How To Control Your Mind With Meditation
Anyone Can Do this
Hello hello!
Man, it’s been a while. I feel like I’ve been spinning around a YouTube washing machine for the last few months - uploading videos each week, learning how to edit and script videos, talking in front of a camera etc (who knew it was so hard!?). I love the journey, but it hasn’t left me with much time to do anything else (other than teach of course). BUT - I am back.
If you fancy checking out any of my videos I’ll link them here:
When I started meditating I was incredibly uninspired by the sheer simplicity of the process. My teacher would give me THE most basic (and as far as I was concerned - boring) meditation methods to follow.
No elaborate ceremony.
No fancy series of tasks.
No interesting build-ups.
No Subconscious programming.
Quite literally, he’d give me one simple task.
Once he gave me this, he’d leave me with it for at least 6 months (but on several occasions 1-2 years).
In the early days, it’d be something like watching the rise and fall of my belly (dantien meditation). Or, observing a candle flame (Trataka meditation).
Simple, right?
No.
Why is it that placing your attention on one point and keeping it there is so hard?
It’s straightforward - your mind does not want to be tamed. That’s it.
When you intentionally take your mind by its wandering horns and task it with observing one, very uninteresting place, it will resist.
It will create feelings of frustration, impatience, boredom, restlessness, doubt and even anger.
On other occasions, it’ll tempt you with sensual pleasures - sexual images, the desire for food, the desire for water. Sometimes it’ll provide elaborate mental images too.
ANYTHING that will cause you to loosen your grip on it.
It took me a while to fully appreciate that all I needed to do was remain equanimous throughout these ‘mental kickbacks’. To keep coming back to the point of focus.
It’s so obvious when you think about it. We let our mind run around all day and we chase the whims and fancies that it presents us with, forgetting that we are not the mind. The whims and fancies are not ours, hence they never give us any lasting satisfaction.
It’s no wonder so many struggle with their mental health, they’ve never been shown/taught how to train their mind. (I know it’s not that simple, but I’m sure it’d have a huge positive impact if everyone knew)
If I could give you any advice, it would be to give your mind one simple, very uninteresting, almost boring task.
Continue practising this one very boring task every day until you realise that the boredom you thought existed was just a creation of your mind.
When you subdue the mind, the boredom no longer exists.
Have a great week,
Ben