New to the forum - some questions for experienced meditators

[charlemagne-is-my-son]

Hi. I am currently living in Changsha, Hunan province, China. Been here for about 4 months. I love it for the free time it affords, much of which is spent meditating. I have two pressing questions that I hope the forum can help with, however:

1. What can I do to get my eyes to stop following my awareness? If I want to focus on my upper lip during mindfulness of breathing, for example, my eyes will automatically look down. Even if I focus on not letting them move, they are still tense. The tension becomes painful, and I am distracted from the meditation.

2. How can I prevent my awareness of thoughts from stamping out the thoughts? I have heard many times that merely observing thoughts arising and observing them pass away is favorable, but the moment I become aware of a thought, it suddenly loses its spontanaeity - it is crushed by my awareness like a deer in headlights or something.

Thanks and I hope to contribute what I can to the forum.
Matt

[Mindscape]

Originally Posted by charlemagne-is-my-son

Hi. I am currently living in Changsha, Hunan province, China. Been here for about 4 months. I love it for the free time it affords, much of which is spent meditating. I have two pressing questions that I hope the forum can help with, however:

1. What can I do to get my eyes to stop following my awareness? If I want to focus on my upper lip during mindfulness of breathing, for example, my eyes will automatically look down. Even if I focus on not letting them move, they are still tense. The tension becomes painful, and I am distracted from the meditation.

2. How can I prevent my awareness of thoughts from stamping out the thoughts? I have heard many times that merely observing thoughts arising and observing them pass away is favorable, but the moment I become aware of a thought, it suddenly loses its spontanaeity - it is crushed by my awareness like a deer in headlights or something.

Thanks and I hope to contribute what I can to the forum.
Matt

Here are my thoughts on the second question.

Awareness is the mode of being when your focus is on the observation of the input from the senses.
If you want to, when the thought spontaneously appears, you can train yourself to immediately go back into the awareness state. This stops uncontrollably following trains of thought. It would be a conscious effort at first but before long, it becomes automatic.

I view pure awareness as the default state and this state is the most important state to practice when doing meditation.

If you do decide to follow a train of thought, it should be a choice and it should be controlled.

This can also be a meditational practice. You can seek to improve your control over the mind and improve every element of your thought process. Thinking about thinking.

[Mr Monkey]

Hi Matt,

Can't help much with your first point I'm afraid, but although I agree with what mindscape says I thought I'd throw in a different perspective:

Originally Posted by charlemagne-is-my-son

2. How can I prevent my awareness of thoughts from stamping out the thoughts? I have heard many times that merely observing thoughts arising and observing them pass away is favorable, but the moment I become aware of a thought, it suddenly loses its spontanaeity - it is crushed by my awareness like a deer in headlights or something.

Think of your thoughts as trains all going to different destinations, some are nice destinations some are cr*ppy. At the moment most of us jump on ‘thought trains‘ without realising it and just end up at places , although sometimes we realise we’ve taken a ‘ cr*ppy train trip’ once we have got to the destination (“Why do I feel cr*p?”, “AAaaahhh, that’ll be because I just spent the last 30 mins mentally beating myself up about x, y ,z” ), but sometimes we don’t.

For me, the point of meditation is to stand on the platform and watch all the different trains go by, if you find yourself on ANY train, just get off an go back to the station and start watching again, irrespective of the trains finals destination.

This practice will help you become more aware of your thinking in life outside meditation, at which point you become more conscious of which trains you’re jumping on, until you can start to ignore the trains to the cr*ppy places, because let’s face it, it’s not much fun (neither is their much point) going to a cr*ppy place, let alone staying there.

The thoughts ‘disappearing’ are simply you going back to the station, so in fact it’s a good thing.

[lsamson]

In relation to the first question, try and meditating with your eyes closed and only concentrate on your breathing. Just completely ignore your eyes, once your reached a deeper level of meditation then try and 'feel' your body. Feel what your limbs are like and what your eyes are like.

I think you are straining your eyes too much and are trying to concentrate on your eyes too much. Just relax and let it be.

If you have any more questions just let me know, Luca.