READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO MEDITATE

Figure 1A is a representation of many of us. You can see how I’ve drawn arrows going in every direction to represent how thoughts can be going out of control.

Do you ever feel as if you are not in control of your thoughts? That they’re racing around here, there and everywhere, and in this racing, you become confused, lost and unaware of what’s going on around you?Perhaps you are on a endless loop of thinking, which is not helpful, probably untrue, and certainly negative. Well, i’m here to say fuck those things (excuse my racy language) and show you exactly how to gain control over your mind.

Stage one: gain control

Here’s a good question: what does it mean to be out of control? The definition is simple: an inability to direct something in the direction you wish it to go in. Look at the figure above , this may be you currently, the direction of your thoughts (the arrows in the picture) randomly placed and going in every direction. In this state, you are not in control and you are certainly not able to direct the mind in the direction you wish it to go in.

Figure 1B : To gain direction in our mind we must choose an object to concentrate on.

So reader, your mind is lost, (or without clear direction), and the question is how do we fix this? The answer is simple: give it a direction.

In meditation we choose an object to concentrate on: it could be your breath, it could be the sensations in your body, it could be the sounds you can here around you, whatever it is, the process is incredibly simple, but difficult to do. You place your awareness on an object (say the sounds you can hear around you), then the practice is in noticing each time you become lost (figure 1 A), or put differently, noticing each time your awareness drifts from the sounds. When you realise your concentration is not on the sounds, you simply place it back on the sounds you can hear around you. The act of realising you are lost and then bringing your awareness back to the object you are concentrating on has been described as one mindfulness rep ( like one repetition of weight lifting in the gym if you are unfamiliar with the lingo). To practice meditation is analogous to doing mindfulness reps over and over again, or, in other words, to continue to monitor when your awareness has drifted away, then replacing it back on the object you have chosen to concentrate on (see figure below!).

A person learning to concentrate on an object. Initially their awareness will be all over the place, but over time they will learn to direct their attention.

With more repetitions, or more practice at realising when you are lost and then placing your awareness back on the object, you will get better and better at directing your attention. You will gain more and more control over where your attention is placed and be less lost in thoughts. (I will go over a simple meditation technique later- theory first then practice, lots of Practice!!)

Stage Two: Wholeness

You may have noticed when you are lost in thought your mind is normally thinking about one particular thing. Your mind likes to loop over and over again on that one thing, (could be some insecurity, some conversation you had that you are annoyed by, or some plan for the future). Let me give you an example :

At the top of figure on the left I have draw a picture of a man looking in the mirror. He is concerned by his hair being stuck up at a stupid angle. His mind is whirling around and around “oh my hair looks so stupid, I look ugly etc. etc.”. His mind is very focused on a specific detail (his hair being stuck up). Now the man at the bottom is focused on himself as a whole, he can see the hair is sticking up but he is aware that this bad part is part of a greater whole - a whole which is fine.

Feel Familiar? Often the reason we are lost in thought is because the brain likes to focus on one specific (usually bad) detail. Could be something physical about your appearance, as above, or could be an event, like an argument you had with your partner, or maybe something you are apprehensive about that is going to happen in the future. Whatever it is, the key to realise is that your mind is obsessing over one thing and not seeing the Whole Picture !!!

Luckily for us there is another practice we can do to get our brain to focus on the whole rather than one specific bad thing.

An example Meditation

In meditation we wish to be connected to a whole thing. Here i give an example of noticing all of the sounds you can hear around you, rather than one specific sound (like the traffic)

• Sit in a crossed leg position - if you can. We do this because our awareness is less likely to drift if we are in an alert, active position. If you are lying down it is much easier to drift off.
• Set a timer for 10 mins
• Close your eyes and place hands comfortably so you don’t have to move around as this will distract you.
• Place your awareness on the sounds you can hear around you.
• Try not to focus on a nice sounding sound, or on a not so nice sounding sound (traffic, children crying etc), try instead to notice the total of all the sounds you can hear. Just like when you listen to an orchestra play, you don’t notice one instrument more than another, you notice the total of all the sounds you can hear. Listen as if each sound was part of a symphony, part of a total melody.
• After a little bit of time you will realise your mind will get distracted by some thought about your day, maybe a conversation you had earlier or some plan for the future. Remember, the practice of meditation is very simple: you notice when you are lost, don’t blame yourself for becoming lost, simply notice, then place your awareness back on the total of all the sounds you can hear around you.
• Repeat the process of realising when you are lost and then placing your awareness back on total of all the sounds you can hear for 10 mins.
• Sounds simple, but when you first begin you will be lost in thought almost the entire time. Remember this is a process and something you can improve. Over time you will get better at being able to direct your awareness.

Stage Three: Make Meditation Easier

So the stages again : 1. gain control by focusing on an object. 2. notice the whole of a thing to train your mind not to pick out individual specific bad parts. And 3. Make meditation easier.

Stage 3 is not so much one thing but understanding why we find meditation difficult to do.

Reason 1: you are not healthy. What we wish to do is make the mind concentrated and undistracted, but if your body is unhealthy this will provide big distractions. Aches and pains will distract the mind, so it is essential you do some form of exercise (I do rowing and yoga) to make your body feel good and so you feel like you have vitality.

Reason 2: you are reactive. Imagine you had two different people and gave them a small bad stimulus, say a shock. Now the amount of pain each individual would feel from the same stimulus would vary massively. If you are a very reactive person and your pain sensitivity is high it will again be difficult to meditate, as the smallest amount of pain (emotional or physical) will distract you. To stop this I recommend a few things. Cold showers. Cold showers train your nervous system to become less reactive to “bad stimulus”. Over time you can train your body to be less reactive to the cold and hence have a greater tolerance to bad stimulus in general. Another recommendation is yin yoga. In yin yoga, one practices holding different positions for long periods of time, this brings up strong sensations in the body which over time your body naturally learns to cope with better and better. By doing these things one can strengthen their ability to tolerate bad stimulus and hence make meditation easier.

Reason 3: you have a bad life. Meditation will help you feel better, but it won’t fix all of your problems. You should still work on improving your situation, as it is easier to meditate i.e. your mind will have less distracting it, if you are content with how things are going in your life.

Summary

So there is actually a process to describe how one becomes good at meditating (* see the 8 limbs of Yoga). The first two limbs are about your circumstances, how you are morally as a person, how you relate to others etc. The third and fourth are about your physical condition, are you healthy, do you have vitality? The fifth is about your tolerance to stimulus, are you reactive or do you have a high tolerance of bad stimulus. The 6th is about your mind lacking direction and fixing this by choosing an object to concentrate on. The 7th is about dropping the single mindedness of your thoughts and focusing more on the whole of how you feel and the whole of the environment around you as opposed to individual specific bad things. The 8th, well I’ll leave the 8th for you to look up.

In short, to meditate one must:

1. Improve your living situation and circumstance.
2. Get healthy: eat healthy, do physical exercise.
3. Boost your tolerance to bad stimulus: cold showers, yin yoga.
4. Pick an object to concentrate on (pick something nice to make your life easier, like the sounds you can hear around you). This takes your mind from being lost and all over the place to having direction.
5. Notice the total rather than a specific part. Imagine each sound you can hear (traffic, banging, birds, people talking etc.) is one rhythm, or melody, that is part of a total piece of music. This makes your mind focus on the whole rather than specific bad things.
6. Practice regularly. The first thing I do each morning is meditate for 20mins. This is sufficient, but maybe start with 10 mins per day. Be patient, your mind will be very unfocussed for a long time, but it will slowly build in focus.
7. Do not make meditation your life: look, my favourite thing in life is playing table tennis not meditating. I have met people in the “spiritual community’ who take these things far too seriously. You don’t have to change what matters to you in life. For me, meditation and yoga do two things: 1. they give me vitality to do the things i wish to pursue. And 2. they give me a more realistic picture of what is going on. The waking up experience that people often refer to when doing meditation is pretty simple to explain: you go from being lost in your racing thoughts, to having a clearer view of the world around you, which will be a useful experience for you to go through, although challenging.

Authors Note:

I truly hope for those particular people who are suffering daily, going around and around in their mind, that they realise there is an answer and hopefully I’ve gone through enough here to get you started.

If you found the information i’ve provided useful, then I’d really appreciate it if you’d click like so others can see it.

Thanks,

Harry