Lighten Up Meditation

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thoughts

Emotions are emotions. Just let them be.

Emotions are emotions. Just let them be.

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The admonition to “don’t be angry” is deceiving – wrong – dangerous?

People get angry.

So now you have anger, PLUS you have guilt. You have a sense of failing, AGAIN. You can’t do anything right, especially not this inner peace bullshit.

When anger comes up, you will be angry. Until you do significant work on yourself to deal with the reasons that anger comes up, anger will come up again.

The very best tools that I’ve ever learned that unravel the spool of difficult emotions and eventually stop them from arising at all is Byron Katie’s The Work.

There may be other techniques too but The Work is the only one I’ve know to literally make the difficult emotions stop arising.

The other important tool to have is what Gangaji teaches: There is nothing wrong with anger. Anger is a part of you; it’s just what’s here. And most of the time, it isn’t. But when it is here, your job is to let it be here. Not to resist it, or tell yourself, “I shouldn’t be angry.”

If you can meet the anger, and welcome it, instead of resisting it or trying to make it into something else, then you may find that what’s underneath anger is not anger. It’s love. Yes I know, sounds crazy but investigate it for yourself! If you truly meet the anger, and let the anger simply be, what do you discover? Give it a shot, the next time someone cuts you off on the freeway.

And then later, if you want to unravel why you became angry at that person in the first place, sit down and do The Work. Identify the thoughts you were thinking that led to that anger to come up. Find out why the experience of anger came into your attention, by listening to yourself and hearing what you were thinking that generated that reaction. The thought comes first, then the emotion. By identifying what you were thinking and believing at the time you were cut off on the freeway, you can see what program was running or what script was playing that triggered the emotional response. It is always so surprising when the root thought is uncovered. Such discoveries can be priceless, and truly transformative!

Gobs of meditation and endless silent retreats may be empowering and reaffirming and healing, but in my experience, none of those practices actually untie the knot of personality. They can be profound, and deeply fulfilling, and bring stillness beyond stillness, and let you touch Truth. But then you go back out into the world, and you get on the 405, and you turn into an a-hole like everyone else.

Discovering the patterns and programs that drive the thinking mind will give you true freedom. Layer in understanding from these teachings and actively investigating the nature of mind will open up your soul to discovery.

image credit: Pexels Image retrieved from pixabay 12/25/18
“I’m thinking MORE, now that I’m meditating!”

“I’m thinking MORE, now that I’m meditating!”

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The quality and substance of your thoughts will change as you increase your awareness and have more energy available in your attention. You will attract a different type of thought when you retain more power over time. Those thoughts too are just thoughts, but they are less likely to be darker, thicker, more difficult thoughts, ones that cause depressive moods or states.

The more clarity you have in your attention, the fewer thoughts will arise.

When you first start to meditate, it may seem like you’re thinking more thoughts than ever before. What’s really going on is you’re becoming more aware of the thoughts. It’s not that meditation causes more thinking; it’s that meditation helps you to perceive more of what’s going on in your mind. This can be disconcerting at first, but it’s a common experience. As you continue to meditate, it will pass. Don’t worry about it. They’re just thoughts.

If you find that your thoughts are disturbing, then you may want to practice a substitution form of mindfulness: When you notice a refrain of negative or difficult thoughts, train yourself to do something different with your mind. For example, if you’re prone to worry, such as about a big exam you have coming up, or a presentation you need to make to your boss, and you find yourself mentally fidgeting with the worry, where you start to obsess over it, then decide on something to use in its place. It could be as simple as a nursery rhyme. Decide that you’ll start “Twinkle twinkle little star” every time you catch yourself worrying about your worry-object. Then, see how quickly you can catch yourself.

Don’t beat yourself up when you realize you’re worrying again. Just catch it, and say, “Oh shoot, there I go again! Twinkle, twinkle, little star…” and say your nursery rhyme. You may only be able to get so far with reciting the rhyme before you’re off in worry-mode again, but that’s OK! Just catch yourself, and start the twinkle twinkle again. It does not matter how many times you go back to the worrying. You can make a game of it, and see if you will catch yourself again.

It’s like training a puppy: The puppy grabs your shoe and starts chewing on it, and you say, “Whoops!” and you swap out the shoe for a dog toy. You don’t get mad at the puppy. Chewing shoes is its nature; it’s what puppies do.

If your brain wants to think obsessively about something, you can give it something different to obsess on. “Twinkle twinkle” works wonders.

You are not your thoughts.

You are not your thoughts.

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This can be a tough one to unpack.

We believe that our perception of the world is constructed through the thought process. Thoughts come in. We think them. We believe things therefore to be true from the thinking. It feels like the thoughts are me. But that’s not the case. If thinking stops, there is still a “you” that continues to exist. Therefore, the thoughts are not who you are.

But it does not feel that way. It feels like anything that enters the mind as a thought is very real; that it comprises me. That the thought is MINE and I am my thoughts.

This is a fallacy.

The process of meditation will, slowly but surely, help you to decouple from your thoughts.

The thoughts may continue. Or they may not. It won’t matter. YOU will exist underneath, or beyond, or through it all. The thoughts appear within something bigger than the thought; the illusion of thinking is that it feels like the thoughts are what make me, me.

It’s that unfortunate Descartes thing: “I think, therefore I am.”

Western comprehension of existence has been shaped incorrectly with such ideas.

The thinking is independent from who you are.

Thinking passes through. It’s like the weather.

It does not actually change the real YOU beneath the storm.

There may be sunny days or cloudy ones. Doesn’t matter. There is a YOU that pre-exists it all.

As you gain clarity from your meditation practice, it’s very likely that you will discover you have fewer thoughts entering your attention.

This can make for a calmer day-to-day. There’s less stuff to pay attention to. It’s easier to be at peace.

Just because a thought enters your awareness does not mean you need to own it. It’s not even necessarily yours. You might pick up on an impression from the world around, like fake news being passed from node to node in a network. It’s just noise. One thought is no more real than another thought. Just because it’s passing through your mind at a given moment does not actually mean that it’s true or real or any more important than any other thought. It’s just a thought. And thoughts are not who you are.

We’re taught by conditioning, through the process of getting acclimated to the way this particular 3-D world on Earth works, to pay attention to the thoughts that come in, to own them, to listen to them. We attach to them and by thus attaching we imbue them with power. We make them real. They become very very significant, but only to the individual who is thinking them.

When you believe your thoughts, you can be easily led astray.

It’s not that you should have a goal to be free of thoughts. Thoughts may come in; they may not. Either is fine.

It’s important to recognize that they are not YOU, though.

You are more than the thoughts.

Who even knows where the thoughts come from?

They just arrive, and we grab them.

What if they arrive, and you let them be? You can watch them pass through.

There will always be another one!

Just like sunny days. There will always be another one, eventually!

And just like you wouldn’t even try to control the weather, you shouldn’t try to control your thoughts. Just let them be. You can watch them, like a disinterested outside observer. Don’t get involved. They’re not actually all that important.