Sounds and thoughts meditation

[Jenna]

Afternoon all

I have been caught up in my depressed and negative thoughts and state today and yesterday. Whilst I have been trying hard to see these thoughts as just thoughts I have on many occasions been caught up in the spiral.

So I thought I would do the sounds and thoughts meditation from finding peace in a frantically world website. However, I found again that I was repeatedly drawn into these thoughts and had to return to the breath to be stabilised.

I seem to be able to let thoughts go far more easily on days when my depression is not so bad, however, on the dark days I have to stick to breathing awareness meditations as I am able to concentrate on the breath.

Just wondered if anyone else has had similar experiences with finding some meditations harder than others.

Thanks

Jen

P.S am rather proud of myself as I recognised an awareness of the 'need' to have the tv on whilst writing this and concentrated on how it felt to write this and the process involved and even the way my fings moved. progress,

[Gareth]

Everybody who meditates has days where the attention is easier to hold than others. I remember a meditation from about a year ago where for 30 minutes, my attention went practically nowhere at all other than the present moment. This brought about a state of deep relaxation that was pretty mind-blowing. I took it as some kind of sign that my practice was 'getting somewhere', which is of course a crazy notion. To this day, I have never been able to hold the attention as well as I did then.

The point is that it doesn't matter how well you manage to hold the attention, what's important is the process itself. I remember that it was such an important step, the day I let go of judging my meditations in any way; it seemed to really benefit my practice. On some days the attention is easy to hold, and on some days it's really hard. This is just the way of the human mind, and of course, every mind is different. You should find that your ability to hold the attention improves with time, that's why they call it practice I guess. But be careful not to attach any aims to your practice.

[Jenna]

Thanks Gareth I think you make a good point I have a tendency to judge a meditation as good or bad useful or poor rather than just as it was

[BioSattva]

I like to think of it this way - trying to keep relaxed and peaceful while watching a horror movie is a lot more difficult than doing the same while watching a deep sea wildlife documentary. Maybe we are metaphorically watching different documentaries on different days and of course our meditations are going to feel different.

The backgrounds to our lives can be like horror movies or deep sea documentaries at different times - subliminally affecting us very easily without us knowing, so meditations can seem 'good' or 'bad' from one day to the next, but that might be because the background 'movie' - environment, food, amount of sleep, big project coming up at work, the way our neighbour looked at us when we passed them this morning as we left the house, world terrorist threats on the news, changes to taxes and laws, global warming making itself known outside and in the news, etc., etc., can all change from one moment to the next and can affect our experience from afar. We can never know all these infinite and complex influences on our momentary experiences - maybe butterflies in Tokyo flapping their wings are causing the hurricane outside our house which is playing on our mind as we sit - it doesn't really matter what the causes are, just recognising that hidden causes of stress outside our control can influence our experience from day to day.

It's what we do when we experience tension and stress - how we respond and react which is the most important thing, in my experience. As Gareth says, one can then drop judging how our meditation was this morning or yesterday or last week and comparing it to today's to try and notice any progress. I'd say reflecting on one's life in quarter years or even half years of daily formal mindfulness practice - the amount of anger, fear, and stress in general relative to the events which were outside of one's sphere of influence - is better for considering how one's meditation is 'progressing'. Checking once or twice a year isn't going to become much of a habit.