From time to time, I encounter the idea that the practice of meditation should be a time of peace during which the mind is quiet and we connect inward. That’s certainly the experience we’re aiming for! But as beginning meditators, we are rarely blessed with a quiet, peaceful experience. Instead, our thoughts race all over the place. Our mind gets bored within seconds. We want to jump up and do something else after a minute or so. Sitting in meditation for even five minutes seems like torture. We may quickly come to the conclusion that meditation isn’t really “our thing.”
What we must understand as we begin our meditation practice is this: the mind doesn’t like it at all. It doesn’t want to be quiet. The mind enjoys running the show. If you’re just starting a meditation practice, do not expect your mind to do as it is told. It wants to stay in control, and it will come up with all kinds of tricks to get you to quit. Your mind will wander. Then it will run. It will cause your body to twitch. It will tell you that meditation is boring and you can do without it. And the more resistant your mind is to your meditation practice, the more you have to gain!
Meditation isn’t so much about stopping or even slowing down your thoughts as it is about becoming the observer of your thoughts. Your mind is going to think its thoughts. That’s what it does. To try and stop all thought is impossible. There are really two main goals when we begin meditating. The first is to stop identifying with the thoughts. You observe them, and since it’s possible for you to observe them, you realize that they are not who you are. Your mind can merrily think away. Behind all those noisy thoughts, you remain calm and unaffected.
The second goal is to discipline the mind. We stop allowing your thoughts to think themselves. We do this by giving the mind something to do. The simplest meditation practice is to sit down, close your eyes and observe your breath. As simple as it sounds, this can be fiendishly difficult. After a mere 30 seconds or so, the undisciplined mind will get very bored and jump around. That’s okay – as soon as you notice that you’re no longer observing the breath, you return your mind to the breath. And it’ll jump around again thirty seconds later. So you bring it back to the breath. Think of your mind as a boisterous puppy, darting all over the place. Your job is to gently, lovingly, and determinedly bring it back to your breath. Over and over and over, you come back to your breath. Each time you bring your mind back to focus on your breath, you have had a success in your meditation practice! You can also use a mantra as a focus. My personal favorite practice is to gaze at the light of a candle while counting breaths. The counting keeps the mind occupied.
Start your practice five minutes at a time. Expect your mind to put up a lot of resistance. Just do the best you can. Don’t expect peaceful stillness. Expect squirming discomfort. You are disciplining your mind to become your tool, rather than your master, with every second that you remain sitting in meditation. Your mind will eventually become quieter, and you will learn to focus your thoughts for longer periods of time. Until then, smile at your busy, whirlwind mind. Let it object. And remember that you, the observer, are making the choice for discipline and spiritual practice. And you are definitely in charge.
What were your experiences when you started meditating? Are you perhaps still shying away from a meditation practice? Share your meditation story!
Blessings,
Andrea
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Wow…how true all of what you said feels for me. I’ve been practicing meditation for almost 9 years now. I remember how challenging it was in the beginning to calm and quiet my mind. I have a super active “fixer” mind. There was a time when I would take long baths, not just to quiet my mind, but to keep my body from insisting on going into movement to get away from meditating. It actually worked great for me and I continue to do this one often.
I love this posting. It reminds me of a fabulous book I’m reading by Dr. Stanley H Block called Come to Your Senses. Dr. Block says we get stuck in Identity System loops, between the Fixer and Depressor and the only way out is to bridging. Bridging is focusing on sound, touch, gravity, labeling thoughts…like you referenced in your posting. I’ve found it to be fun, challenging, stimulating and liberating. Isn’t this fun?!?
Thanks for the post Andrea…I love your conversations!
Congrats on a 9-year meditation practice, Tuck! I think that’s a huge accomplishment. I can relate to the busy, busy mind! I started my own meditation practice in “boot camp” – a ten day silent retreat, which was both amazing and total torture. It’s not for the faint of heart, but my mind did lose its capacity to run away with me in those ten days.
I’ll have to check out this book you mention – always looking for new inspiration. Thanks for commenting, Tuck!
Blessings,
Andrea
Congratulations on your new book. As for meditation, since different practices and ways to approach it exist, you’d think it would have more widespread appeal than it does. I suppose conditioning and the prospect of discomfort to be experienced during deconditioning, can turn people off. I encourage people to relax. No pressure. Yet, learning to to internalize pressure itself can take practice.
Alan Watts describes mind is like a pond fills with ripples. We don’t put our hands on the water surface to calm the ripples, doing so we create more ripples. To quiet the pond let it be the ripples will die sooner or later.
Neale Donald Walsch keeps mention that what resist persist and to quiet our thoughts don’t give it a second thought.
My Spiritual Guide, keeps remind me to let my thought go freely and do not participate in the conversation. The conversation he means is the agreement and disagreement. Just leave the question with no answer. Sooner or later our thought will give up its dialog. Every time I engage in the conversation my body twitch as a reminder (if you sincerely ask your body to do that, it will perform it, like the internal alarm clock thing). If your thoughts are random and dream like, have fun with it but do not repeat the image or event and add things up to it.
Meditation is quite easy if we do not think it is hard. Before we sit down and close our eyes, we have made up our mind that doing so is boring and it is hard to fight boredom. For me I give that action a challenge likes a game or a purpose, soon the boredom arrives, I revert it into excitement by dive into my boredom and get bore some more.
When all of the things that I mention above become a routine that is when all the fun starts. Best wishes.
Liara – I agree, the first hurdle can be to relax in the face of discomfort!
Tuan – I love your perspective, thank you for sharing those insights. Meditation is definitely whatever we decide before we sit down on our pillow. I also like the idea of “diving into the boredom” and making that the excitement. What’s underneath there, right?
Thank you for sharing!
Blessings,
Andrea
I’m new at learning how to meditate. I’ve always wondered why I looked forward to naps and bedtime because when I sleep, my mind is quiet. When I’m awake, there is not a moment in the day that my mind isn’t thinking, talking, anticipating, planning, or negoitating. I’m working on teaching my mind to be quiet. Thanks for the recommendations.
Cherri
Nice article. Good tips. Encouraging. I found it through Anmol Mehta’s Carnival #8. I really like the dialogue that’s followed as well and would agree, “What’s underneath,” is the most intriguing part.
Hi, A. Decker – welcome, and thanks for joining the discussion!