Thoughts in Meditation

There are many mental and emotional events which occur when one sits to meditate. It depends on the mind content, the activation of subconscious energy and the massive or infantile power of the meditator.

Those who practice proficiently, who have some mastery over the mind, may banish any mental or emotional disturbance in a split second. They bring the mind to order rapidly. Others, the novices, even after years, may struggle to control what is unwanted in the mind, with the mind getting the best of their attention, day after day.

Respect!

• Does the mind have respect for the observing self, the witnessing faculty?
• Who or what is that witness?
• What is its function?
• What is its authority?
• Where do the emotions fit in?

Some meditation methods dictate that all thoughts which arise in the mind should be ignored or brushed aside. This idea is based on the declared statement that the thoughts are ephemeral, useless, a humbug; that they are of no consequence. They are figments and have absolutely no value.

It is declared that one should be a witness to thoughts which come and go. One should be a silent non-reactive witness, like a sun in a solar system which witnesses but does not react with or respond to the planets, asteroids, and meteors which flash by around it.

What do I recommend?

I feel that there is value to attending to thoughts which arise in meditation, but that value should be accessed during some meditations even though in some others, it should be ignored or left aside for the time being.

This is because mere brushing a thought aside does not necessarily remove the thought from the psyche, even though it may cause the thought to be dormant or to be suppressed for the time being.

One may observe thoughts as they come, one after the other, but keeping them in an orderly queue, instead of allowing them to flash by at a rapid speed at their own rate. One may throttle them at a slow speed, examining one after the other for their source force, to determine how they were formulated, and how they derived the power to flash into the mind, as to how they derive the power to command the mind to display them, as to if they originated from someone else, and then penetrated the psyche, like a bullet which entered a body and lodged in it.

This examination if done precisely and with great care, as compared to ignoring the energy, may cause the permanent removal of that thought energy from the psyche. It may even cause the mind to develop an automatic deletion of similar energies which would arise in the mind in the future.

Here are some of the skills which one may fail to develop if one always only ignores the thoughts and urges which arise in the mind.

• identification of persons who somehow has the power to penetrate the psyche
• identification of specific sensual addictions which are innate to the self
• identification of subconscious cravings which normally operate covertly in the psyche
• identification of thought pattern behaviors which are self-destructive energies
• never being able to throttle the speed at which the mind spits out thoughts
• not having the ability to sort which thoughts have great value and which are trivial
• not understanding the relationship between the memory and the thought production mechanism (the intellect)
• not sorting the observer-witness from the thought producing adjunct in the mind
• never getting clarity to know how the thoughts are generated, illustrated, and displayed in the mind

Hence in inSelf Yoga™, it is recommended that one should confront thoughts during some meditations.

When should one not do this?

This should not be done when specifically, one is in a high control state, where somehow one has very little thought packages or no such packages. Then one should proceed with the high-end meditation method or state, where there are no thoughts occurring or where there are very few thoughts which occur and which one can confront if need be.