Don't Believe Anything You Think (in Meditation)

When I first read the book title "Don't Believe Everything You Think", I found myself laughing. It created a delightful, meditative moment. I was driving and saw it on a bumper sticker. Probably I was caught up in some story about this or that going on in my mind, and seeing the bumper sticker brought a sudden, refreshing perspective. Given the shift those words created, I wondered how they applied to meditation. With a change in just one word, I realized they apply perfectly to meditation, at least the style of meditation you'll hear on our podcast. When it comes what we think in meditation, don't believe anything! The way I've always put it is "let thoughts be a meaningless activity in the mind". "Don't believe anything you think" works just as well!

Meditation gives the mind the opportunity to disengage, like shifting gears into neutral. Meaning keeps the mind engaged. Believing what we are thinking and that it is important keeps us involved in thoughts. Of course that's going to happen in meditation. It's the habit of the mind. But in meditation we have the opportunity to let that go. Learning to let go of thoughts -- to not resist them and to not purposefully follow them -- is the art of meditation.

Years ago I did the Course in Miracles (the year of daily exercises in the Workbook). Although it doesn't say it's a course in meditation, doing the workbook exercises is a way to learn to meditate. What's interesting is that the very first lesson has to do with letting go of meaning. "Nothing I see means anything" is the title of Lesson One. At the time I did the lesson, it made absolutely no sense to me. I couldn't imagine what the exercise would achieve. Only recently did it occur to me that it related to the ability to allow the mind to disengage from its usual habits and surface appearances. And only now as I am writing this do I see how it was the first step in what amounted to a course in meditation.

So if you find yourself struggling with thoughts in meditation, just remember -- don't believe anything you think!

On Meditation and Philosophy

Discovering that today is World Philosophy Day inspired me to reflect on the relationship of meditation and philosophy. It all started when Richard showed me this BBC article by David Bain -- Four Philosophical Questions to Make Your Brain Hurt. I'm not particularly fond of having my brain hurt, but I am fond of philosophy. This fondness isn't about reading philosophy, as that can make my brain hurt. It is more about a natural tendency I have to question things. It's about having a mind that's always exploring the meaning and nature of things. When I was in college, I took a vocational aptitude test. The idea was to help discover what I would be good at as a profession. When I met with my advisor to learn the results of the test, he scratched his head and looked perplexed. Poring over the results, he said that it appeared that my abilities would make me well suited to be an "armchair philosopher". Since this didn't offer a path to earning income, he scrambled around for another option -- sales. Well, selling things has never been my forte, and I certainly haven't earned a living through philosophizing.

What's interesting to me is that my income is currently related to lifelong involvement with meditation. Thinking about it today, I see that meditation and philosophy go hand in hand for me. Both involve investigating the nature of things, the nature of oneself. With philosophy the exploration is intellectual, and with meditation it is experiential. And yet, there is a point where intellectual and experiential exploration meet and can't really be separated out.

Perhaps this is most clearly seen in the case of inquiry as a path of spiritual realization. The great sage Ramana Maharishi indicated that asking oneself the question "who I am" could ultimately result in realization of the truth of ones existence. Although the question can be answered intellectually with descriptions such as "I am a woman", "I am a doctor" and so on, taken to its final conclusion this question reveals ones nature as it exists beyond such descriptive terms. 

Meditation involves a shift of attention that takes the mind out of its usual ways of perceiving and experiencing. It seems that asking philosophical questions has the potential to do the same thing.

I can't speak as a professional philosopher, but as an armchair philosopher I can say that asking questions about things we don't usually question has been part of my path with meditation. It jogs the mind from its usual assumptions and opens the perception to seeing things differently. At times, it's a great recreation for my mind. It loosens the grip of tightly held assumptions and in that sense is mind-expanding in much the same way that meditation is.

In working on this post on and off throughout the day, I ended up Googling "value of philosophy" and found the following from Bertrand Russell's Problems of Philosophy. It was fascinating to find in the last sentences a description which could just as easily have been about meditation (in bold type):

"Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good."

Discovering Peace Guided Meditation Podcast

The idea for our latest podcast episode, Discovering Peace, came out of a discussion with our local meditation group. People were feeling agitated about the election and felt they were losing their center. One person said "I want to be able to rise above this and find peace". Ultimately, a guided meditation much like the one we just published came out of our discussion, but first we talked about the idea of "rising above" something. Many of us are being affected now with the turmoil in the economy and a heated election going on. In the midst of all of this we long for a sense of peace. Often people envision that as arriving at a place that's not only peaceful but completely removed from the difficult feelings. That's what "rising above" sounds like to me. While we can find moments of time in which there is only peace, this isn't always possible, and, when we try to get away from the fray, that creates a conflict in and of itself. What's more realistic and achieveable is to find the peace within that's there even in the midst of conflict and struggle.

In many ways this new guided meditation is like the Beyond Pain meditation. Even though pain may not go away, we can still find a sense of peace with it. It has to do with stopping fighting what's bothering us and relaxing into the difficult feelings. Even more important it has to do with discovering that peace is always with us -- in the breath, in the silence of our own awareness.

Just yesterday I was out walking with lots on my mind. Thanks to all the years of meditation, or simply thanks to grace, I recognized a sense of peace that seemed to be there in the air around me -- in the blue sky, the sounds of birds, colors of flowers. It was even there in the sounds of the traffic. At that moment, I could see that life could seem really, really difficult if I focused solely on the challenges in my life, but much more simple and sweet if I also acknowledged that peace. Sometimes I do that, and sometimes I don't. And part of the process of growth on the spiritual path is letting that be OK too.

What about you? How do you find peace in your life?

No right or wrong way to meditate

Meditation is about your own self-discovery. Learning to meditate is about discovering your own natural ability to shift into a way of being that is natural and effortless. It's about finding what already exists in your own awareness. My goal with my guided meditations is to create a platform from which you can make your own discoveries, so ther e is no right or wrong way to do them. Meditation is a happening, not something that you do. However it happens for you is just right. Yesterday I answered an email question making this point, and today I received a reply back which was so beautiful. It's all about this very point, in this case as it applies to someone experiencing anxiety. I'm sharing part of the email exchange here because I think it might be meaningful for many of you.

Question: "I have always had an interest in meditation and have known for some time that it would help me get over my anxiety and panic attacks but only in the last 3 months have I made it a part of my daily life and the results have been dramatic. Just knowing that the peace that meditation brings is available to me whenever I need it has made a huge difference to my day to day life and your podcasts have been instrumental in this. I really can't thank you enough for taking the time out of your life to do this for others.

However, the anxiety I feel often manifests itself physically as a tight chest and shallow breathing. During meditations I have found that focusing on my breathing when it is already laboured sometimes makes this worse as I become more conscious of the unpleasant sensation and this feeds the anxiety. My breathing does eventually become effortless but generally only when I take my mind off my breathing.

I imagine that this may be the case for others who suffer from heightened anxiety and would love to hear your views and opinions on the matter.

Thanks again for making the podcast and the website. It really has been a huge help for me to make meditation part of my daily life."

Answer: "Thank you so much for your open sharing of your journey with anxiety.  It's wonderful ...that you've made meditation part of your life. You are very welcome for the podcast -- it's so inspiring to hear from people with stories like yours!

These meditations are really meant as a springboard for the discovery of your ability to relax and enter a meditative state. Although we do have a Breath Awareness Meditation among the podcasts, and some other meditations refer to breathing, there are many that don't involve awareness of the breath. Perhaps you'll find that certain meditations are more useful than others at different times.  For example, when you are particularly anxious, the breath meditation may not be the best one for you. You can trust your intuition on this! 

And when you are doing a meditation you don't need to follow the instructions precisely.  There's no right or wrong experience or way to do them. They are there for your own exploration and discovery. You discovered that at certain times taking your mind off your breathing works best. You can trust yourself and do just that!"

Questioner's Reply:

"Thank you so much for your reply. The fact that you said that there is no right and wrong experience and that the meditations are there for our own discovery really has helped me see the breathing issue in a different light. Even if my breath isn't effortless then that's ok because this is my experience and whatever happens during my meditation is right for me. I'd get frustrated in the past thinking that because my breathing was difficult then I was doing it wrong somehow. Of course you mention these things in your podcasts but sometimes you have to be told something many times before you take actually take it on board don't you?

As I have realised many times since I started meditating, the relaxation and peace I'm looking for only comes when I stop frantically trying to find it. The first time I ever felt the complete peace that meditation can bring I felt so stupid! I'd been looking everywhere for this feeling during my anxiety and there it was all the time, quietly waiting for me to stop looking. Just that knowledge made all the difference."

Inner Child Guided Meditation

I've had more requests for an inner child meditation than anything else. I haven't done inner child work in any formal way as part of my path, and can't be sure exactly what people were asking for when they made these requests. Nevertheless, the concept of the inner child speaks to me and I really enjoyed exploring it as I created this latest podcast.

The term "inner child" has different meanings to different people. Not everyone relates to this concept, but for those who do it can be a very useful concept for growth and healing. If you're interested in the history of this term and how it's been used in the past, check out Wikipedia. When I use the term, it relates purely to how it resonates with me and my experience.

As I've said before, when I record a guided meditation I am meditating with you. I go into a meditative space and a meditation happens which is just as much for me as for you. In creating the inner child meditation, I discovered a bit about what the inner child means to me.

As I meditated with you, I experienced some feelings which are very familiar, but most of the time are lingering under the surface. My adult becomes very busy with her life and often ignores these feelings which are inconvenient. To pay attention to what may seem like childish needs and hurts, and even the wish to express the unbridled joy which is also there under the surface, would take time away from all the things which seem so important in my day. And yet what is more important than attending to our deepest needs and feelings or allowing ourselves to cry those unshed tears that have been waiting for expression for years? What is more important than expressing childlike exuberance? I love to pretend I have on my tapping shoes and dance around just for fun. We don't just find our unmet needs and past hurts when we connect with the inner child, we also find the source of our joy.

I have done lots of inner work, through meditation, therapy, and various healing modalities, yet the ethic of productivity and achievement have a strong momentum. I am not always as attentive as I'd like to be to my needs. Our culture prods us on to do, but doesn't honor our need to be. Our culture doesn't place a priority on nourishing the inner life. I'm thankful to all of you who requested this meditation. It caused me to take time to connect with some of the longings of my deeper self.

Whether you are already working with the inner child as part of recovery or healing or simply want to explore your inner life, I hope this meditation supports you. I would love to hear about your experiences with this meditation or any other work you've done with the inner child. What does the inner child mean to you? What experiences have you had with him or her?

----

NOTE: We're so sorry -- we originally uploaded our Inner Child Meditation with outtakes.  If you are among the 12,000 people who have downloaded the first version, please check back for the correct version which is now available here and on iTunes.