When talking to people about meditation, I often hear this: “I try to meditate – clear me mind – but my mind starts racing! Meditation doesn’t work for me.”
The racing mind is a common problem with those new (and maybe not so new) to meditation. Except that maybe it’s not really a problem but exactly what you’re aiming for. You just cocked your head and thought, “isn’t meditation clearing your head of thoughts?” didn’t you?! But I ask you – WHY no thoughts?
Reasons for Meditating
Go back to your original reasons for undertaking the practice of meditation. Relaxation? Because you were feeling creatively blocked? Because you couldn’t focus and weren’t finding solutions easily? Because too much “life” stuff keeps getting thrown your way and you can’t “hear yourself think”? Ultimately, aren’t you trying to relax and seek a few moments of peace and quiet to that you can then think more clearly?
Real Ideas
The next question is whether or not these racing thoughts are water cooler caliber gossip or are real ideas. And sometimes what starts out as drivel (It annoys me when Joe taps his pencil on the desk when he’s working) can lead to (and often quickly) a series of thoughts that can be quite valuable. (Maybe there should be pencils shaped like drumsticks
The point is that the very end goal of meditation for you may not be an empty head. And while that’s not to say you shouldn’t try to clear your mind when you sit down to meditate, you shouldn’t necessarily become frustrated if thoughts start pouring into your mind. Now the focus will be on one thought at a time.
Case in Point
There was a morning when I first started meditation in which the ideas started flowing so rapidly that I had to write them down. I quickly opened my journal and took some notes. At that time I was too new to know how to wrangle the thoughts so I could further develop each one. But at least by jotting them down I had something. Later that morning I fleshed out my notes on at least a few of those ideas. I glanced back through my journal while writing this post to find that list. I had scribbled down seven ideas. Two of those I later wrote some details about. Looking at the list now, I have no idea what three of them are about, but those remaining two ideas have sparked some new ideas. Now that I’m “better” (perhaps the term is “more focused”) when I meditate, I will be able to bring each of those ideas to mind and follow it where it goes. As it blooms in my mind I’ll grab my journal and start writing.
That’s how this blog post came to be. I began my morning meditation thinking of people I’m grateful for and my friend Susie came to mind. The string of thoughts that followed were diverse, but each thought led to another – and I followed each one until it led me to the theme of this post. Then I knew it was time to break open the journal.
As a side note, the first half of this post “wrote itself” – I just let the words form on the page as they tumbled from my head. As I came out of my relaxed meditative state, as my conscious mind started paying more attention to what was going on, I had to “think” more about what I wanted to write. Any time that became more taxing than I would have liked, I took a deep breathe or two or three and focused. The words flowed again.
