Oakville Zen Meditation
Don’t fight your thoughts during meditation
Can you stop your heart from beating or your kidneys for making urine? No
While keeping your eyes open, can you stop seeing? No
Can you stop thinking? No, even while meditating. This is a fake news.
Our brain-mind that is hardware and software has 4 main duties: Making our body working, relating self with our environment via our 5 senses, thinking and having emotions. All of them are unstoppable.
How to work with our thoughts and emotions is the biggest challenge during meditation and life. While sitting, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, past and future are always present regardless your level.
No one even among the most experimented meditators is able to stop them. If your mind is on standstill thoughtless and clear, calling 911 is too late. In fact, focusing on our breathing is a thought by itself.
Stopping thoughts is a megalomaniac and irrational goal close to absurdity. Unfortunately, we read in the so-called mindfulness literature that is possible to achieve an absolute clear and empty mind.
The goal is not to stop thoughts and feelings but simply to learn how to deal with them meaning
1) To be aware of them in order 2) To control their intensity when they appear automatically.
Let go of the idea of engaging in battle with your thoughts. You will loose, get mad, frustrated and quit meditation like 90% of beginners after 3 months of practice.
You don’t need to force anything. If you refrain from trying to stop your thinking, you allow it to stop by itself. This is the miracle behind meditation.
When a thought is popping out during meditation just pay attention to it ---this is awareness--, accept it and let it go by pressing the delete button and go back to your anchor such as breathing.
This how you will calm the mind and learn to control ---not to stop---your thoughts. During the day, over 90,000thoughts are produced automatically without being actively aware of them the same way that we are not actively aware that we see and breath during the day. Being aware of a thought is the only way to deal with it, that is to control it. Without this awareness, thoughts and feelings are controlling us .
As judges watching our mind and ourselves during meditation, we constantly check to see whether or not we are doing well or not. We want self-feedback on the quality of our sitting and its progress.
“ Am I doing all right?, Am I meditating properly? Am I getting somewhere?”
Part of us seeks constant reassurance that we are on the right track and that the time and effort we are investing is and will make the difference.
We compare ourselves with an ideal and perfect meditator that we hold in our imagination. Don’t.
That constant comparison day after day is keeping us from simply being in the moment.
Perhaps we worry too much that if we don’t assess our thinking and judge our sitting , then we will not be able to assess our meditative skills and the progress of our practice.
What will happen if you drop judging your meditation and life in general?
Absolutely nothing will happen but some sort of serenity will appear.
Meditation is being mindful of the moment. No judgment, no decision.
Trust your practice and the process of meditation mindlessly, without thinking and you will discover
that your daily practice will pay off as far your quality of life is concerned.
Final words.
When a thought or emotion appears, accept it regardless; then letting go and go back to your breathing as the main anchor of your mind.
Don’t be upset with and never try to block a thought. It will be too frustrating and self- destructive.
Having insight to improve ourselves is OK in our day-to-day social and professional life.
Meditation is non-judgmental. Just do it .........mindfully and mindlessly
