every thought as your own, you will come to a startling conclusion: you will discover that you are the consciousness in which the thoughts appear and disappear. You will discover that this thing called mind only exists when thoughts are allowed to run free. Like the snake which appears in the rope, you will discover that the mind is only an illusion that appears through ignorance or misperception.
You want some experience which will convince you that what I am saying is true. You can have that experience if you give up your life-long habit of inventing an ‘I’ which claims all thoughts as mine’.
Be conscious of yourself as consciousness alone, watch all the thoughts come and go. Come to the conclusion, by direct experience, that you are really consciousness itself, not its ephemeral contents.
Clouds come and go in the sky but the appearance and disappearance of the clouds don’t affect the sky.
Your real nature is like the sky, like space. Just remain like the sky and let thought-clouds come and go. If you cultivate this attitude of indifference towards the mind, gradually you will cease to identify yourself with it.
-Annamalai Swami
You can see more from Annamalai Swami here.
From Living by the Words of Bhagavan, page 267, David Godman