Clearing your Mind through Meditation
This good article is from Buddhismzone.org. You can click the website to see more.
The ultimate purpose of Buddhist practice is to reveal one’s enlightened nature or Buddha nature. All living beings have an enlightened nature, but what is this enlightened nature? To achieve enlightenment is to free oneself from the identification with the mind and body. Most of us probably would view the idea of attaining enlightenment as being impractical or impossible. However, most of us would welcome a way to calm down our minds, slow down our racing thoughts, and eliminate our negative self-talk. In truth, the difference between calming down our minds and achieving enlightenment is one of degree. In this article, we will explore what it really means to “calm down” your mind and how that relates to higher states of awareness.
Calming down the mind does not mean getting rid of thoughts, which is impossible. Nor does it mean controlling your thoughts or thinking positive, which only leads to further mental distress. The essence of calming down your minds involves losing interest in your thoughts.
Creating Distance
Most people who try to learn how to meditate give up because they become frustrated by distracting thoughts. They want to learn to meditate because they want to clear their minds. Instead, they often experience increased thought activity. They find themselves in a battle with their thoughts. What most of us do not realize is that our thoughts have no inherent power of their own. The power that energizes thoughts is derived from the attention that we give them. The basic principle of meditation is learning to create distance between you and your thoughts. You can experience this for yourself by doing the following exercise:
- Find a place where you feel comfortable and will not be interrupted.
- While breathing normally, close your eyes and allow yourself to relax. You can do this by focusing on the sensations that you experience as you place your attention on your breathing.
- While doing this exercise, do not judge anything that you experience or hold any expectations. Merely allow anything that you experience to take place.
- When thoughts appear, acknowledge their existence. Do not try to resist them or control them. Instead, return your attention back to the sensations of your breathing.
- Continue to redirect your attention back to your breathing anytime thoughts appear, regardless of how many times this occurs.
- Doing this exercise will do two things. First, you will increase your awareness of when thoughts arise. Secondly, you will be able to experience the changes that occur in your mental activity when you withhold your attention from your thoughts.
Meditations, such as the one that you just did, work because the mind can focus only on one thing at a time. You cannot give your attention to a thought when you are focusing on your breathing. Since thoughts derive all their power from the attention that we give them, this meditative practice is withholding the attention that energizes them.
Magnetized Thoughts
While it is important to learn how meditation works to clear the mind, it is also useful to know why we experience busy minds. First of all, you do not create your thoughts; instead, you attract them. There is only one consciousness, which is sometimes referred to as the universal consciousness. Your mind is a localized expression of the collective consciousness. Just as a cell phone picks up a signal from a cell phone tower, your personal consciousness attracts thoughts from the collective consciousness. Thoughts are like magnets that attract other thoughts that are of a like kind. Here is an example:
The thought “my checking account is low” arises within you. Your reaction to this thought will determine the quality of thought it will attract. If you feel confident because you have just got paid, the next thought that you attract maybe “I need to deposit my check.” In turn, this thought may attract a thought like “Everything will be okay.”
An alternate possibility is that you have the thought “my checking account is low,” which creates fear in you. Your fear results in the original thought attracting other thoughts of similar quality like:
- “What am I doing to do? I have no money.”
- “How will I pay my rent?”
- “What if I am unable to recover financially?”
- “What do I tell my wife?”
In turn, any of these thoughts will attract other thoughts of like kind. This person will be consumed with worry because their minds have become a party where their fearful thoughts are inviting all of their friends over. Now imagine this person suddenly receives a large tax refund in the mail. The focus of this person’s attention is no longer on his fearful thoughts but the check instead. As the person has redirected his focus, the fearful thoughts are no longer energized and cease to attract thoughts of similar quality.
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