I can't meditate, I keep getting lost in thought

[Mezanti]

I cannot meditate, I cannot detach from my thoughts at all. 

help? 

[DivineSoda]

I made a video on this topic, let me know if it helps: 

 

[AdamDiC]

Thats the point. Keep going. Dont stop. 

Tell me where you are in 5 years...

[Consilience]

In addition to keep up your practice, Id also recommend reading the mind illuminated if you’re interested in achieving a calm and focused mind for this work.

[Leo Gura]

Kriya yoga is good for this. It's less mental and more physical.

You could also try using binural beats as training wheels to build yourself up.

Meditation is very difficult in the beginning.

[Truth Addict]

Don't detach from the thoughts, be them.

You're creating duality as you're trying to detach.

Let go and accept.

[DoubleYou]

On 26-9-2019 at 11:44 AM, Mezanti said:

I cannot meditate, I cannot detach from my thoughts at all. 

help? 

That's the point. You can't do it. And now you've realised that.

Great job. Keep going.

[MAYA EL]

Don't try to do that worthless "dead brain" sitting in 1 spot with your legs crossed wasting your life away "medatation " .

If your mind is full of random crap that's flooding your head and you can't stop it then try what I did (I was really ADD) what I did was I paid perfect and full attention to any and all thought that came to me and sid so with the mentality/ concept that they have to be important because why else would I be letting them over power my will power so then theres something I really need to find and know .

You will be surprised at how fast those ideas vanish one by one as you observe them until one day you realize you only think when you desire to

[GromHellScream]

The great maya might be on to something here.. 

 

I've also found that my thoughts begin to vanish as i stop being attached to them, stop loving to think so much you will stop thinking so much. Problem is we are all thought addicts

Edited September 27, 2019 by GromHellScream

[Commodent]

I've never really had a consistent meditation practice, but I walk for several hours a day. I've been doing it for over a year, and the growth has been absolutely amazing. I truly see everything so much clearer. I think that the most important thing about meditation is that it gives you an opportunity to free yourself from distractions and to just let the dust settle. But meditation isn't really the only way to attain that.

Right now I'm at a place where I'm working more on my focus, and it's going quite well. There's a time and place for everything.

[R-Type]

Maybe it'll help to do physical mindfulness practices, like Hatha yoga, qi gong, Tai chi, yoga Pranayama and alike in order to stabilize and calm your nervous system. 

When my mind is going bonkers, trying to do mindfulness meditation feels like a waste of time and it probably is. 

[MAYA EL]

4 hours ago, Commodent said:

I've never really had a consistent meditation practice, but I walk for several hours a day. I've been doing it for over a year, and the growth has been absolutely amazing. I truly see everything so much clearer. I think that the most important thing about meditation is that it gives you an opportunity to free yourself from distractions and to just let the dust settle. But meditation isn't really the only way to attain that.

Right now I'm at a place where I'm working more on my focus, and it's going quite well. There's a time and place for everything.

I agree contemplation is the most effective method of problem solving in my experience 

[Tistepiste]

@MAYA EL I didn't understand what you meant with:

 

Quote

 

"I paid perfect and full attention to any and all thought that came to me and sid so with the mentality/ concept that they have to be important because why else would I be letting them over power my will power so then theres something I really need to find and know ."

 

 

 

Do you mean you pay attention to your thoughts while meditating? Because they keep coming back they must be "important"?
But what do you get out of paying attention to them. Do you go into them? Understand them intellectually? 
I would think going into the thought is the last thing you'd want because more and more thoughts will come

(I have ADD that's why I'm asking)
 

Edited September 27, 2019 by Tistepiste

[Identity]

@Mezanti thats like a fat person saying he cant go to the gym because he’s too fat ?

[MAYA EL]

6 hours ago, Tistepiste said:

@MAYA EL I didn't understand what you meant with:

 

Do you mean you pay attention to your thoughts while meditating? Because they keep coming back they must be "important"?
But what do you get out of paying attention to them. Do you go into them? Understand them intellectually? 
I would think going into the thought is the last thing you'd want because more and more thoughts will come

(I have ADD that's why I'm asking)
 

Sorry for the typos I have fat thumbs. 

What I was saying is that when I would try to meditate my brain was a lot like somebody constantly changing the channel on the TV every second with the radio playing the background I mean literally music playing and words being said at random with old memories memories curiosity about the future everything enough to drive a person nuts and I'm sure this is most ADD people so what I did was I got mad one day and said fine what's so important about that god$&# song that always plays at the gym?! So I focused in on the song to hear the words on it and the song faded away but there was a memory to replace it so I said ok from the beginning no skipped parts let's remember this and it started fading and I did it over and over and I finished my attempted meditation several times without successfully still in mind this happened for a while until one day I noticed when I sit down and try to meditate I didn't have as much s*** in my head as normal and so I got about 10 minutes in and I ran out of stuff to think about and yet I wasn't bord because that's a thing and I wasn't happy because that to is a thing 

I was just sitting there that was it.

Later on is when it got fun as I learned how to think as in creat a thought that I myself created.  Now that's worth paying attention to. 

[The Don]

On 9/27/2019 at 6:06 AM, Leo Gura said:

Kriya yoga is good for this. It's less mental and more physical.

You could also try using binural beats as training wheels to build yourself up.

Meditation is very difficult in the beginning.

I agree with you @Leo Gura. Meditation is very difficult in the beginning.

If you practice meditation the right way and make an effort to keep your mind in the present moment, eventually the hardness of meditation will subside. I promise you that.

Anyway, this will happen after a year of meditation. You can't get the benefits of meditation in the first months. You have to meditate on a daily basis until you find yourself in a position where you can be present without having your mind wandering.

I'm able to keep myself in the present moment and be conscious at the same time with little or no effort at all. It's an amazing experience as I'm feeling my brain rewiring itself for the better.

Sometimes I'm asking myself what will happen when I'll be able to be present all the time and experiencing reality without thoughts and just a pure, lucid mind.

The good news is that I'm heading towards that experience.

I wish you luck.

[Smurfinstein]

In the beginning. meditation is a WHOLE lot of learning. An uncomfortable firehose of learning. I absolutely love the reminder (and Leo mentioned it in his beginning meditation video) that each and every "damn I messed that up, damn, messed it up again... ARGH, and now I'm messing it up again!" *IS* actually the practice. If you sit for 20 minutes and only "stray" once, you've only "practiced" once. If you stray a hundred times. you've "practiced" a hundred. I don't like to "lean into" the thoughts when they come, I just label and release them. "Judging" return... "fear".... return... "memory".... return. I also like the labeling Leo talks about "seeing".... return... "feeling"... return. For me, the labeling lets me feel like I'm being respectful and observant of what's coming up, and also seems to let that thought feel "heard" and fly away.

But, the TLDR of all of this is: You're doing it right. Proceed! 

[ttom]

My practice transformed radically once I began acknowledging that I had no control over my minds wanderings. I feel a lot of people fail to realise that meditation is not a practice in the application of effort. It is simply returning to the object of your meditation whenever awareness presents itself. You have no control over when your mind wanders, nor when awareness comes back.

In the mind illuminated - the book mentioned earlier in this thread. The author points out that meditation is simply setting 2 intentions for your mind over and over again and then accepting whatever this results in. "Find the object" and "Be with the object".

Initially this will feel insufferable because you will spend most of the meditation engrossed in thought stories. However, with time you will remain with your object for longer and longer and the mind will wander for shorter and less frequent periods. Consistency is paramount.

While not entirely accurate, a good way to conceptualize this initially is to think of your awareness as a muscle. The more repetitions you do of returning to the object, the stronger it will grow. However unlike lifting, you have no control over when you get to do a rep. All you can do is make sure you sit everyday and when the opportunity to return to the object arises, you seize it.

Edited October 1, 2019 by ttom

[Mezanti]

@ttom well explained, thank you!

[TheSomeBody]

as long as you dont move during the practice, you will get meditative at some point