So today's question is,
How do you keep your mind quiet during meditation?
Okay let me just jump into the spoiler alert and that is,
It will happen eventually.
It will happen.
So have faith in that.
And know that whatever challenges,
Whatever struggles you have,
Act during the process and it can be a long process.
You will overcome them eventually.
I think the initial reaction for a lot of people is,
Oh my gosh,
I can't do this.
What's the point of this?
You have to realize,
If you're starting to entrain your mind and your being to silence,
There's going to be a bubbling up of so much of your life energies,
Even ancient energies.
That have been buried in your being,
In your muscle tissues,
In your nerves.
It's almost like pouring hydrogen peroxide on a wound.
It's just this bubbling as all the infection,
All of your karmic infection bubbles to the surface and is resolved.
You might say to me,
Why all the pauses?
Can't you just speak continuously?
You're making us sit here and wait while you come up with the next thing.
And having meditated already this morning,
My mind is entrained to the frequency of silence.
And so hopefully some of that silence will seep into you.
As I said in one of my meditation videos,
Silence doesn't mean lack of sound only.
It also means stillness of the mind.
But that stillness isn't empty.
It is actually really full and rich and robust when you enter it.
It will feel like this expansive,
Open,
Fresh space,
The realm of all possibilities.
So when you're starting out meditating,
Maybe just do it for five or ten minutes.
Don't be too hard on yourself.
Just sit and get used to that new world a little bit.
Give yourself time to do that.
So when you're sitting in a comfortable position,
Back straight,
Maybe against a wall or just sitting on a yoga mat or in a chair,
Legs crossed or not.
Just relax into quietness.
Give yourself permission to take a break.
You don't have to take it too seriously.
Again you're just easing into getting comfortable with it.
If thoughts do arise about what you're supposed to do that day or your to-do list or regrets that you have,
Those you're beating yourself up about,
Desires that you have or that have you,
If they arise,
You don't have to fight too hard against them.
Let them rise and fall,
Appear and disappear.
If you attach onto them,
Then you can get sidetracked and start thinking about something,
You know,
And then you lose the next fifteen minutes and go,
Oh my gosh,
Where did that go?
And you're just thinking about a football game the whole time.
One of the little secrets though of a long-term meditation practice is that even if you do get lost down those back eddies of thought,
If you're sitting earnestly in practice with the intention of freeing your mind,
Becoming more peaceful,
Experiencing more harmony and flow in your life and becoming liberated from the illusions of duality,
Then you're just being,
You're allowed to have thoughts every now and then.
It actually doesn't hurt.
You can still come out of twenty minutes of meditation having thought half the time and having found emptiness half the time and still get all the benefits.
And again,
Those are a sense of flow for the rest of your day,
A sense of being in your dharma and experiencing lots of synchronicities,
Lots of magic,
Things that transcend reductive Western scientific ways of thinking that have to do with cause and effect,
Past,
Present and future.
You're going to start occupying a space that's free of those boundaries.
So the question is how do you keep your mind still during meditation?
I would say don't beat yourself up.
Do the best you can.
You'll get better and better at it.
Over time,
You're going to be able to touch that space of infinite stillness and silence almost immediately and through your meditation and then in the rest of your day it will stay with you.
So even in the rest of your day,
The mind chatter will subside and you can enjoy the gifts and surprises and just ease of the rest of your day.
