Unfortunately It was an utter nightmare in the beginning. I could not seem to get it right, my thoughts would be all over the show. I would get about 10 seconds of silent meditation in the beginning of the session and then bam! all of a sudden I'm thinking about a random event from the recent day, something that someone said to me, or some arbitrary image that my imagination decides to spark up from the inner void of randomness. And as soon as that one initial thought captures your attention, it's a roller coaster ride from then on, right up until you gain control again and that's if you've even realized that your efforts have been sabotaged.
I didn't like the fact that my mind was so noisy, I despised it, I was angry, felt hopeless, I hated my failed attempts at meditating, I thought I was using the wrong approach, that there was something special I wasn't doing. I thought I would never get it right, I thought my conscious self would be banished into this realm of reality forever. But I still persevered, I kept at it, session after session, meeting after meeting, attempt after attempt, and surely but ever so slowly progress was made.At least I thought I was making progress, up until one moment changed my perception forever...
I was at a Buddhist temple here in the mother city, and I was attending a weekly guided meditation session, the monk seated in the front of the room proceeded to tell us to focus on our breath, and the thing is I had heard this many times before, but that day something was triggered. In the beginning I was consciously breathing, in out, in out, in out, with concerted effort, focusing on the inhalation and exhalation throughout my body. And then after a while I had realized that I had stopped consciously breathing, but my body ever so faithfully carried on.. and it was at this moment that I had a massive epiphany.
My body (well my respiratory system, to be specific) breathes, yes, my body this over glorified bag of cells, this vibrant living organism that I call home, breathes and my brain (the control center) manages the breathing of my body without the need for my conscious intervention. At the age of 22 my brain will ensure that I breathe on average 12-20 times per minute, at least 17,280 breathes in a day.Why...? because that's a part of it's job. This isn't the epiphany in its entirety don't worry there is more to it than that. Because from there I realized that just as my body takes an active role in ensuring that I continuously breathe to survive as a part of its function, my brain, or rather my mind must think, one of the mind's key functions is to produce thoughts, and produce thoughts is does, second after second, minute after minute, day after day, whether you know about them or not- they are there.
On average we have at least 50,000 thoughts a day, fifty thousand different thoughts racing through your mind during your every day life, and the problem is that unless these thoughts are well monitored, literally tens of thousands of these thoughts could be one, some or even all of the following "I regret..", "I shouldn't have" , "I wonder if", "I'm so lonely" "I'm hopeless" "this will never work" "I'll never get it" "why does no one care" "I cant imagine he did that", "I look really fat in these" "my life is such a waste" "this is nonsense" "I'll never be able to..." "It's impossible" "I can't" ...and so on and so on.
Now there are an infinite amount of negative thoughts and projections that can be appended to that list, the problem here is not solely that we are having these thoughts, the major problem here is that we have identified ourselves with these thoughts (the ego), so instead of us realizing that this is our (clearly untrained) mind doing its job, putting in its hours, serving its purpose, we identify with the thoughts, that our mind produces, we forget that we are the driver, the horse rider, the captain, the pilot, we forget that we are user of the mind, we forget that the brain is our tool and slowly but surely over time we allow the mind to use us, to shape us, to dictate our every move, wish, desire, activity... we as the drivers of our life allow ourselves to become victims to simple vehicles of thought - the mind.
And when this happens you live your life in a reactive manner, you unknowingly attract bad things into your existence, you allow fears and worries to manifest into reality, you lose track of who you are, who you want to be, where you want to go. You limit yourself, you maneuver through reality with a distorted filter on, limiting your perception and understanding of what is out there, what is possible and what you can become. You allow people thoughts and opinions to over power you, you allow yourself to fall into the trap of self-induced mind control. And we can't blame the mind, we unfortunately just don't know how to use it properly.
With this said (I could really go on forever, but i'll keep this short), I'm happy to say that it is mostly through consistent meditation that I have been able to actively take the role of the observer, the watcher, the thinker and not be identified with the thoughts themselves and it has truly done wonders over the years. Because of this constant presence (still working on this) and awareness I am able to live life consciously and I am not easily affected by the instability of my surrounding environment, the noise from the empty vessels, the negativity of those around me and the ever-present chaos that is 'reality'.
So yes unfortunately as earlier mentioned I haven't been able to have an out of body experience, communicate to an ancestor, or travel through the multiple planes of existence, but at least I am learning how to cope with the current dimension that I am in, one thought at a time.
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"Don't under estimate the power of the subconscious mind, because the truth is that your life, your perceptions and your reality as a whole is filtered, formed and defined by what goes on up there." B.J.M
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T4aM
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