Our Thoughts
Introduction
Many of the people I had the privilege to introduce to meditation say that they would like their thoughts to stop. Is stopping our thought a worthy objective? Is it even possible? In this article, I will cover why running away from our thoughts is not meditation and how embracing them instead can improve our quality of life.
Don't Empty Your Mind
Millions of years of evolution or the creation of a higher power (depending on your world view) gave us the gift of thinking, and now we want to switch it off? In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, while the absence of thoughts is somewhat tolerated at the beginning of the path, it is said to be the cause of rebirth as an animal, as it is tantamount to ignorance. In fact, in the higher teachings of that tradition, specific techniques are taught to get out of a blank state on no thought.
Approaching meditation expecting to be able to silence our mind is counter-productive, and it can lead to a frustrating meditative experience as our constant struggle against our very nature will keep distracting us from the actual point of the practice.
Mindfulness Is a Super Power
If we practice regularly for a prolonged period of time, way before a temporary state of absence of thoughts might manifest, we begin to develop a new, different relationship with our own thoughts.
We stop fighting them and begin to understand them. Seeing them clearly for what they are, the spontaneous product of a healthy brain.
This simple mindset shift opens the doors to a myriad of possibilities. Now we do not have to believe and follow the directions of whatever passes through our mind, but we can discern what is helpful from what is harmful well before we act. Indeed, this introspective superpower makes therapy much easier. Did you notice how often a therapist would ask you: “…and what did you think at that moment?” Or “please observe your thoughts in the next week, especially when you get triggered”. All of this makes use of this fundamental capacity to see thought as thought.
The Benefits of Mindfulness
Better at making decisions: Through mindfulness practice, we become more aware of our thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations, meaning that when the moment to make a hard call comes around, we will be less likely to act out of impulse. Being able to say “Okay, I’m afraid/angry/hungry and that makes me want to do x” is a great compass to measure our decisions by.
More focused: Mindfulness has also been known to increase one's ability to focus and retain active information in what is known as "working memory". According to studies, this benefit springs from the fact that mindfulness actually opens new pathways in our brain, once these pathways are established, it takes less energy to make use of them. In a sense, mindful meditation is in itself an exercise in focus, so it only makes sense that practicing would make you better at it.
Less stressed: This ability to rewire our brain also brings relief to people suffering from excessive stress as researchers have found that mindfulness meditation also affects two stress pathways in our brain which are associated with emotion control. This does not mean that meditating makes us not feel stressed, only that we become better at handling it, and that things that would make us stressed before don’t have the same effect anymore.
Less prone to mental illness: It has also been proven that meditation can help mitigate the effects of anxiety as well as diminish indicators of depression such as ruminative thinking and dysfunctional beliefs with an efficiency almost on par with anti-depressant drug therapy.
More healthy: Not all benefits are limited to a psychological level either, recent neurological research has also demonstrated that people who constantly meditate have a better immune system, becoming sick less often.
All of this serves to show that our thoughts have an enormous influence on our lives, they control us almost as much as we control them.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, meditation is less about the unrealistic ability to stop thinking, and more about being fully aware (mindful) of our thoughts and understanding that they are a part of what makes us who we are. In accepting them, we eliminate internal conflicts that gnaw at our minds, distracting us from the here and now, and we become more open to the wonders of reality and available to our loved ones.
