Misperceptions about taming the wild mind through meditation

One of the meditation questions I get often is about thoughts and how to quiet them. Many people seem to have come to the conclusion that their thoughts are supposed to immediately calm when they begin sitting on a meditation cushion. This is an exaggeration, but I think you understand. The belief appears to be that if your thoughts don’t quiet within your first couple sits, that you’re doing something wrong.

In my experience, this is not true.

It IS true that some techniques of meditation will help to calm the mind over time. However, this takes commitment…   and commitment means consistency of practice, dedication to the technique, and compassion to meet yourself where you are.  I will be dedicating blog posts to each of these topics over the course of the next three weeks. Before we do that, there’s another topic I want to discuss.

 First, I’d like to talk about the misperception of quieting the mind, what I think it is and what it means to me to do so. As with everything I say, please feel into my words, take what resonates as truth and leave the rest.

KMULHERN PHOTOGRAPHY

 Based upon my conversations with people, it appears that many believe that they should be able to quiet their minds through shear will or force. And my reaction to that is normally, “How is that working?” I ask this because it is important to create an awareness for yourself of how your actions are working for you.

 In most cases, it’s met with, “It’s even worse than normal.” Which for me makes perfect sense. Force or shear will rarely creates the outcome we desire. Your mind will be like a toddler and throw a huge tantrum by thinking ALL the thoughts as rapidly as possible.

 I know this is true because after having my second child, “my meditation practice was suffering”, as I would have said then, and I had plenty of sits during which I attempted to will my mind to stop all the racket. The result was me feeling worse than I did at the beginning of the sit and feeling as though I had lost everything I had once learned / accomplished through my practice. I know now that I was suffering as result of my beliefs about my meditation practice. I also know now that this type of change is normal given major life changes and that meeting it with compassion makes all the difference.

 Another common misperception is that the mind actually quiets, as in…  goes to silence. Perhaps this is the case, but after over ten years of practice, it is rare for me to have mind silence.

What I have seen and do see is this…   intermediate to a more “quieted” mind, what meditation helps you do is to stop interacting with your thoughts as they arise.

As you practice, you begin to see that the mind’s thoughts are fleeting, meaning that as soon as one arises and subsides, another comes; and none of them are permanent. Also you begin to see that although they feel personal, they are not personal. We all have the same thoughts, just to different degrees and with different variations of the same themes. As you begin to see that thoughts are fleeting and impersonal, it becomes less important to latch on to them, less important to engage with them. And so, you begin to disengage. And of course, as with everything, this isn’t an all-at-once kind of thing. It happens gradually.

Perhaps a thought comes up that is “less important” to you and you are able to simply see it arise and let it go without engagement. Then perhaps a thought arises that is “more important” to you (based upon your perceptions and beliefs) and you have a harder time letting it go and therefore you interact with it. Over time, you are able to let more and more thoughts come and go without stopping to interact or “play” with them. As this happens, and as this ability to disengage from the thoughts that arise deepens, the mind begins to naturally quiet.

It is normal to see progress towards this, and then have a period during which there is perceived “set back”. This could occur for any number of reasons and being aware of the circumstances of your life can give you insight into why this may be happening at any given time. Sometimes there may be no reason you can find, which is ok too.

One of the most important parts of practice is to remember that it is perfect exactly where it is. I’ll be talking more about that in a few weeks when we hit the topic of compassion.

Until then, happy sitting!

Stay tuned for the next posts:

• Why “I meditate consistently once or twice a month” doesn’t cut it
• The Fickle practitioner…   who likes to do all the techniques…  all at the same time.
• The Game Changer…  cultivating compassion within your practice, no matter what it brings