Meditation held back by unwelcome thoughts ?
If what you do doesn’t work …….
One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things (in the same way) expecting different results.
How long must you keep the faith and use methods that may never work ?
Every year millions of us start to meditate and millions of us give up or park the practice until the ‘right time’
The ‘right time’ we hope will be when ‘things are different’ and we can concentrate more on what is for most of us, a tricky task to complete.
For most of us the right time will never come……
What if the trickiness is more to do with the methods, we use than the objective itself?
The real conclusions for most of us who consider the ideas of a peaceful practice?
- Distraction and interruptions hold us back
- The flow of thoughts in our heads does not always help us in ways we can understand
- Our experience shows us that meditation or mindfulness practices are interrupted or even destroyed by intrusive thoughts.
- The advice to ‘ignore’ or ‘rise above’ unwanted interruptions and distractions doesn’t work so well.
- If the existing methods work at all then they take years to give the results we want
- For most of us traditional approached to silence the Monkey do not work in today’s world.
If you meditate or practice mindfulness, you may even feel you suffer more from your Monkey’s chatter than most.
You may find your Monkey seems more active and more intrusive just as you sit down to meditate.
Consider a different perspective with a question,
“When else you have been quiet enough for them to get a chance to speak to you?”
When you see it from their perspective, the perspective of someone who could and would help more effectively if the circumstances were right, then it is not really surprising that a frustrated Monkey grabs the opportunity of you sitting in silence to tell you what is on their mind.
If this is your experience maybe it’s time to rethink how you are approaching the problem?
Maybe it’s time to try out a new option?
To reengineer the relationship read the Misaligned Monkey here