How to stop the thoughts and be still

[Jkris]

The thoughts keeps on comming and not stopping at all. It is highly irritating some times. 

So what's the best technique to stop the thoughts or still the mind. 

 

[Consilience]

Mantra meditation used to help me. Now I focus on surrendering everything, just surrendering all effort or direction when meditating. Literally do nothing and eventually the mind slows down. You have to be patient though, and some days will be better than others. 

The problem is, there is no way to stop the mind because you do not control the mind. You are not the mind. You are witnessing the mind manifest. So if the mind stills one day, it wont be because you do anything. 

[FoxFoxFox]

@Jkris Breath control works best if you are hellbent on stilling the mind. Although I would suggest inquiring into the nature of the mind and allowing it to dissolve itself. The mind is just a bundle of thoughts. It has no foundation without thoughts. When you realize that, you can witness the thoughts without being engaged by them. Pulling out energy from them like so will automatically lead to the thoughts slowing down and fading out. Even the thought, "I am a witness to thoughts" must go similarly. 

[Truth Addict]

@Jkris

Simply by stopping the 'thought'.

There's this kind of thought that is creating the problem, which is the one that wants to stop the thoughts.

You see, look for this 'master thought' and then surrender yourself to the facts (reality).

Meditation I find is the best way, it'll make it easier for you to have a grip on the mind.

Sometimes, it can get real hard and you might find no where to run.

Here, I suggest stuffing yourself with food, or dropping all activities at once for a long time if possible.

Other less direct ways:

• Music.
• Books.
• Video games.
• Friends.
• Internet.
• Tv.
• Hard work (manual work).
• Basically, anything that distracts you from the main irritating thoughts.

Good luck!

[Enlightenment]

@Jkris Training stable attention on the breath

[Zigzag Idiot]

5 minutes ago, Truth Addict said:

Hard work (manual work).

I like this one best on the list.

 

3 minutes ago, Enlightenment said:

@Jkris Training stable attention on the breath

Agree!

31 minutes ago, Jkris said:

The thoughts keeps on comming and not stopping at all. It is highly irritating some times. 

So what's the best technique to stop the thoughts or still the mind. 

 

My two cents:

1- Put attention on physical sensation in the feet with intention of escaping narrative consciousness in head brain to embodiment of whole body awareness grounded in the belly or heart.

2- Role play being extremely stupid or of being a ghost.

[Forestluv]

@Jkris I was just discussing this with a friend yesterday. Here are a few things that resonated with me.

1. Thoughts and thought stories aren’t necessary for beingness. There can be an underlying belief tat thinking is necessary to operate in life. Realizing this isn’t true, can help relax the mind. At most, 1% of our thoughts are needed to function. This is a very radical idea for me. I’ve gone stretches of 10min or so, and have done fine. Actually, life seems to flow a lot better without thinking. The mind-body is like a jazz band and some guy in the audience keeps clanging an annoying cow bell. He insists he is the band and the band can’t survive without him. It’s distracting and unnecessary for the music.For example, these words are just being expressed right now, I don’t even know how this sentence will end. It feels like bizarre magic.

2. I’vefound that trying to repress thoughts can be counter-productive. I’ve found it more at times helpful to get curious about the nature of thought. What is the underlying nature of thought? Sometimes when I meditate, I will sit and wait for thoughts. Like a cat waiting for a mouse to come out of the cupboard? Here, I actually want thoughts to arise. That is the whole experiment.To discover where these thoughts are coming from. What comes prior to the thought? Ironically, sometimes when I do this, no thoughts arise. I just sit there like a cat waiting. Before long, I started experiences stretches of a few minutes without a thought.

[peanutspathtotruth]

51 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

The mind-body is like a jazz band and some guy in the audience keeps clanging an annoying cow bell.

This is such a hilariously accurate metaphor 

[Forestluv]

6 minutes ago, peanutspathtotruth said:

This is such a hilariously accurate metaphor 

I was having a discussion on this with @Nahm yesterday. I originally said thoughts are like the guitar player in the band. Nahm said thoughts are more like a guy in the audience with a cow bell. I laughed and realized it’s so true. My thinking mind wants to create a story in which thoughts are really important, like the guitarist. It doesn’t want to admit it’s just a cowbell guy making noise.

[peanutspathtotruth]

1 minute ago, Serotoninluv said:

My thinking mind wants to create a story in which thoughts are really important, like the guitarist. It doesn’t want to admit it’s just a cowbell guy making noise.

I can resonate with that. It's crazy every time I arrive at the direct experience of thoughts being at least 99% unnecessary, I can clearly see that this clinging really is the hardest addiction I've ever encountered.

[Forestluv]

2 minutes ago, peanutspathtotruth said:

I can resonate with that. It's crazy every time I arrive at the direct experience of thoughts being at least 99% unnecessary, I can clearly see that this clinging really is the hardest addiction I've ever encountered.

Yea, just 1% of cowbell is sufficient. It’s a tough pill to swallow for the cowbell guy.

 

[peanutspathtotruth]

7 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

Yea, just 1% of cowbell is sufficient. It’s a tough pill to swallow for the cowbell guy.

 

[Nahm]

@Serotoninluv ??   

2 hours ago, Jkris said:

The thoughts keeps on comming and not stopping at all. It is highly irritating some times. 

So what's the best technique to stop the thoughts or still the mind. 

 

Overall my suggestion is to go downward. As a model, physically speaking, consider you’re experiencing at the eyeballs & ears ‘level’. When you see & hear things do you take that upwards into thinking/reactional, or downwards into the heart/responsiveness. Are you thinking about the experience, or feeling the experience. 

I don’t know if “stopping the thoughts” in a direct actionable sense is really possible.  I do know that with enough focusing on breathing from the stomach, the thoughts will eventually just give up, and stop altogether. Imagine Will Ferrel (per the snl skit) just absolutely rockin that cowbell, but you aren’t paying him attention - your attention is on breathing from your stomach. Will’s not going to like the lack of attention. He’s gonna pummel that poor cowbell right next to you face. But you keep the attention to breathing from your stomach. It is fine with you, what Will Ferrell does. After a while, Will just gives up, surrenders.

The thoughts will put up one hell of a convincing fight such as this, as to be taken seriously. Your past, your future, responsibility, pressure, regrets, guilt, etc - thought is shameless with it’s resources and more cleaver than you will ever be. Thought can not be “beat”. Only surrendered. 

Pay Will no attention. Feel the breath, the peace in the simplicity and stillness of the subtle, gentle, relaxing inward & outward calming reassurance of the stomach. After some practice, you will be without overthinking, without self doubt, and will literally not even fear the reaper. 

When that cowbell is knocking right in your ear, if it is just too overwhelming, know what to do, ahead of time. Knowing what to do minimizes the troubles. Break from the meditation and grab a pen and paper, and just write down whatever barfs up; how you’re feeling, what the sensations feel like, write out apologies, write out forgivenesses, write about yourself, write about how you want to be feeling about yourself. Write like it’s your last day on earth, and no one will ever read it. It’s very important to do the pen & paper practice, as this allows your mind to literally see & gain understanding about what is going on below, in the body / emotions / sensations. A rough approximation, but I believe the conjunction of these two practices would more than cut the amount of time needed to arrive at an emptied mind in half. 

Then self inquire, and if that gets overwhelming emotionally, then go to the pen & paper practice, and barf it all up. Understand it, effortlessly, simple by seeing it (and the willingness to do the practices). 

If the emotions are not understood, the thoughts will continue - seeking. Or worse, they’ll subside, but creep right back up. That can be very frustrating - hence the unresolved involvement of the emotions (frustration). This is why the emotions must be undertood by the mind. To get off that hamster wheel, and each of us have our own self created unique hamster wheel. To be in the jazz band, so to speak.

Noteworthy..(?)....the entire genre of jazz arose, from a mistake. If that’s not revealing of the undeniable Beauty, I don’t know what is. Oh wait, I do, it’s this gut in the tight v-neck...

Christopher Walken plays one hell of an Ego, he’s just “gotta have more cowbell!!!”. How does he (and we) keep such straight faces, when it’s all so damn funny? 

[Nahm]

Ha! Cowbell jinx!

[lmfao]

@Jkris If you force yourself to do strong determination sitting or force yourself to meditate for a long period of time, there'll be pain arising. If you can sit through the pain and surrender to it you'll train your mind to surrender.

You might look at my answer and roll your eyes but it's the truth. 

Edited April 7, 2019 by lmfao

[Salvijus]

How are you going to stop your thoughts if you're yourself just a thought? It's like trying to stop the wind with a kite

[peanutspathtotruth]

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

If the emotions are not understood, the thoughts will continue - seeking. Or worse, they’ll subside, but creep right back up. That can be very frustrating - hence the unresolved involvement of the emotions (frustration). This is why the emotions must be undertood by the mind. To get off that hamster wheel, and each of us have our own self created unique hamster wheel. To be in the jazz band, so to speak.

So true. Are you familiar with A.H. Almaas? His approach is also emphasizing that understanding of what is going on is of utmost importance. Of course that's not to be taken as an intellectual understanding. It's understanding through observation. This helped me a ton.

Also, it's interesting that you mention the writing method. Every time I have furious and unstopping thoughts, I try to write it all down. After that, it's much more still. Thanks for the reminder to incorporate that technique more often ??

[Salvijus]

44 minutes ago, David Hammond said:

The thoughts do dissipate by intention, but you can't wilfully will the thoughts away.

Wtf, make up your mind

Btw intention is also a movement in the mind. And the one who's going to will the thoughts away is also just a thought or a movement in the mind.

How can a movement in the mind stop the movement in the mind? The more you try to stop your mind, the more noise you will produce. There're no brakes in the mind, only throttles.

Edited April 7, 2019 by Salvijus

[Nahm]

@peanutspathtotruth Thanks. No, I haven’t heard of it. Just sat and barfed for a few days, then it was pretty clear. ??? Aside front the pen & paper, It was pretty much a few days of Do Nothing practice. Really something what the mind throws out to get us to do just about anything for really any reason. It try’s every angle. Get’s all personal about it. Lol. So sneaky. 

[Salvijus]

@David Hammond it's okey i understand what you say and I'm not disagreeing with you. I just wanted to raise some insightful questions to people who want to stop their thoughts 

Edited April 7, 2019 by Salvijus