exiting The thought stream
Exiting the thought stream
Calming the mind during meditation is very similar to swimming in the ocean. The more you move the more you turn up the water around you, and if you can become as motionless as possible, you still exist in motion of the ocean.
When we begin to meditate, we do things like sit still, close our eyes, focus on our breath, and we often do this in a quiet location. Every kind of stimulus we can remove, is like slowing the motion of one of our limbs while swimming.
When we close our eyes and cut ourselves off from visual stimuli, it is the equivalent of us slowing our kicking legs while swimming in the ocean. Or like closing windows on your desktop, computer or apps on your phone. It allows the processor which in the case of meditation is your mind to have less to compute. It frees up space.
If this still isn’t making sense, I’ll try another metaphor.
This one might be more taboo or gross so consider yourself warned, but hopefully if you haven’t gotten the point, this will help.
Imagine you’ve just taking a dump, or a poop. In that toilet bowl exists water and your doodoo. You know that when you flush the toilet water will churn up and spiral with all of the poo and go down the drain. You also know that as long as everything is functioning correctly, all you have to do is wait a little while and the bowl will refill with doodoo-free water.
you also know that before you can get rid of the Poo, you’ve got a stir up the water. Which is why when we sit down to meditate we tell you not to fight the swirling and chaotic storm of thoughts, but to try to relax and allow it to settle on its own. It’s the effort you take to stop thinking that keeps you mentally kicking in the swirling thought stream.
A properly executed meditation session is the equivalent, to flushing your toxic thoughts and beliefs, and hangups, and so on. What I call mental poo.
By the way, if any of this has in some way, upset or offended you, I invite you to recognize that you might have some poo to release too.
Stay Mindful
