Monday 25 October 2010

Letting Go

Seems clearer to me now that the main thing meditation enhances is the ability to let go. I even find that I have to consciously choose a line of thinking I want to pursue. I'm not saying that I don't have thoughts popup in to the forefront of my mind, but as and when they do, they just seem to automatically fade away.


One of the hardest things I faced when learning meditation was accepting the inevitable fact that thoughts come to your mind during meditation. Learning to let them go and return to your object of attention is what you are learning, not the annihilation of all thoughts. That may seem strange to some but it was a source of frustration at the early stages of my learning.


You'll find that during the meditation session, the more times you let go, the clearer and easier you can focus your attention. You might find like me, that after several minuets you hit a wall where your attention drifts quite a bit again. This seems to me like when people are doing endurance sports and 'hit the wall', once you're over it, things become easier again.

And just as with each meditation session, you go through cycles of clarity - you may find over the longer term, you experience times where you feel as if you're being knocked back (doubting if it's helping), just to find that once you've over the wall again things are even clearer than before.