Tried this last night. Interesting personal results.
I was surprised by just how difficult it was. My brain is very noisy, and I kept thinking. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on my breath, memories of earlier in the day or plans for tomorrow kept intruding. Or music loops. Or recollection of the instructions written here. Or frustration that I couldn’t concentrate on my breathing, and meta-thinking about all the thinking I was doing instead of concentrating on my breathing. It was really quite shocking—I considered it a success (and a RARE one) if I could get two breaths in a row without my mind jumping to something.
But much more surprising was the repetitive nature of my thinking. It was like my brain was stuck on a loop. I kept coming back to the same 4 or 5 thoughts/memories/plans, and kept replaying the same small slices of songs. I even came back several times to being shocked/annoyed by how repetitive my thinking was. If this reflects my normal mental processes, then I waste a TON of energy simply re-thinking thoughts over and over.
I found this very interesting, and plan to keep doing this for a while. I have no idea what the term “vibrations” is supposed to mean, and it sounds very New-Age-Woo to me, so I have doubts I’ll experience any of that. But the experiment was easy and produced novel results quickly.
I got similar results when I tried the more nondescript “focus on your breathing, if you get lost in your thoughts, go back to breathing, try to observe what happens in your mind” style meditation. Also, I got intense feeling of euphoria on my third try, and feelings of almost passing out under the storm of weird thoughts flowing in and out. That made me a bit scared of meditation, but this post series managed to scare me a whole lot more.
But much more surprising was the repetitive nature of my thinking. It was like my brain was stuck on a loop. I kept coming back to the same 4 or 5 thoughts/memories/plans, and kept replaying the same small slices of songs. I even came back several times to being shocked/annoyed by how repetitive my thinking was. If this reflects my normal mental processes, then I waste a TON of energy simply re-thinking thoughts over and over.
I have had things like this happen when trying to fall asleep. One thing I’ve found effective is a pad of paper or a voice recorder- when I find myself thinking “I need to get started on that new project” I leave myself a semi-detailed note to start on the new project, and then I don’t have that thought again.
This sort of mind-dumping is probably better done as a warm-up to your meditation rather than part of your meditation itself, but I wouldn’t know for sure.
Thanks for doing the experiment and letting us know about it.
If you’re attempting to use the technique I’m describing, remember to actively label all the mental activity that occurs to you. If the majority of the mental activity you can see is repetitive thoughts and reactions to them, the majority of your meditation experience should be the generation of a stream of labels related to them: “thinking, remembering, aggravated, in-breath, thinking, annoyance, hearing, thinking, shocked, out-breath, thinking, frustrated...”. In some ways this is much more important than just trying to follow your breath.
Tried this last night. Interesting personal results.
I was surprised by just how difficult it was. My brain is very noisy, and I kept thinking. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on my breath, memories of earlier in the day or plans for tomorrow kept intruding. Or music loops. Or recollection of the instructions written here. Or frustration that I couldn’t concentrate on my breathing, and meta-thinking about all the thinking I was doing instead of concentrating on my breathing. It was really quite shocking—I considered it a success (and a RARE one) if I could get two breaths in a row without my mind jumping to something.
But much more surprising was the repetitive nature of my thinking. It was like my brain was stuck on a loop. I kept coming back to the same 4 or 5 thoughts/memories/plans, and kept replaying the same small slices of songs. I even came back several times to being shocked/annoyed by how repetitive my thinking was. If this reflects my normal mental processes, then I waste a TON of energy simply re-thinking thoughts over and over.
I found this very interesting, and plan to keep doing this for a while. I have no idea what the term “vibrations” is supposed to mean, and it sounds very New-Age-Woo to me, so I have doubts I’ll experience any of that. But the experiment was easy and produced novel results quickly.
Anyone else get anything similar?
I got similar results when I tried the more nondescript “focus on your breathing, if you get lost in your thoughts, go back to breathing, try to observe what happens in your mind” style meditation. Also, I got intense feeling of euphoria on my third try, and feelings of almost passing out under the storm of weird thoughts flowing in and out. That made me a bit scared of meditation, but this post series managed to scare me a whole lot more.
I have had things like this happen when trying to fall asleep. One thing I’ve found effective is a pad of paper or a voice recorder- when I find myself thinking “I need to get started on that new project” I leave myself a semi-detailed note to start on the new project, and then I don’t have that thought again.
This sort of mind-dumping is probably better done as a warm-up to your meditation rather than part of your meditation itself, but I wouldn’t know for sure.
Thanks for doing the experiment and letting us know about it.
If you’re attempting to use the technique I’m describing, remember to actively label all the mental activity that occurs to you. If the majority of the mental activity you can see is repetitive thoughts and reactions to them, the majority of your meditation experience should be the generation of a stream of labels related to them: “thinking, remembering, aggravated, in-breath, thinking, annoyance, hearing, thinking, shocked, out-breath, thinking, frustrated...”. In some ways this is much more important than just trying to follow your breath.
Yup, I did that. It helped a lot, without it I would’ve been completely at the mercy of my racing stream of consciousness. Thank you!
Think, or think not. Trying already gets you into “meta”.
If it was that easy I’d simply think not. :)
I often quiet myself with “shhhh” (aloud), in a comforting manner, when I’m tired and observe that my thoughts are useless or even detrimental.