A Million Thoughts: Learn All About Meditation from a Himalayan Mystic

Like the physical world outside, your inner world is interdependent and interconnected. For example, in the outside world, if there is no fuel, your car fails to move; if there is no road, there is nowhere to drive your car; if there is no energy, there is no way to run the fuel refineries; if there are no vehicles, there are no methods to transport the fuel, and so on. Everything is interdependent. No independent phenomenon exists in the outside material world. However exhaustive you may examine, you will get to the same conclusion. One thing links to another.

This is exactly the case with your inner world of thoughts too. While meditating, if you fail to check the very first thought, be prepared to be bogged down by a thousand more. Let us say that you feel thirsty during meditation. Naturally, you think water, and from water maybe you think of an instance of buying bottled water, the shop, swiping the credit card. From credit card your mind may jump to an incident when you purchased gasoline with it, that may remind you of the gas prices, cost of living, your scarce resources, how you could or should have saved in the past. From savings, you may jump to future planning and on and on and on and on and on and on… Suddenly, you feel loss of focus, energy, and concentration. Had you gotten back to your object of meditation the moment you thought of water, you would have been saved from all the rest.

Stray Thoughts – A Natural Hurdle

The natural state of mind is like the quiet, expansive sea. Thoughts are like waves. They can be tidal at times. Restlessness can be compared to a sea storm. Laziness is like the floating ship that has its engines shut down and is simply moving in the direction of the wind. Just like a sea is not sea without waves, mind is not mind without thoughts.

A conditioned mind’s natural tendency is to engage in thoughts. Anytime you pay attention, you will find yourself in thinking mode. During your meditation, as you become increasingly attentive getting past restlessness and sluggishness, you are met with the hurdle of thoughts. This is a catch-22 situation. Thoughts cause restlessness and when unchecked, they also make you dull and tired compromising your meditation. As you continue to strike a balance between relaxation and exertion during your meditation, you start to gain control over your thought flow. They keep pouring, though. You need not feel bad.

This is natural. Thoughts have no intrinsic value or power. In the beginning, as long as you have an awareness, you will have thoughts. Eventually, with great practice, you learn to replace your thoughts with the only thought you are meditating on even if you are meditating on no thought, on emptiness.

The Remedy

It’s quite simple, do not react at any thought, just drop it and get back to your point of meditation. Treat all thoughts with equal indifference. Do not examine or place any importance on any thought. Use mindfulness and alertness to detect the thought at the point of emergence and drop it that very moment. As you continue to practice your meditation with mindfulness and vigilance, thoughts not only become feeble but almost stop emerging after a certain point. In that supreme quietude, when you continue your meditation with awareness, you inevitably experience transcendental bliss.

Random Images

Flashing of random images present one of the subtlest forms of hurdles. After you have diligently worked towards pacifying your mind, the onslaught of the thoughts poses a great challenge. Once you are past restlessness, dullness and thoughts, random images with no connection to your current state of mind start appearing out of nowhere.

Let us say you sit down to meditate with resolve and attentiveness. After a while you start to feel restless, you feel the urge to move or to end your session. After you check restlessness by calming your mind, a sort of lethargy and dullness blankets you. Many people erroneously term it relaxation or a good meditative experience. Good meditators, however, staying alert, apply mental exertion with attentiveness to overcome this hurdle. As you progress with a mind that is neither dull nor restless, the natural tendency to engage in thoughts spring up. Soon, you find yourself either pursuing a thought or actively engaging in it.

For example, you might recall a conversation, an unpleasant one. Forgetting that you are meditating, you start to mentally pursue that conversation, you start to think how you should have said this or said that, or, how you should have responded in such and such manner, how the person was ungrateful, shallow, rude, wrong and so on. When you are mindful to not pursue a thought, the fourth hurdle still affects the quality of your meditation as random images start flashing in front of your inner eye.