How do I block out random thoughts while I'm meditating?

>>18589262
Have you tried guided meditations to start? Headspace app is a good one.

Youtube etc. After you follow these for a while, you can focus on using them sparingly or as needed to get your mind in line again. I did guided meditations for about 2 months every night before I was able to do it on my own.

>>18589262
Try hypnosis instead. You can do self-hypnosis or look for files online. Once you learn how to get your brain to shut up with hypnosis, doing it while meditating is easy.

If you don't want to go that route then the best advice I can give you is, the second you find yourself thinking, just let the thought fizzle out. Don't get mad, just let it get washed away, as if it wasn't there.

>>18589262
Try avoiding stimulants such as sugar and caffeine before meditating.

You have to just fucking do it. The point of meditating is to gain control.

Exert your will; DYEL
seriously, exercise and using your body will quiet your mind and train yourself to exert your energy wherever you want.

IF you cant control it, youre fucking weak, period.

>>18589262
You don't block out random thoughts. The mind is constantly generating activity. To 'try' to stop this generates the activity of 'trying'. If you just watch the thoughts without attaching importance to them, eventually the activity will subside.

Couple of pointers about this process. First, when you stop resisting the mind you may experience an increase in thoughts. It's a bit like putting your car in neutral gear and revving the engine, the engine will run freer. This often happens around a few days or a week after beginning to meditate, and is the main reason most people give up, thinking 'I can't do it' or 'it doesn't work'. Just be patient and observe whatever is happening.

Second, the point about watching the thoughts without attaching importance to them. This has to be absolute. None of your thoughts matter. Unless it's 'I think the house is on fire', nothing else matters. Some thoughts will seem really important, e.g. you may start to have insights into yourself or the world. Ignore these. You can think about them later, or set aside a separate practise time to meditate about them. But if you allow any thought to have the slightest importance, it will draw your attention off on a tangent. Something to help this: you don't have to stay perfectly still while you're meditating. Some thoughts might be 'useful' thoughts like, 'I forgot to renew my car insurance'. I keep a pencil and paper by me, if any thoughts arise like that which I think I need to remember later, I'll write them down and return to the meditation. It is really useful to get stuff out of your head and onto paper if you think it is going to be drawing your attention for the rest of the meditation.

>>18589262
Distractions will come. That's fine. Recognize when you have a thought. Don't chastise yourself for having it, or reward yourself for catching it. Just note it, and return your focus to the target.

>>18589654
This isn't stilling the mind, it is crystallising it. This type of 'control' freezes the energy of the thought processes and locks them in to neuroses and ego (same thing, different terms.) It gives the illusion of control and tends to produce the type of fragile ego that will tell you 'youre fucking weak' (sic).

>>18589666
it can be useful

dont trick them

>>18589262
You don't block them out. You literally can't.
Try to watch your thoughts as an outsider , like , you can see the thoughts and hear them , but they're not your thoughts.
Most people would describe it like watching clouds go by.
You know they're there , you just don't interact with them.

>>18589668
It's illusory. It's becomes very difficult to 'see' your thought processes when you have crystallised them like this. It leads to the kind of thinking which says 'I'm OK, everybody else is wrong' when you are still carrying old patterns and not able to see them.

I'm not trying to trick anyone, but you are fooling yourself. Real control is being able to find calm and stillness when we are challenged, not rigidity.

>>18589697
the sapling and the oak tree

>>18589697
Just look about how he approaches it: if you "Fail" you are a weak failure. This is the doctrine of the fragile ego - what happens when he fails?

You are right on, the goal isn't to have aversion to thoughts, to push them away, but rather be aware of them as they pass through your mind, noting them to be mental phenomenon. It's about changing your relationship to your thoughts so that you aren't chained by your knee-jerk reactions to them.

The right way to approach trying to learn mindfulness meditation is to see the failures not as failures but as victories: whenever you notice your mind straying from the present it's a victory for you noticing, and a sign of progress. It is only with this failure that one can learn, and someone will have to practice failing to maintain awareness of the present thousands of times. Of course you don't just want to practice mindfulness on your surroundings, breath etc but also your thoughts and mood.

>>18589722
Nice one anon. Really useful way of thinking about victory/failure. Well said.

>>18589262
Stop controlling it. the more you do the less control you have, because the thoughts are controlling what you do. Let it go.

>>18589262
I had to resort to meditation to escape reality two times today. The first time I saw a lot of different images, the second time it was just emptiness.
Breathe deeper and slower. If you don't blank the first time, take a break doing something else and try again. Create an ambience and get rid of distraction.

What I do is just focus on breathing. I just keep my mind focused on breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Meditation music to block out background noise helps too.

I was going to post a topic about this but figured I'd just ask in this one...

I've got the relaxation part of meditating down pat for the most part but find that when I go too deep I nod off. Anyway from keeping this from happening or is it supposed to happen?

I was also looking into astral projection which requires you to enter sleep paralysis mode first. I can get close but the aforementioned nodding off is a problem as well as when I do nod of while on my back I usually wake myself up due to starling myself by snoring.

>>18589262
You have to practice pulling away from thoughts. Like you're sitting on a river and your throughts are just drifting by. You might see some that you really want to look at for a while, but you have to be able to put them back into the river and keep drifting. I'd say set a timer for every 5 mins, and when ever it goes off, pull away from the thought you picked up

>>18589262
You are thinking too much. This thinking generates another thought, of quieting the previous thought. It will result in an endless cycle of thoughts. Just don't stress too much

>>18589654
You sound like an idiot lol

I've never read any guides to meditation this is just how I do it myself.

You shouldn't block the random thoughts, you should counter them.

When I meditate there are three stages.

Stage one is calming my body. I lay down and shut my eyes and consciously focus on the feelings in my arms and legs and fingers and toes. I flex and unflex them to enhance this feeling.

Then when I feel my heartbeat dropping and my body relaxing, I begin to conquer the thoughts that take up most of my random pondering, all the issues that have been stressing me out etc.
To 'conquer' them, you don't need to decide on how to get rid of these issues, but you need to decide on a plan on how best to tackle them. We don't always have the answer, but with some introspection we can begin to rationally decide what the best approach would be to pursuing the answer.
Once you've really decided on the approach, and you believe it, the thought can then be dismissed with "well I'm going to ___" etc.

Then after the common thoughts that bother me I start treading darker waters. Looking at my position and life and considering whether I'm happy with it etc.

I find it's either a yes or no at this point, and if it's a no then it's back to stage two.

Once i'm past stage three, things get trippy. Too personal to share though.

>>18589262

Don't fight it. Just let them happen and don't pay attention, it'll slow down eventually. When you fight it, they start showing up more often because you acknowledged them. Sit your ass on the riverbank and let the fish swim by as they will.

>>18589654
This is actually the exact opposite of meditating. The more you try to control your thoughts, the more control will elude you. Better to justice notice that you're thinking and non-judgementally bring your attention back to your anchor, typically the breath. If you do that over and over and over again, eventually your mind will become still. It takes practice, but really there's nothing complicated about it.