RE: Instagram Meditation: A Guide
Nice post! However, I believe you're slightly incorrect about meditation here:
Commonly, practitioners of meditation will sit with their eyes closed and clear their mind of thoughts for set periods of time or until a particular state of presence is achieved.
There is no such thing as clearing your mind of thoughts. Your brain produces thoughts constantly, whether you meditate or not. Generally, practicioners of meditation observe those thought (along with input from all other senses) and after observing gently move their awareness back to their preferred anchor (the breath, a mantra, etc).
Hope you don't mind me clearing that up, it's a common misconception that I think keeps a lot of people from meditating. Clearing your mind sounds hard (it is in fact impossible), just observing is much easier.
I believe I addressed that point with " If you find thoughts entering your head, merely observe them and let them fall away into the past as you stay grounded in the Present". Personally, when I'm in a deep state of meditation towards the end of a session I feel so grounded that I don't have thoughts any more. I try to move beyond observing thoughts to a point where I have no thoughts, even if only for the last few minutes of my session. I'd like to be able to go 20 minutes straight in that deep meditative state one day. Thanks for keeping me in check though!
You're right, I reacted too fast to that particular sentence. I hear a lot of comments from people new to meditation (or even afraid to start) that they think it's the goal to clear your mind, while that's actually a result of another goal (being mindful). The way of phrasing it has an effect on how hard meditation sounds to people. I didn't mean to dispute your point, I mainly wanted to clarify it for others. But you did indeed explain the observation part well too.
Thank you so much for the thoughtful input. Never ever shy away from speaking your mind. I appreciate the engagement!
A few days ago I went to a talk about "Learning through your dreams". The lecturer talked a little about several topics, the subconscious mind, energetic bodies, senses beyong the official five, etc, but specially about the importance of remembering your dreams, where meditation before and after sleeping can be a useful tool. I asked him about meditation, if it's possible to reach that state of "being in blank", which I've never attained. "Where do you get that from?", he said, and I replied, well, many sources I have consulted, many meditations workshops I have assisted, at some point they tell you "clear any thought". Well, many other say "observe your thoughts, let them pass, release them, don't focus on them, focus on your breathing", as you say. But the lecturer just responded: "If I ask you not to think of a green bear, what happens next?", of course that's the first thing you do. You can command your mind like that, it doesn't work that way. "The mind is the lunatic of the house", he said. Yes, you can reach that state of not thinking in anything specific, but by focusing in something, a mantra, a point in space with your eyes open, your breath, etc.
On that topic, in a session of Yoga Nidra (which I described in this post, I think it needs some pictures, but in the future I will add them), our yoga teacher told us: "The mind is like a child: curious and fearful. The child mind doesn't want to be ignored by us, but we have to treat it in a loving way, not judge it or scold it. The more you forbid things from a child, the more he or she wants to do them."
That's a really great answer. I should have been a bit more careful in my comment, what I meant to say was that the idea that you can clear your mind seems daunting to many novice meditators, and might even put them off of it.
By stating it like you did, at least it's clear they should not worry and focus on their anchor, and the clear mind will follow. That even gives them an incentive to continue even if it's "not working" at first.
I believe that any endeavor should be tackled from process-orientation rather than outcome-orientation. While the goal is to achieve those moments of stillness, to achieve that outcome you can't focus on the outcome. Rather you need to focus on the process itself: breathing at a steady pace, being aware of any tension in body and feeling the sensation of being at ease in your body. When you're so focused on these things, the thoughts become softer and softer to the point of silence because you're so preoccupied with being present. Kind of like when you're in a heated discussion with a friend and you can't pay attention to anything else.