Body Love: Yoga, Health and Fitness: Meditation: Those Pesky ...

Yeah, I took a little hiatus from writing. Sometimes life just gets too busy. But this is a quicky, and it's fun and easy! No really!

I think one of the hardest things about meditating is the feeling that you're supposed to be getting rid of all those thoughts, but what always seems to happen is that those thoughts multiply like fruit flies and before you know it, they're all over the place. And then you feel like a failure because of course, no one else ever has that problem. You are unique in the realm of meditation!

Except you're not.

Meditation isn't really about getting rid of the thoughts; it's about seeing what else you are besides your thoughts. So it's more about turning down the volume on them than getting rid of them altogether.

But how do you do that?

I've been given many tips from teachers and books, and I've come up with some of my own along the way, so here, in no particular order, are some thoughts about dealing with thoughts:

• Imagine you're sitting on a hill overlooking a river and your thoughts are like boats gliding by.
• Or like clouds floating through a clear blue sky.
• Or like brightly-colored balloons drifting away.
• Or imagine you're in a forest and the thoughts are contained in the little drops of water dripping off the leaves.
• Or that the thoughts are just the background noise of the leaves rustling in the wind.
• Speaking of noise, maybe you have a radio dial and you can turn down the volume so they're just a murmur.
• Or maybe they're movies happening on that drive-in movie screen three blocks over where you can barely see them.
• Maybe they're birds chattering...or insects flashing...either way something to notice but not the main event.

Or maybe you let yourself get distracted by the visualizations. Maybe you need something a little more grounded. So perhaps when you think something you can echo it, repeating it to yourself until it loses its sense.

Or maybe you'd do better to name it. Every time you have a thought, name it: "Thought." Every time you have a feeling, name it: "Feeling."

Is one of your feelings "absurdity" at this point?

Well, that's kind of the point.

What else do you start to see there when your thoughts and feelings become background, rather than the main event? That's meditation.

copyright 2012 J. Autumn Needles

Source: http://bodyloveyoga.blogspot.com/2012/12/meditation-those-pesky-thoughts.html

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