Mindfulness Vs Productive Thinking

[Thom]

So I've been meditating for about three and half years fairly regularly. However I often struggle to find the balance between mindfulness and having a good old thought process that has continuity. Meditation creates the habit of mind of returning to the breath when the mind has strayed. The problem comes when, for example, I'm trying to mentally prepare for a social or professional event and my attention keeps going from a potentially productive thought process back to my breath. It breaks the continuity and ya I become mindful of my breath and surroundings, but damn it I'm trying to think here!

Just wondering if anyone here has experienced something similar to this as a result of their meditation practice and if/how you overcame it?

[Leo Gura]

Be more mindful that you're using mindfulness mindlessly

I think you've defined mindfulness too narrowly, as something associated with focusing on your breath. When in fact it's much broader than that. You gotta be careful not to become a mindless meditation machine.

Try practicing mindfulness without focusing on your breath, and while doing activities such as light chores, house work, cleaning, showering, driving, watching TV, and even talking to people. This will push your mindfulness abilities outside of their currently constricted pigeon-hole.

And when in comes to doing practical thinking/planning, allow yourself to get into it and to flow. In pursuing mindfulness we tend to swing our pendulum too much to one side and demonize all thinking as evil. Thinking is not evil. This needs to better integrated in you. Thinking is useful in proper proportions and situations.

The only thinking that's really problematic is the I-thinking. That is, thinking about the me, me, me, me! all the time.

[Guest]

Yeh 100% what Leo said..

But just to add a little something...it's not that thinking is bad, but the default way of thinking that we tend to is bad.

Edited February 12, 2016 by tryingforfreedom

[Guest]

@Thom During meditation you are already observing this unwanted interference, but now look at it as strictly an object of observation, just like the breath you focus on.   Just look at those thoughts.   Do not judge, consider, elaborate or pursue in any way.   Just watch as they pass in and out of awareness.   Also watch the "habit of mind" of returning to the breath.   Watch it as a curiosity, but do not characterize it in any way.  See how it is working with the meditation process - not analyze or think about it - just watch it.   And if analyzing thoughts appear then just watch them. 

There is nothing to achieve in meditation.   Meditation's purpose is not achievement.  Rather it's practise enables a certain familiarity with the nature of thought and the entire mental/emotional mechanism in terms of insight and revelation - not in terms of thought.   Thought comes later, after the meditation, when you can ponder the insights and revelations.  That is OK.   It may lead to useful applications in daily life or even enhance the "inward" journey.  

Edited February 11, 2016 by walt