Pleasant habitual mental patterns
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
I noticed during my morning meditation today that I spend a lot of time thinking about spending time with my niblings. Its one of my favorite things and we have fun, right now they like to exchange riddles, jokes and I'll play science guessing games with them, so I spend time thinking of things to share when I see them next.
Anyway, it is a habitual thought pattern quite like ones where you may spin off into self loathing or anger, except it generally makes me happy. I can sense though how like seeing and stepping outside of other thoughts leads to greater contentment and peace of mind that being able to do so with something pleasurable would actually lead closer to the Buddhist sense of happiness.
Anyone else have experience or thoughts about letting go of pleasant mental patterns?
Comments
I am assuming "niblings" are your children?
These thoughts need to be let go of just as thoughts that make you unhappy are.
@person
These are simply dry runs to meditatively learn how to stop feeding our habituated impulses to phenomena, whether pleasant or not.
This may be your only opportunity to learn how to practice restraint & objectivity with these small pleasant mental waves, because with any serious practice, much larger & more seductive spiritual versions of the same, with corresponding greater potentials for delusion, will at some time also arrive without warning on your doorstep.
As @how mentions. Everything comes to nibble.
The good I like
The bad I no like
The ugly ... nothing to do with me ...
We get bored, la-la-landed, calmed, up, down, sideways. Dark night of the batman. Everything is just a mind nibble.
Our karma, if you like that term, is centered around our being. Unsurprisingly we may 'meditate' or rather think about bills, children, partners, the death of our favourite boxer, what will happen next in 'Preacher' on TV [oops what a give-away], the pain in our ass etc.
Being human we like the pleasant thoughts, everything will pass, pain is delusion, death is only a transition etc.
How does it dissolve?
Stay tuned. Are you sitting comfortably? Just nibbling?
OK cushion, come to Lobster. Nice cushion ... good cushion ...
I don't think that looking forward to something pleasant is a major problem, though it might indicate a disatisfaction with the present moment?
Niece and nephews. There isn't a real word so somebody made this one up.
Nice word....
When I read your post, @person, I was reminded of Kipling's line in his epic poem, 'If'.
"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two Impostors just the same"...
If it's 'bad', swing with it. It will pass.
If it's 'good', swing with it. It will pass.
The different qualities of your thought-streams are still streams of thought qualities...
one may be a pure, limpid, clear stream where you can see the little minnows and crayfish scuttling about among the rocks; the other may be a turgid, muddy, greenish-brown impenetrable flow, where all you can see is the contant ripple and eddy.
They're both streams. They both need crossing.
@person said, "I noticed during my morning meditation today that I spend a lot of time thinking about spending time with my niblings. Its one of my favorite things and we have fun, right now they like to exchange riddles, jokes and I'll play science guessing games with them, so I spend time thinking of things to share when I see them next."
I think it's just you giving those memories and future memories a mind-hug.
So many awesome and amusing thoughts/responses. Good on us.
https://youtu.be/jyaLZHiJJnE
I found that trying to tear oneself away from pleasant mental patterns can be a form of violence towards yourself. Those pleasant patterns are there for a reason, they generally satisfy something within you, if they are not dysfunctional. They support some aspect of your personality, some joy you take in life, or some instinct.
One route you could take is mindfulness. In my experience it is useful to look at the craving part of the entire behaviour - when do you miss it? When do you feel like engaging in that activity? What triggers it? What personal drive underpins the trigger? If you can answer those questions and bring insight to bear, sometimes you can expose the whole complex and the behaviour just disappears.
Even if it doesn't, as long as the craving doesn't turn into an addiction (which it can with things like sex and games, although it's unlikely to happen here) it often isn't harmful, and eventually can disappear on its own. Then the trick is to not sustain it by clinging, to recognise the point where the time has come to let it go and just let it pass naturally.
I sometimes think about ice-cream, but it's generally harmless fun.