In the last post we looked at using dream interpretation as a tool for looking at the subconscious mind using a conscious effort.
In this article I’ll talk about using meditation as a tool to reduce the subconscious popcorn flying around in your head, reducing the amount that can affect your consciousness.
Meditation is an absolutely amazing tool and one that can give you the greatest results if you’re one of those people that can do a few things consistently. Meditation at it’s simplest consists of sitting in one place, closing your eyes, and focusing on the spot where your inhalations and exhalations are felt in your nose or on your upper lip.
Seems pretty simple I know, but that’s all you need to do in order to have the most profound experiences available to you as a human being on this spinning blue ball. Can you handle something like this? Sure you can. If I can do it with attention deficit disorder (ADD) you can do it, I’m sure of it.
Some people tire of meditation. Yes, believe it or not - some have a lot of expectations about where their meditative sessions will lead them - and they become disappointed with the length of time it takes things to happen. Paradoxically, if you are really wanting something to happen - it won’t. Meditation itself is like a zen koan.
One meditates to get somewhere in their mind… to advance through the stages of meditation leading to jhana or other absorption experiences.
However, if one desires overtly to get somewhere. He or she will go nowhere really. Meditation is catch-22 like that. It doesn’t seem like it should make sense, but it does. Just not sense that we can rationalize using our minds. The book, Zen in the Art of Archery teaches how in order to let the perfect arrow fly from your bow you cannot make a conscious decision to let the arrow go. It must just go. If you focus too much on trying not to focus too much - you are focusing too much and the arrow will be off course. Likewise if you focus too much on meditating to reach high levels of meditation and you’re excited about getting there and anxious - you go nowhere.
Meditation takes persistence, I will say that. Though you’re only sitting for 15-30 minutes at a time you would be amazed how difficult it is to focus on the feeling of your breath in the nose for even 1 complete inhale and exhale. Then, once you’re able to do that you’ll be amazed how difficult it is to focus for 2 breaths. And so on… Yet, this is all that’s really required in order to send yourself down the path toward the most exhilarating experiences.
The mind has a natural tendency to produce thoughts. We all know that. However, you’ve likely not really seen thought for what it is. You’ve likely not watched it consciously for any period of time. As you sit and attempt to focus your entire mind on the feeling of the breath you’ll undoubtedly be taken away from that focus toward whatever the mind wants to churn up in the way of thoughts.
Are thoughts conscious or unconscious? You might question that for yourself as you begin meditating. You’ve probably never watched a thought form in your head and followed it to see what it does. As you meditate you will. Your attention will be pulled away from focusing on the breath to something more interesting that the mind cooks up. You might follow that thought as it builds adding more thoughts around the original focus of the thought. Or, you might follow it as it branches off 16 different ways into different thoughts entirely that are all linked loosely to the first thought. The thought-chains that are created can be brought to conscious awareness if you look at them - apply attention to them. Otherwise they are in the background… in the space between conscious and subconscious. They are being fueled by the unconscious during meditation but you could choose to ‘think’ about something and the thoughts become conscious and focused around whatever subject you chose.
The simple act of meditation does a couple things initially:
- Focuses the mind on a small task with a tiny sensory footprint.
- Relaxes the body completely so there is no bodily stress or concerns.
- Trains the mind to re-focus on the area of attention repeatedly so that it becomes second nature after a while.
- Slows down the barrage of thoughts that are being churned out.
As the number of thoughts becomes lessened the mind starts to achieve a strength that maybe you haven’t known before. It’s a kind of power that enables you to focus for progressively longer periods of time on one very small sensory input - the feeling of your breath coming in and out at some tiny spot around the nose and upper lip.
Eventually the mind-candy slows waaaay down and you’re able to experience brief moments without thought. Eventually these moments get longer. Absorption experiences start. Jhana starts. Eventually this process transforms the mind into something amazing. The mind becomes strong and unaffected by things that used to cause it discomfort… neurosis. You’ll notice that you’re relatively unaffected by things that used to bother you.
Why is that - are you a zombie now?
No! Meditation makes you much more alive than you ever were before. It gives you a new perspective on life as you realize how much time, energy, and efforts were wasted on things that really don’t matter. You’ll begin to experience life in the present moment as you never could have understood before. You may have read books on the present moment, Thich Nhat Hanh - a Vietnamese Buddhist monk has an amazing series of books you can find on mindfulness and the present moment. You might want to read those as you get started, they are a wonderful aid to help you practice getting into the present moment.
One benefit of meditation is that your subconscious that’s filled with fear, anger, and sadness churns out less dysfunctional material over time. See, when you’re sitting there quiet and watching the breath your subconscious will continually throw up a lot of information from the past that it wants you to look at. If you choose to you can look at it.
Everyone has painful memories of experiences from the past. Sitting quietly helps to bring those up. Occasionally you might cry during meditation because all the sudden sad thoughts overwhelm you and your eyes flood with tears. That’s a good thing. For major things like this it’s good to put meditation on hold and really think about the issue that brought tears to your eyes.
What is the reality of the situation? Can you change something? Often times you can change something about it… you can make a phone call, write a letter or even role-play out some interaction from the past with a friend you have now. You can change what happened in the past with the new role play situation and it can change your life from that time forward.
Nothing from the past has the power to affect you once you decide to eliminate it. It can’t. It’s finished. Done with. There is far too much present and future available to continue your life in a different way, a more functional and better way.
In fact, the only thing about the past that is still there - are the memories in your head about it. That’s IT. The action doesn’t exist anymore. It existed at one time and then it disappeared. Nobody in the world can bring it back. The memories you have about the issue are the only thing that exists - and you know - memories are only tiny electrical impulses… Change them by facing them and then doing things differently from today forward.
My father left my mother, me and my brother and sister when I was five or six years old. He did his part to come see us once a week usually and I can’t blame him for leaving as it was the right thing to do. For a long time I had memories of him and they made me feel sad. Sometime about my mid-teens I remember my girlfriend asking me if I missed my dad and if I had sad thoughts all the time about him. I told her, “Sure, I still think about him occasionally.”
But you know what? I spent the next couple days looking at the reality of the situation. He had left nearly 10 years before. He wasn’t mean to me or abusive to me in any way. He was just not there. Society was telling me that he should be there but when I thought about it myself… it didn’t really matter that he wasn’t there. I didn’t really need him close by and part of my life I realized. I got along fine from the time he left and I didn’t really know him.
Why would I want someone I didn’t know to interact with me more? The reality was, overall it really made no difference at all whether he was there or not. At that point I let go whatever dysfunction my memories and my subconscious were churning out. I moved forward. I don’t dislike my father. I just don’t know him. Should I know him? Society would answer - YES, you must know your father. You must care about him. You must do whatever you can to get close and remain close to him.
I think, what for? I’ve known lots of other people… To me it’s neither here nor there now and I’m happy in my own mind not thinking about him on a daily or weekly basis. Since my mid teens I can’t remember a time when I missed him or thought that I was missing out on a part of life for not having him as a close friend.
Even major things like this can be quickly gotten over if you just analyze the reality of the situation and realize that the only thing that exists are your memories. Question them. Question your beliefs. Question what society is telling you. You’re your own person. Nobody else is looking out for you like YOU are. Change you memories or change your present life such that the old memories don’t matter that much or have less power and you change your life.
So, if you’re crying as you sit and meditate that’s a great thing because you’ve just found something from the past that you can look at and eventually rid yourself of. There’s nothing too great, nothing too powerful to screw up the rest of your life. You gave it the power to affect you up until now - and now you can get rid of it. Don’t ignore it. Now’s the perfect opportunity to destroy it.
And so meditation provides this opportunity to quell the craziness in your mind that surely exists to some degree like it does in all of us. In fact, if you had no craziness you wouldn’t dream at all.
After a year of meditation you know what?
I didn’t dream at all for the next five or so years (I didn’t count, I’m using five as a minimum though). It was amazing to realize that the subconscious had no reason to create dreams anymore. Just outrageous really. My mind was so calm and at peace with the past, present and future that it didn’t create dreams for a long time.
Gradually after 5+ years the dreams slowly started again about events that I was stressing out over. I had stopped meditating after a year and I’ve no doubt that if I would have continued the dreamless state would have also.
Today I still have dreams, but they seem to be related to not achieving goals that I have fast enough. I don’t dreams about fear, anxiety or sadness about past events. I have dreams about the future and not being where I want to be. I think this gives me the motivation on a daily level I need to sustain over time so I reach all those goals.
I’ve started meditating again recently and already I’ve noticed that my mind is quiet and balanced when I shut my eyes and focus on my breath. I have little thought - little extraneous material popping into the conscious from that nether region between sub and conscious awareness.
Meditation is an incredible tool and one that is available to you:
1. Today
2. For free.
3. As much as you want.
Mind-blowing benefits are waiting for you with practice of as little as 30 minutes a day.
I think meditation is the most important thing you can possibly do for 30 minutes. I can’t name anything that even approaches it as a close 2nd. Nothing. Nothing has the power to change your life so completely.
I’ve created a 22-Day meditation e-book course on PDF (right click, choose “save target or file as…”) if you’re interested in downloading it:
22-Day Meditation Course, Meditation without Religion >
I’ve considered revising it to add a lot of information but if I do that I’ll likely turn it into a publishable book instead. For now - grab it for free and get started!
If you have any questions about meditation as you begin feel free to write me and I’ll help however I can. I’m not a Buddhist teacher or any other kind of teacher. I follow no religion about meditation myself and I can offer nothing but the reality of how I did it and the truth of what it did for me.
It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced and I know it would be for you too!
Here are some links to videos I did about my experiences with meditation. These are in no particular order, they are just numbered as a series.
Experience 1: Body relaxed, mind starts to follow
Exp 2: Breath slows, body starts disappearing
Exp 3: Fatness
Exp 4: Consciousness expands
Exp 5: Denseness of body
Exp 6: Bliss & Joy
Exp 7: Highly concentrated mind
Exp 8: One pointedness of mind
Exp 9: Dying - no breath
Exp 10: Interconnected cosmos, at “one with all”
Exp 11: Just as it is…
Exp 12: Visualizations
Here are two audio links for mp3 files (best to right click and “save target (file) as…”) of me talking about my experience with meditation and what occurred:
Meditation History, Pt. 1 >
Meditation History, Pt. 2 >
Good luck on your path to a higher consciousness through eliminating dysfunctional material in your subconscious!
Best of Life!
Vern
As I get into my forties sometimes I find reality confronting me about something. I’m not on top of the world like I thought I might be by 30. I haven’t made it by 40 either. I had this idea since high school that by thirty I’d be wildly successful and on top of the world - the world at my feet so to speak. Maybe you had that idea too? Seems fairly common!
