The first step to working with unproductive thoughts is to become aware of what thoughts you are having. Just as when you are speaking, if you wish to eliminate filler words such as uh, um, or and - the first step is to catch it happening.

Here is exercise to observe your thoughts from the insight meditation center:

During the next week, spend a two-hour period tracking the kinds of things you think about. Find some way to remind yourself every few minutes to notice what you are thinking. Are the thoughts primarily self-referential or primarily about others? Do they tend to be critical or judgmental? What is the frequency of thoughts of “should” or “ought”? Are the thoughts mostly directed to the future, to the past, or toward fantasy? Do you tend more toward optimistic thoughts or pessimistic ones? Do your thoughts tend to be apprehensive or peaceful? Contented or dissatisfied? This is not an exercise in judging what you notice, but in simply noticing.

I think the last sentence is key: don’t be discouraged by your thoughts, just notice what comes out. If you get discouraged, realize you are creating negative thoughts… about having negative thoughts. And then e-mail me. I think it’s really funny, and it will brighten my day.

Categories: Mindfulness
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So much for exploring the journey. I like to write for my empty bucket because it is an excellent way to explore topics of personal transformation, and having a daily post forces me to sit down and think. I didn’t post last week as I got swept away with anxiety and unproductive thoughts.

Or more correctly: thoughts that kept repeating that I was being unproductive.

This is strange because I have been accomplishing a lot. My mental chatter just doesn’t understand - my thoughts keep repeating that I am not being productive. Do these thoughts serve me? No. It wastes a lot of time.

This week I am going to examine my mental chatter.

Categories: Mindfulness
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The joy of being arises in this present moment when you realize that everything you are experiencing is perfect. Nothing needs to change - the joy is in appreciation of what is. It doesn’t mean you don’t act, rather when you do act it is more of a dance with what is, rather than craving to get somewhere or something new. This dance is your true self. How do you know if you are acting from your true self? Eckhart Tolle explains:

The main trap to avoid is to confuse content and essence. The ancient dictum “know thyself” points towards essence, your true identity. Your name, nationality, religion, your opinions, political views, material possessions, likes and dislikes, desires, fears, ambitions, as well as your view of yourself as a success or failure, good or bad – in fact your entire personal history and your thought processes… all that is content. All content is subject to the law of impermanence (as the Buddha already discovered 2600 years ago), and if you try to discover who you are within the dimension of content, you will encounter frustration again and again. Or, as the Buddha put it, you will suffer. You suffer because you derive your sense of identity exclusively from the content of your life. Another word for content is form. That is what the ego is: identification with form. When you stop identifying with form, the ego is no longer in control. So, first realize who you are not (form) and what’s left is who you are. But then there is nothing left, you might say, but this is not so. What’s left is not form, but essence, which we could also call inner space. The space out of which all forms come and into which they disappear. The ancient Chinese philosophers called it the Tao. It is beyond time. It is the eternal, the primordial I am.

Categories: Happiness, Mindfulness
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At the core of Vipassana is understanding the impermanence of all things. Everything we know, we experience within the body as a sensation, either as a subtle vibration of awareness, or through our senses. Everything we experience arises within us, and then passes away.

Our obvious senses include sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch.

According to wikipedia, our senses also include:

Thermoception - the sense of heat or the absence of it (cold)
Nociception - physiological pain (in our skin, joints and organs)
Equilibrioception - our perception of balance
Proprioception - our kinesthetic sense - our body awareness

What about our thoughts? Are a thoughts one of our senses? Or are they a product of a different sensation? They’re certainly something I experience… and something I can even influence occasionally.

Categories: Mindfulness
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I have experienced two 10-day Vipassana retreats.

During my second retreat, I had an amazing insight into the power of the meditation. (I’m a slow learner.) One of the objectives behind Vipassana is to dissolve pain by observing it in the present moment and accepting what is. When we are aware of the internal resistance we are creating, we can stop the cycle of craving or aversion that creates pain within us.

At these retreats, around the fourth day, they start these sittings where you are expected to sit still for the entire hour. For a guy like me, who doesn’t sit on the floor often, my back starts aching after about 10 minutes. In my first retreat, I never quite made it a full hour without adjusting my back.

The second time around, and something stupid came over me - I resolved to sit still for a full hour. My back was killing me, but I continued to meditate without moving. I could barely focus on anything except for the sharp feeling in my back, which, by the way, felt like an army of four year olds scratching chalkboards. I forced myself to sit through it. Masochistic? Probably.

And then the most curious thing happened. The pain… dissolved. It went from feeling completely unbearable to feeling like any other sensation on my body. It didn’t cause me any more anguish. What I found really peculiar was that those same sharp fingernail on chalkboard sensations were there… they just didn’t hurt. They didn’t distract me. They felt as painful as my pillow.

That’s when the practice of Vipassana became clear to me, and what they mean about using awareness to dissolve your pain. The physical sensation, even if uncomfortable, is not what I thought was the pain. The true source of pain is something I don’t think I could have understood before I experienced it.

I have started noticing where in my life I am resisting what is, and how I am reacting to situations. It is not just physical pain, but can be found anywhere - arguments, laziness, frustration, boredom, apathy, and probably a million other places.

Categories: Meditation, Mindfulness
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Vipassana meditation is pretty straight-forward. At the retreat, you start working with your breath, and progress to passing your awareness through your body.

The rough guide to Vipassana is:

1. Awareness of breath (paying attention to your breathing).
2. Focusing your breath awareness onto a smaller and smaller point at the base of your nose.
3. Passing that same awareness slowly over the surface of your entire body, starting with your head, arms, chest, back, legs and then back up to the head.
4. Sweeping your awareness over the surface of your body.
5. Passing your awareness through (inside) your body.
6. Becoming aware of your entire body simultaneously.

All this is done while trying to remain as an objective observer. This would be dead easy, but unfortunately, minds like mine like to run wild… much of the meditation is just recognizing that thoughts are popping into our head, accepting that this is happening and returning our awareness to the practice.

I never knew how much my mind had a mind of its own until my first retreat.

Categories: Meditation, Mindfulness
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The largest offering of Vipassana Meditation is that taught By S. N. Goenka, offering free 10-day courses (costs are covered through donations). It originated in India, but now there are meditation centers world-wide.

At first glance, the daily schedule for the 10 days looks pretty demanding:

When I first went, I thought it would be impossible to wake up at 4 am and meditate all day long in silence. (There is no talking during the retreat, except for brief check-ins with the assistant teacher.) But waking up was a lot easier than I expected… you are naturally rested from going to bed early and meditating all day. And you are free from other distractions, such as work, mobile phones and e-mail, so it’s not difficult.

At the same time, I think I convinced myself on one of the days that time had stopped and I was going to be there forever.

Categories: Meditation, Mindfulness
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Vipassana is a meditation centered around observation and awareness. It differs from focused meditations that use mantra’s, such as transcendental meditation, or meditations that focus on controlling the breathing, because it is precisely about NOT controlling anything, and just observing.

Sounds easy enough, right? In Vipassana, for once your life you don’t have to DO anything. In fact, you’re specifically NOT supposed to do anything. Well, other than observe…

The meditation stems from Buddhism as the technique taught by the Buddha to reach enlightenment. The meditation itself is quite separate from Buddhism and is something that anyone can do.

Where to start? Zencast has some great meditation podcasts available for download introducing meditation.

Categories: Meditation, Mindfulness
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Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal.
– Eckhart Tolle

So much for mindfulness. Yesterday I wrote a short post, and saved it, but didn’t think to publish it. That is known in scientific circles as the “absence of mindfulness”. It was a miracle that the thinking blog found me today, which appeared to be exactly what I needed… until I found myself having optical seizures. (Which just fuels my theory that too much thinking is painful.)

So am I supposed to think or not? Becoming brain-dead certainly isn’t the answer.

To be mindful is to be aware of what you are experiencing in the present moment. It is about observing the emotions and feelings you are experiencing, and being aware of the thoughts fluttering into your mind. The point is not to stop your mind from thinking, rather to stop your mind from thinking uncontrollably.

Categories: Mindfulness
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How often are you caught up in your thoughts, worrying about tomorrow, regretting yesterday, or waiting for something to happen? Are you aware and conscious of what you are experiencing right now? Do you notice the strain on your eyes from staring at your computer for too long? Or is that just me?

This week’s topic is about mindfulness. I’ll try to remember.

Categories: Mindfulness
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