Thinking and Not Thinking Meditation

This meditation for beginners helps gain an insight into how the mind works.

Transcript

Welcome to this meditation on thinking and not thinking with Peter Radcliffe.

This next meditation,

Thinking or no thinking,

Is a really good meditation for beginners because it challenges you in the way you think your mind works and my hope is that after doing this meditation you'll find and discover some things the way your mind works aren't quite the way you perhaps expected them to be.

So the first part of the meditation we're going to just clear our mind and it doesn't matter if you've had no meditation experience.

In fact it's probably best that way so it's great if you've not actually meditated before.

And the second part I'll explain when we get to it.

So when you're ready just sit down in your meditation posture,

Just relax and bring your mind into the present moment.

And then clear your mind of all thoughts and go ahead and don't worry if you think you're doing it wrong.

It doesn't really matter,

This is more of an investigative meditation.

Just in the best way that you know possible,

Clear your mind of all thoughts and relax so you're not thinking any thoughts.

Now I'd like you to go ahead and keep doing this for the next five or so minutes and you'll need to pause this audio while you keep meditating in silence.

Remember just clearing your mind of all thoughts.

If you have a thought put it aside so that there are no thoughts in your mind.

So go ahead and pause the audio now and keep the meditation up for the next five minutes.

Okay welcome back if you've paused the meditation.

And I hope that was good but you will have found that it's almost impossible to keep thoughts from occurring.

Even if you're thinking no thought that's still a thought.

And the mind is a self-luminous entity,

It always has energy in coming up with thoughts.

So it was a little bit of a cheeky meditation but it's also intentional to see that you can't stop your thoughts.

So in the second meditation we're going to try a different tact.

I'd like you in this meditation to think of as many diverse different thoughts as possible.

So for example start by thinking about the grass growing and then the politics of your country and then your favourite actors,

What you were doing yesterday,

Think of having a hot bath,

What it's like to laugh with your friends,

Think of how beer gets bubbles in it.

So basically keep changing up the type of thought that you're thinking and never let one thought stay for more than about half a second before getting rid of that thought and replacing it with a new thought.

It's going to be a little mentally exhausting but just push through and try and think of hundreds of different abstract thoughts.

Again spend five or so minutes on this meditation,

Stop the track and go ahead and don't be lazy,

Just think of as many thoughts as possible.

So just stopping and pausing the track now for five minutes or so.

Okay,

Welcome back and just open your eyes if you haven't already and that is the end of this meditation and my question for you is what did you learn?

Now you're not here obviously but some of the things that are common are that people find that it's almost impossible to stop thoughts when you're trying to but then interestingly when you try to have thoughts they find that there are spaces arise where there is no thinking,

There are gaps between the thoughts sometimes lasting a number of seconds where you're struggling to think of a new thought.

So that's kind of interesting isn't it?

That when we try to stop our mind it doesn't work and when we try to fill our mind it doesn't work either.

So the other interesting thing that people report is that although thinking many thoughts is obviously kind of mentally exhausting,

It's not really that stressful,

You can actually maintain a fairly good level of calm but focused attention as long as you're not thinking emotionally draining thoughts and even if you did think of emotionally draining thoughts like say an argument that you had with someone because you only let it stay there for less than a quarter of a second,

It doesn't have time to cause stress and this is another interesting thing about meditation is it's not actually the amount of thought that is going on in your mind that causes you to be calm,

It is the quality of the thoughts that you're having.

So you'll discover this as you do more and more meditation and it's the reason why chess players or racing car drivers can be doing incredibly intense cognitive activity but they remain very calm in what they're doing at the time.

And then the last insight that people often have is that meditation is neither thinking lots of thoughts nor trying to clear the mind of thoughts and that is a misconception is people do believe that you just clear your mind but it's not true,

It's actually somewhere in between.

You need to actually be thinking thoughts but stay in control of those thoughts and those thoughts need to be placed on an object which is calming.

So I hope you enjoyed that meditation and the insights that it brought.

Reviews

Very beneficial for beginners. I'm keen to share this with my "MIND Your Thoughts" group. Thank you. 🙏

Great meditation full of discoveries. Although I would have preferred to have a 5 minutes pause for each, instead of having to do it myself haha.
Nevertheless, amazing

Wonderful little way of knowing what our minds are and are not capable of doing and the struggle it faces in different situations. Thanks for this meditation experiment.

Thank you for the insight!

Enjoyed it. Thank you

Very informative

Wow!!!! Now this was awesome!!! Thank you so very much for making this! I'll be back! :)

Lots to think about even if you have been meditating for some time. Thankyou

It helps me to think how my mind Works and how far is the way that I need to go to undestand miself. Thank you.

Thank you, very insightful!

Good exercise. Thank you

Excellent —& longer than it appears if you follow the instructions.

I enjoyed this, short and sweet

I'm not new to meditation and this brief lesson was still very instructive and helpful. Thank you.

Excellent exercise! Thank you!

Brilliant! Will recommend this one to beginners 💗

Interesting ideas even for me who has been meditating for a time. Gave me insight into why some days this is easier than others. Thanks

Wow!!! Such a great meditation.