Rethink What Goes On In The Mind Of A Seasoned Meditator To Wrestle With Your Own Thoughts Less
Beware! That serene face on the mindfulness magazine cover could be a trap.
While stock images of serenity are intended to inspire, promoting mindful awareness can create assumptions that get in the way of experiencing it.
You never know what’s going on in another person’s mind
A few years into my daily meditation habit, I observed a woman during a silent retreat who sat more still than the rest of us. I’d never observed such consistent and sustained composure. It didn’t seem real or attainable.
At the end of the retreat, she said she’d been painfully grieving and apologized if her restlessness had been distracting.
I’d assumed her stillness was the evidence of internal quiet, but it was actually a reflection of her response to ongoing painful thoughts.
Thinking in stories
The content of our thoughts conveys meaning — the stories we tell ourselves and each other.
Their composition refers to the basic mechanisms that make it possible to construct stories.
Noticing the thinking
Putting the emphasis on the composition of our thoughts makes mindfulness practice possible.
At any given moment, we are either experiencing:
📽 Mental images
🎧 Verbal thoughts (or mental melodies)
🍿 Both
💬 A blank mental screen and quiet mental speakers
It requires practice to get clearer about which one you’re experiencing at any given moment, but not as much as you might think.
Imagining the minds of meditators
Imagine the minds of long-term meditators being full of exactly the same kinds of thoughts you run into when you meditate.
See if focusing on the composition of your own thoughts helps you wrestle with them a little less. Treat the challenge as a trainable skill.
