Blog | Podcast
5 mins
Imagine your eyes are closed and you are seated for meditation and you enjoy the first nanosecond of silence in your mind which is very quickly in the next nanosecond followed by the usual mind chatter, what we call the monkey mind. Thoughts come flooding in about what your plans for the day are and more thoughts from the past, present and the future. Thoughts about what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow.
In many conversations around the practise of meditation, these terms have been commonly thrown around “no mind”, “stop the mind” , “quieten the mind”.
A useful Yogic dissection of the mind – one part of the mind is memory and the other part is imagination. Our past is memory, our future is imagination. That means, it is not in existence right now, in this moment, it is just a mental construct in our mind. Thoughts come from our thinking brain (neo cortex) and feelings come from our feeling brain (limbic brain). Understand the nature of the mind, the mind is an accumulation of thoughts and emotions.
How can you resolve the monkey mind using the very mind that is creating it? If you understand the nature of the mind, you will know that it is impossible to stop the mind. What you resist, persist. You cannot control your mind forcefully. Let’s do an experiment together now with just a single thought. Experiment this for yourself in the next 10 seconds to forcefully remove just one thought from your mind, if I said try not to think of a pink elephant for the next 10 seconds? You will notice all you can think about is pink elephants.
During meditation, it is most beneficial to bring your attention and awareness to a life process – for example, your breath, your heartbeat, your pulse then you are rooting yourself to existential reality in this very moment. As you sit in meditation, whenever you find your mind wandering, bring your focus back to a life process – this could be your breath, your heartbeat or your pulse.
When you breathe, focus on each inhalation and exhalation.
You can also focus on your diaphragm, when you breathe, focus on each expansion of your diaphragm when you inhale and each contraction when you exhale.
Keep doing this at each time the mind wanders. Bring yourself back to a life process.
The benefit of consistent practise of meditation is acquiring a certain quality within your state of being. It is in experiencing it within you.
“You cannot do meditation but you can become meditative. Meditation is not a certain act, meditation is a certain quality.” Sadhguru, Yogi
Awaken Your Inner Journey 