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Good and not so good ways of letting go of thoughts?
maarten
Veteran
Lately I feel that I can let go of my thoughts relatively easily, but I am wondering if I am zoning out too much. The technique I use is to focus on the breath and on pleasant sensations in my head (like a warm feeling in my face, or a light spacious feeling in my skull). This feels good, but afterwards I often feel not so good, I get a stiff wood-like feeling in my head (for lack of a better way to describe it) that lasts for hours (or the rest of the day). Maybe the absence of thought has caused some kind of stress? If I'd be listening to music and watching movies during the day, I think I don't get the stiff feeling. It's like the lack of content in my head leaves me with a dry feeling.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
If someone has some ideas on this I would appreciate it.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
If someone has some ideas on this I would appreciate it.
0
Comments
I was taught something different. That we should simply allow thoughts to drift by like clouds in the sky.
No grasping and therefore no letting go.
As far as I am aware, there are no receptors to determine wet or dry in the skull.
What do you wish to achieve?
Simply stopping thoughts is not the goal, though it is a very useful skill to have on the path to the goal. Once the mind has settled down, you need to give it something to do to avoid the zoned out feeling. The classic prescription is to attend to rapture, concentration, and analysis of the qualities of mental phenomena.
Zoning out, if that's your description of the lessoning of awareness, is usually the result of an intent to not be where you are.
It's a lack of willingness to accept what is arising.
Gently returning ones attention to this present moment without judging where you were, is the usual solution to Zoning out.
This from the Aro course
But doesn’t meditation make you slack and spacey?
Some kinds of meditation can have that effect, but this is not the intention of the techniques taught by Aro. (The ability to stay cool, calm, and collected under pressure is often useful – and that is a benefit of the methods we teach.)
Aro also teaches a variety of techniques for counteracting the urge to space out in meditation and in life. Meditation should make you energetic and perceptive, not lax and vague.
Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read you begin with A-B-C
The Sound of Music
http://aromeditation.org/
The course is excellent after about five weeks they try and get you involved in mentoring, meetings, wearing bed sheets (not a KKK thing) and the usual soft sell and support us monetarily even though we all work, type thing. That may be required for some but no need for others. The advice on technique starting with as little as five minutes meditation I can not fault.
If the course ends, then I may well start all over again . . .
Hope that is of use :wave:
@Sabre I guess this is why I was referring to "good" and "not so good" ways. Let's say that (as is the common case) it's hard to not get caught up in your thoughts. Then (as perhaps is my case) you find a way to get less caught up, but it does not come naturally. What to do next? Go back to getting caught up in the thoughts? How do you go from "getting caught up" to "letting go naturally"? Also, isn't it somehow natural to get caught up in thoughts (so any movement away from that is in a way unnatural)?
I did notice about a year ago that my mediation practice made my mind more flexible and creative, which was something I enjoyed (but lately I have not been feeling the same effect, although its probably still the case that meditation has an overall positive effect).
Or perhaps focus on more on the breath, to increase concentration? (I will try this).
Can you explain what you mean by "analysis of the qualities of mental phenomena"?
What's natural is different for everybody. Some are thinking all day long, and identify with their thoughts to a large extend, others not so much. With the right practice, the 'balance' may shift and the natural thing in meditation will become silence. It will be easy to let go of thoughts. This won't happen over night, probably. But it will become stronger with practice. If I had a nice meditation, my natural state is without thoughts after the meditation as well.
For deeper peace you must realize thoughts are not helpful. They are an obstacle in meditation and you are not interested in them. But they are not the enemy either, because that might result in using too much force again. You are simply not interested in thoughts, whatever they say. They are not you or yours. The more you realize this, the less thoughts will have a grip on you. They will slowly dwindle away.
To let go you have to find a switch of mind. If you try to let go, that's not letting go, that's another trying. You have to realize how all trying won't get you to peace. Yes, you can use some 'doing' in the meditation, but if you have to, only occasionally. For example, you can steer the mind to the breath every once in a while. But if you push it on the breath constantly, it'll stress you out. Every once in a while you can hush the mind, but if you push thoughts out constantly, it'll also stress you out. You'll tense your face, which results in the feelings you had. I think this has been the case; you used to much force, too much will. A good soccer coach is not yelling to his players all the time, they will rebel. He only instructs them from time to time, and in between he sits at the side looking on.
These are all little ways of looking at it, but in the end it comes down to taking away our wanting and not wanting. Most thoughts are created by wanting and not wanting. The remaining thoughts are easily stilled.
I think this may be useful for you: It also says:
Have fun!
Sabre
That is the insight approach. Another concentration-based approach which I have found very effective is the breath-energy manipulation meditation described in this essay. Try doing it with the stiff feeling. I recommend reading the whole thing. The basic idea is that once you've got stable attention on a pleasurable region, you flow the breath energy (and the pleasurable sensation) through the tense region. At this stage in your practice, there is no problem with desire for pleasure in and of itself. The trick is to keeping attending to the breath, rather than the desire or the pleasure. But choosing to attend to the breath for the sake of achieving that desire is perfectly appropriate. I suggest switching goals. The pleasure is a tool for staying contented and concentrated on the breath, which then provides the foundation for the release of stress. If you treat the pleasure as an end in itself, it can get you in serious trouble. Both worth trying. The key principle here is that once the mind is content, you have to give it something to do. What I do is scan the body for tension and unpleasant sensations, then do the "breathing through the pain" meditation (described above) with that sensation until it releases. If the stiff feeling comes up, you can work with that, if not, there will probably be something else to work with. (I recommend reading the whole thing.)
When listening to a friend, you don't try to pull out the words you want to hear, you just wait for whatever he has to say.
In meditation you can try all sorts of techniques and approaches, but in the end you just have to let go and it'll all unfold. Very counter intuitive, but that's the way it goes. It's the nature of the mind to be still and peaceful, but we keep disturbing it with thinking and less obvious mental movement through wanting and not wanting.
I'm happy you recognized the way you stilled the thoughts got you a bit more tense, so couldn't be right. Once you still the mind the right way, it'll leave a very deep inner contentment that can last for hours or days even. Imagine it's like your neighbor switching off the grass mower after he's been mowing the yard for a few hours. To still thoughts is similar. Finally silence!
And sometimes you let go and you get a bunch of noise in return.. that happens as well.
With metta,
Sabre
There is that first hurt from seeing your foolishness and then aggression towards anyone who pointed it out. But if you remember that the foolish thought is of no consequence very powerfully cuts that neurosis out. We keep faith that deep down our minds are perceptive and we will have wise or good moments and also foolish. This allows us to grow rather than busying ourselves with the spiraling feeling of hurt and wanting to fill up somehow to protect ourselves from that hurt.
Now don't be aggressive toward me.