Not Thinking Feels So Good

[Frogfucius]

When I'm not thinking, I'm not suffering or harboring any pain. But the problem is, I'm addicted to thinking. I let the bad thoughts and emotions consume me throughout the day. I resist meditation until I reach the point where the pain gets too unbearable, and I need to let it all go. Then things get better for a while, until the bad thoughts and feelings surface again.

If meditation feels so good, why do I fight it, and instead choose to build up suffering? Why do I get sucked back into the same harmful patterns I've always had? I know it's very painful, but I still choose to do it...

[Frogfucius]

Yeah when I say "thinking" I mean the kind that is compulsive and I associate with. The kind that tells me that life is pointless and I should just kill myself, because that would be better than living. And I listen to these thoughts.

[the dreamer]

@Frogfucius at those hard moments where you are struggling with the thoughts,  try breathing consciously and try to bring your consciousness fully into your breathing and it may help you relax. 

[LaucherJunge]

I had the same problem about 1 year ago and i also dont understand why i was choosing the suffering over a nice calm meditation.
At some point is just shifted for me and i started to enjoy meditation a lot!
What can help is trying to just meditate multiple times for very short periods of times. Or as the dreamer said conscious breathing is a great idea. Just bringing your meditation into your normal state always when you become conscious even if its just for a moment so in other words becoming meditative in every activity.

[Azrael]

6 hours ago, Frogfucius said:

When I'm not thinking, I'm not suffering or harboring any pain.

"When I'm not at work, I'm not stressed or bored." "When I'm not being insulted, I don't feel bad or wrong." What do all of these hold in common? They blame the suffering on the phenomenon, not on the internal process that is occurring inside of you that is actually responsible for the created suffering.

With that attitude you'll try to calm your mind for the rest of eternity, with very little progress (because trying to calm your mind is the least effective thing you could do to attain a calm mind). What you could to be effective then is this:

When you suffer because of thinking / emotions, go right to the cause of what is fucking you: the thinking or the emotion. Localize it. Where is it? Maybe in your head if it's thoughts or in your abdomen if it's fear. Then go to the localized sensation of "not feeling good" and hold your attention on it. While doing that, be curious. Be curious why this sensation makes you feel bad. Be curious how it can do that actually. Isn't it weired, that just out of a sensation like a contraction or pictures / voices in your head can arise a feeling of being unwell. What actually makes this sensation into something that you don't like. When you think you got it, go deeper. When you think it's the contraction in your abdomen that makes you feel fear, ask: But why is contraction generally bad. Why is contraction bad and feeling light good? Why is that. Then go deeper into the contraction. Go as deep as you can and stay curious. You'll eventually find that all suffering is an illusion you put on yourself and can only be held up if you look at it without much attention, suffer from it subconsciously and don't investigate it. If you do, it will just go.

Don't try to get rid of the phenomenon like having thoughts or emotions. Understand what they do inside you. The deeper I dip into non-duality on a permanent day-to-day basis, the more thoughts vanish automatically and only a few very inspiring or fun ones remain. Most thoughts go after you've unlocked them. But I never asked them to. They just leave because they not longer are needed. And I'm now at a place at which I find it highly interesting and inspiring to have a thought. The phenomenon itself is very mystical. It's like being sucked into a dream that comes out of nothing, has its time and then leaves.

Same with emotions. When I have a negative emotion these days I'm thrilled by the power it carries, by the way it makes me react, by the thoughts it stimulates. It's really like being in cinema. You come to this point when you get intimate with all of these, not by pushing them away or denying them.

I personally know that this is hard when you're fucked up, trust me. I had my head screaming at me for 4 months this year plus my body fucking me up with every kind of emotion it had. And how did I get out of that? By letting it be okay, feeling sorry for my shadow that it has to to that and by being interested in it.

Cheers

[Bob84]

Your adiction of thinking is noting more then a thouth that you charish. Dont try and stop thinking with thinking to not think of anything.