Everyday Mindfulness

Hello All

I am new to Mindfulness - I was drawn to it around a month ago when I had a spiral of very negative thoughts which scared me to the point where I felt I was losing my mind. I have been slowly picking pieces of mindfulness information up from here and there via online information such as this forum and Youtube etc.

I've recently started the 'Mindfulness - a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world' by Mark Williams. The first seventy pages explain my life and my inner expectations to a tee and I feel very positive that this book could help me to see myself for who I am. However, as my stress levels still have me seeing my life through a negative lens, I seem to develop more questions than I tend to find answers for.

The book explains the Being and Doing modes and shows that I have been allowing the Doing mode to attempt to plan my future and deal with my past (big mistake!). It then explains that the Being mode allows you to see your negative thoughts with compassion and without judgement. For some reason, when I attempt to meditate I simply do not get these thoughts and feelings to come to the fore, all I tend to 'see' is chatter or daydreams when I then focus my attention back to the breath/belly/lungs/body etc. What am I doing wrong? Should I consciously try to bring about my thoughts whilst meditating rather than allowing them to manifest naturally?

I apologise if this is a strange question as I say I do regularly try to tell myself that my thoughts are not my own at present and have been brought about by the low mood of the ruminations and worry. I try to meditate twice per day and prefer guided meditation to internal mediation as guided enables me to focus and feel more calm than self meditation does currently.

Although I have started to read the book, I haven't got to the guided meditation part yet (although I have used mediation tools such as Insight Timer) but I don't want to overlook something obvious that I may be misinterpreting. Thank you for your time and input.

Welcome Escapee,

Just try to be aware of what is. Indeed, let them manifest naturally. If there aren't any thoughts, that's fine. If you try to focus real hard on catching thoughts, there won't be any. They arise when we loosen our grip a bit. If you notice that you've been pulled into thoughts, try to notice what the thoughts were about, and then gently, without judgment, bring the attention back to your anchor (eg the breath).

Thank you Peter, your response is just what I needed to hear. In the beginning, I was getting lots of thoughts popping up to which I observed and focused on my breath. Recently however, I get very few thoughts emerge that I just sit there thinking, 'come on there must be a thought there somewhere' but there simply isn't! I then question if I am meditating deeply enough or even at all. Maybe its the expectation or an attempt to seek or lure the thoughts into being as to why I do not sense them.

Later, I will just try to relax more and go back to the focus on breath. Meditation certainly is a curious art. Firstly I thought I was failing because of the distracting thoughts, now I feel like I'm failing because I cannot sense any!

What you're experiencing is very common. I'm glad I could help you out. Good luck!

A little anecdote from my own experience : I've been meditating on and off for the past 15 years or so, and for the past (six?) months my mind has been particularly agitated when I meditate - to the point where I sometimes consider giving up. My life has (otherwise) not been exceptionally stressful or anything lately ; it just seems to be some phase my mind is in right now and I've more or less come to accept it.

Bottom line : even after many years, many books read about meditation, many reflexions on the subject, the mind still does what it wants to do at that precise moment. It doesn't get any easier, your thoughts won't stop or anything, but you come to (somewhat) accept the fact that they will still arise, sometimes more violently than at other times, and you ultimately can't prevent that.

Thanks a lot Alex. You're right. We can calm the mind for a short while, using something like concentration meditation, but ultimately it's going to do what it wants. And we better let it. Like Eckhart Tolle says, whatever we fight strengthens, whatever we resist persists. How very true that is. The best thing to do is trying to be aware of what the mind does, not trying to control, judge or fight it. This awareness, of course, does give us the opportunity to make conscious choices about our actions.

Exactly, being aware and not controlling. That's the principle behind all of this. I'll try to put that in practice a bit more myself too

Thanks for the reply.

You're very welcome, Alex.

My advice is to loosen your grip on what you think meditation 'should' look like. Your meditation is what it is. It might be a chaotic jumble of thoughts and judgements, especially to begin with. Your only job is to sit and watch. Come back to your anchor when you notice that you are gone. Start small and go really easy on yourself. Some people find meditation really difficult.

"The capacity to relax is at the very foundation of any program undertaken to overcome anxiety, phobias, or panic attacks... Regular practice of deep relaxation for 20-30 minutes on a daily basis can produce, over time, a generalization of relaxation to the rest of your life. That is, after several weeks of practicing deep relaxation once per day, you will tend to feel more relaxed all the time."
from The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook by Edmund J. Bourne, Ph.D.

A random quote i found somewhere, but it illustrates the point. In other words, when your life becomes so overclocked that stress starts piling up, life becomes unmanageable, and things you used to enjoy, either you don't have time for them, or you are just stuck with the "stress switch" permanently on - the best antidote is to turn the switch off. Our tendency is to try to do something to "fix" things, but sometimes just stopping "doing" is more important than "doing" anything.