Dark Night of the Soul

With consistent practice and correct technique and due to neuroplasticity the mind will eventually quiet. Maybe not all the way unless one becomes a hermit or monk, finds a cave and devotes one's life to it.

Samskara describes it pretty well too.

[ThatMan]

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

With consistent practice and correct technique and due to neuroplasticity the mind will eventually quiet. Maybe not all the way unless one becomes a hermit or monk, finds a cave and devotes one's life to it.

Samskara describes it pretty well too.

I have to be sincere, I find myself dreaming from time to time at living a solitary life where I can devote myself fully to this practice, but then again I also find myself dreaming about experiencing the human love, I experienced so little of it... The thing is that I find myself very rarely dreaming of "future things", this is one of the benefits of meditation, my mind is pretty silent almost all the time.

Originally Posted by ThatMan

I have to be sincere, I find myself dreaming from time to time at living a solitary life where I can devote myself fully to this practice, but then again I also find myself dreaming about experiencing the human love, I experienced so little of it... The thing is that I find myself very rarely dreaming of "future things", this is one of the benefits of meditation, my mind is pretty silent almost all the time.

The next book on my reading list is "The Bhagavad Gita". Right now I'm reading "Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works" but it's almost a thousnd pages and not in a large font. LOL! After the biographical intro and his Chicago address I might switch gears to The Gita.

The Gita is how to live a realized life without becoming a monk. Here's how Swami Sarvapriyananda explains it.

https://youtu.be/-99Fb-SIpl0?t=708

[Pastthemirror]

Originally Posted by A human Being

That self-critical voice is an issue for an awful lot of people, I suspect, myself included. I think the key thing to understand is that what's energising that voice is some unresolved emotion, and thus in order to be free of that voice, you need to resolve the emotion - which for me is the whole point of meditation, it's about allowing the body to release what's being held (and there may be layers to it - in my own experience I've found, for example, that emotions like anger and resentment are concealing feelings such as sadness and despair).

People often get caught on the level of thinking and think that the whole point is to have a quiet mind, but what you quickly find out is that you actually have very little control over your mind - most humans are compulsive thinkers, it just seems to be the way we've evolved. For me in my own meditation practice, the focus is much more on the body and simply allowing it to relax and release; thoughts still arise, obviously, but that's only a problem if you make it into one. Patience and discipline really is the name of the game.

What if that emotion cannot be resolved?

[Pastthemirror]

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

If the voice is that bad you should probably avoid meditation. Have you ever considered counseling to get to the bottom of the self-criticism?

i am doing counselling. A lot of it is a tendency to compare myself to others, but I just don’t know how to stop it.

[Ariaecheflame]

Pastthemirror:

I get a lot of self sabotaging thoughts and even scary impulsive thoughts to do reckless things towards myself (never others). Mine are due to my mind and nervous system being overwhelmed.

What helps me the most is to simply remind myself that they are just thoughts and they will pass. I try to just observe them, notice that I'm having a thought, accept myself regardless of such thoughts and remind myself that the thoughts will pass.

This tends to break the cycle of worrying about the troubling thought. Accepting that I'm having the thought and practising non judgement of it seems to create enough space between the thought and my response to the thought.

I can't seem to stop some impulsive and intrusive thoughts but I can practice self acceptance and self compassion when I have them.

[A human Being]

Originally Posted by Pastthemirror

What if that emotion cannot be resolved?

When I'm talking about resolving emotions, what I mean is that the emotion is felt fully, all the way through, so that it's discharged from the body - in that sense I don't think there's such a thing as an emotion that can't be resolved, though some emotions can be more tricky to resolve than others.

What I've found in my own experience is that it's not so much the emotion itself that's the core issue, it's actually the unconscious resistance that's been built up against it - it's this which is preventing resolution. Through the course of our lives, our bodies have developed patterns of contraction that create internal energetic dams within them, and this creates various physical, energetic, mental, and emotional issues. So for me, as I say, meditation is, as much as anything, about allowing the body to relax and gradually release what has been unconsciously held; sounds simple enough in theory, but in practice it does require lots of patience and discipline as well as a willingness to experience painful and uncomfortable emotions and sensations.

[enaid]

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

. . .

"The Purpose of Meditation Isn’t Stress Reduction"

"If you practice meditation and contemplation, it’s important to understand this dark stage. Ignorance is not bliss and can even be detrimental to your mental health. Willoughby Britton, a researcher from Brown University’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, is presently studying the difficulties that frequently arise for practitioners of Buddhist meditation.” . . .

Thank you for bringing up this very important distinction between one’s expectations and one’s actual experience of meditation, which for me was so frought with darkness and confusion that I eventually gave it up.

For most of my youth I was obsessed with obtaining the condition of ‘emptiness’ which led me to be quite harsh with myself - taking a hatchet to all my thoughts. Ironically for a year this procedure actually worked and led to my being in an almost constant condition of satisfying emptiness meditation no matter where I went, which condition, however, was more fragile than I knew and shattered to pieces when I became extremely upset about something in my life. I was literally stunned watching this profound (and I thought permanent) state of mind dissolve before my eyes.

The internal work since I gave up meditating has actually become way more meaningful and involves the science of letting go of stressful states and faith in a higher being to take over responsibility. Not too original I know but life changing nonetheless. I am in process of refining this relationship to God by relying on him for all my answers to every decision I have to make, which involves a letting go and a waiting, so that my mind can potentially remain empty. I do not do this perfectly but I’m trying to remind myself to do it as often as possible.

Thank you for your post. It meant a lot to me.