A reader from Massachusetts asks:

I cannot stop thinking. I tried meditation, but it was so unpleasant with all these thoughts in my mind. How can I stop this and experience an empty mind?

Many people assume that spiritual practice = meditation. But meditation is really quite an advanced practice. It is normal not to be able to sit quietly and enjoy that when your mind is racing.

Meditation is not an antidote for a busy mind. True meditation is what naturally emerges from a psychic system that is already in equilibrium.

Students have to do practices to recalibrate their systems and achieve greater balance. Then meditation becomes possible.

The first place you want to look is not your psychology or your spirituality, but your dinner and daily routine. Our thoughts are Shakti. The movement of energy is very much affected by what we eat and how we live.

The process of calming down and gaining more orderliness and less compulsiveness in our basic experience is called “seating the prana.” Before we can sit, our prana must sit!

Seating the prana is achieved by doing hatha yoga that is appropriate to your constitution, by eating appropriate foods and by ritualizing your day through the practice of dinacharya. Consulting an ayurvedic practitioner, or a reliable book about ayurveda, is your first step.

If you eat, sleep, work, play and move more appropriately for your unique way of showing up in the world, you will gain much more peace of mind than you will struggling to sit and stop thinking!

For many students, mantra practice is a good place to begin after your prana has calmed down a bit. Mantra japa is tangible and generally enjoyable. It engages all of the senses, and movement also as you use a mala to count. This helps to further reorient distracted senses and recalibrate them.

Although experiencing “empty mind” happens along the way, it is not the goal; it is just an experience.

Thoughts are energy. They are also Shiva nature. They arise and subside, just like the rest of life.

We do need to practice to free ourselves from attachment to compulsive thinking, but wishing for empty mind is no different from wishing for an empty world. If our minds or our world needed to be totally empty in order for us to relax, what kind of Self-realization would that be?

A realized person is undisturbed by naturally arising and subsiding thoughts. She is in a state of supreme poise in life and doesn’t experience thoughts as essentially different from any of life’s other arisings.

In Ma’s love,

Shambhavi

Posted by Shambhavi on September 22nd, 2009 | Explore More! Tags: Fixation, Sadhana