Taming Wild Thoughts During Meditation
Wild thoughts in your head are common to everyone. For me, it is often made worse by the analytical work that I am often involved in. Meditation in itself will not “cure” reeling thoughts. A great analogy to understand your mind is this: thoughts are like ripples in a pond. Once they are started, they continue to reflect and interact with each other until their energy is spent. Physically, your brain neurons are literally activating and reactivating each other in waves.
Meditation is the act of stopping the rainfall of new thoughts into your mind-lake so that the thought ripples can settle and new ones don’t form.
When you meditate, thoughts continue to play themselves out. You want to avoid trying to force them to stop or push them away. That’s like trying to stop the lake ripples by sticking your hand in the water to try and block them. It just creates more ripples.
A big part of this is the recognition that you are not your thoughts. This may sound obvious, but in practice, we often become involved in our thoughts to the point where we become them. Our language reveals this: “I am angry.” “I am confused.” I am not anger, I am experiencing anger.
So here’s a simple meditation technique to start with: Observe everything that arises within you as you sit. You don’t even have to control your breathing. Just sit in a relaxed place and observe. Boredom? Ok, observe it. Irritation? Calm? Excitement? Distraction? Random thoughts? Don’t analyze, don’t label, don’t categorize or try to control anything. Just let go of tension and passively observe. Scientists understand the necessity of separating themselves from the experiment in order to prevent pollution of the results. Think of meditation as an experiment in observing what goes on within you. Separate yourself from your internal dialogue, thoughts, feelings, automatic patterns, reactions and emotions in order to understand their nature.
When you meditate, you may begin to notice that there is an undefinable “you” who is observing everything. Describing this “you” (called the Witness or Presence in some philosophies) is difficult, and is the reason that mystics can sound cryptic when trying to describe it. Any label that you place on the Witness (including “Witness”) is not the truth; it’s a guide. The experience of being the Witness, not the words, is where you find the truth of it. The Witness exists beyond any definition of identity. The concepts that you define as you: your name, your profession, seeker, your beliefs, your creations… take those all away, and the Witness remains as an aware point of observation surrounding and encompassing these things.
A large benefit of this process is that when you learn to step back into the Witness, it allows you to be the controller of your experience rather than thoughts or emotions controlling you. When you can step outside an emotion or thought process and realize that it is not you, it’s amazing how quickly it melts. Thoughts and emotions require your participation (consciously or unconsciously) to stay alive. Learning to passively and consciously observe ends your participation.
You don’t even have to do a full meditative session to experience the calm passive observational stance of the Witness. Meditation is a tool to assist you in understanding how it all works, inside. Once you get it, once you experience it, you can use it anywhere.
What are your favorite meditation tips and tricks? Let us know in the comments.
Related Posts
Recent articles
- Start Calling Bullshit on People’s Barriers23 Nov 2010
- Holy Shit: Gulf Spill As of 12 June 201016 Jun 2010
- The Desire for Vengeance: Hard Truths About Transformation22 Apr 2010
- Would You Get Tazered For Cake?02 Apr 2010
- What is Killing You?30 Mar 2010
Recent comments
- Start Calling Bullshit on People’s Barriers | Transhumanize on Meditation Cheat Sheet
- Josh on The Great Truth
- Jer on The Great Truth
- Creating the New Consciousness | transhumanize on Taming Wild Thoughts During Meditation
- Creating the New Consciousness | transhumanize on The Future is Called Integral
[...] This foundational way of being is built through self-awareness and assisted through meditative practice. Eckhart Tolle successfully explains this key mindset in A New Earth: Awakening to Your [...]