One of the benefits of a meditation practice is we learn to stop identifying with our thoughts. We learn that our thoughts are ephemeral, they come and go. As we watch our thoughts come and go we begin to see that a lot of the thoughts our minds generate are really nonsense, and that pokes a hole in the solid trust and belief we’ve habitually had in our thinking.
When our minds begin to relax, our thoughts slow down. In the gaps between our thoughts we become acquainted with stillness, we learn that underneath all the noise our minds generate is a deep peace that is unshakeable and unchanging. It’s always there, always a part of our awareness, it is just hidden below our habitual reactions and thinking about life. When we become absorbed in it, we begin the long process of learning to give up our attachments and aversions to our thoughts, at least for the time we are seated on our cushions. It’s. Just. Thinking.
Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation. We will be sitting from 7:30 to 10:00 PM EST. It is not necessary to sit for the entire extended time, which is set up to make it convenient for people in four North American Time Zones; sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you. Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers, who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
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We often wish we could take that peace with us when we get up from our cushions. With another layer of practice it is possible, although since life and our minds are so noisy and demanding it just doesn’t come naturally. However it isn’t difficult. We only need to remember to take occasional stillness breaks in our day to day lives.
One of the easiest ways to bring stillness into our experience of everyday life is through our senses. It might seem counter-intuitive since it is frequently a goal in spiritual practice to transcend sensory desire, but it is also possible to use our senses in service of spiritual development. When we are absorbed in sensory input, thinking stops, and we are in stillness. It isn't necessary to be a skilled meditation practitioner, anyone can do this. It is not possible to be attentive to your senses and think at the same time. It isn’t even necessary to believe me, just try it. :-)
Digging for peanuts
We can bring stillness into life simply by taking a break to look out a window and watch a squirrel.
We can bring stillness into life by attending to our breath.
We can bring stillness into life by massaging or stretching a tight spot in our bodies.
We can bring stillness into life by petting the soft fur of a cat or dog.
We can bring stillness into life by looking, really looking, into someone’s eyes.
We can bring stillness into life by attending to the sound of a fax or printer.
We can bring stillness into life by tasting and savoring a single piece of chocolate.
We can bring stillness into life by following the rise and fall of traffic sounds outside our windows.
We can bring stillness into life, literally, by stopping to smell the roses.
The key is we generate stillness in day to day awareness by bringing our attention to the immediate moment. Every time we pause to come back to stillness we break the spell cast by our thinking. By bringing attention to our senses we become mindful of this moment. For this moment at least, we are not “out there”, instead we are just right here, right now. The more frequently we pause the more practiced we become; we can go deeper into stillness in a quick moment, and it becomes more stable. We can bring ourselves to stillness in an instant, and it can actually remain with us as we return our attention to what ever it is we are involved in.
Bringing stillness into our lives this way amplifies creativity, it makes room for solutions to problems, or current situations, to arise in ways in which it is impossible when we are lost in thought. As the continuing practice stabilizes and becomes more anchored in our awareness, peace becomes apparent and evidential in our lives.
We can take it one step further while in that moment of stillness, by reminding ourselves, It’s. Just. Thinking. Bringing our practice from the cushion deeper into our day to day experience further helps us to loosen our grasp on thinking and reminds us we are not our thoughts. It’s only thinking. It is a practice that brings meditation from the cushion directly into living experience. It is actually a strategy to ground unchanging awareness in our moment to moment experience, and to bring peace into the world.
We have become so identified with our thoughts and the personal histories we carry around (which are also just a collection of thoughts) that we are weighted down by this burden of thinking. But our thoughts are not who we are. There is so much more to who we are. We are instead the space in-between our thoughts. The stillness. The alert presence and life energy in the background. ~ Eckhart Tolle