Canvas234

Hi everyone, I’ve been meditating for a few years now regularly and haven’t made too much progress. I recently realized that when a thought comes up, I quickly react and instinctively pull away mentally and focus on my breath. It happens before I can even catch myself and try to not react. I also noticed I do that during the day. I know that I should be just observing my thoughts and not trying to pull away or get carried away but it happens almost instantly and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to not react to my thoughts and just observe them from a distance. After realizing I was doing this, I was able to somehow stop the auto reaction and just observe my thoughts and I began to make great progress in my meditation for about a week. I’ve since however somehow gotten back into reacting/pulling away automatically by changing my focus to another sensation like my breath and my meditation/life have suffered. I can’t for the life of me figure out what I did the first time to not instantly react to thoughts and just be able to observe but can’t seem to be able to do it again. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

That is really, really helpful insight! I did do a google search and nothing really stands out. Do you have any go-to books or resources you’ve used that I could look into? Thanks for all of your help, truly!

Thank you so much for your responses! I think you are spot on and am really going to try to digest them and apply them to my practice. As far as learning about the nature of thought, do you have any suggestions or resources other than insight gained through meditation practice?

I’d like to get rid of this aversion to thought so that I can just observe the thought without pulling away instantly. Will just observing my pulling away from the thought lead to that?

Hmm interesting! Thanks for your response! Any suggestions on what to do about it/how I can go about things differently in meditation when I automatically pull away from the thought? Just observe that I pulled away and gently go back to my breath?