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Sounds and Thoughts meditation3
We are immersed in a soundscape of enormous depth and variety. Just take a moment to listen. What can you hear? At first you might sense a general pulsating, all-encompassing hubbub of noise. You might be able to pick out individual sounds. You might recognize a friendly voice, a radio elsewhere in the building, a door slamming, cars hissing past, a siren in the distance, the hum of air conditioning, an aircraft overhead, tinkling music. The list is endless. Even when you’re in a quiet room, you can still pick up muffled sounds. It might be your breath as it moves through your nostrils, or the creaking of the floor or a heating system. Even silence contains sounds.
This constantly fluxing soundscape is just like your thought stream.
It’s never still or silent. Our environment fluxes constantly like the waves on the sea and the wind in the trees.
The Sounds and Thoughts meditation gradually reveals the similarities between sound and thought. Both appear as if from nowhere. Both can seem random and we have no control over their arising. Both are enormously potent and carry immense momentum. They trigger powerful emotions that can easily run away with us.
Thoughts come as if from nowhere. Just as the ear is the organ that receives sounds, the mind is the organ that receives thoughts. Just as it is difficult to hear the raw sounds without activating a corresponding concept in the mind, such as “car,” “voice” or “central heating,” so the flicker of any thought activates a network of associations. Before we know it, the mind has leaped and bound into a past that we had long since forgotten or a future that’s been entirely dreamed up and has little basis in reality. We might start to feel angry, sad, anxious, stressed or bitter—just because a thought triggered an avalanche of associations.
The Sounds and Thoughts meditation helps you to discover this for yourself. It also helps you to discover—at the deepest of levels—that you can relate to unsettling thoughts in the same way that you relate to sounds. Your thoughts can be likened to a radio that’s been left on in the background. You can listen—or rather observe—but you need not elaborate on what you receive or act on what you feel. You don’t usually feel the need to think or behave in a way that a voice on a radio tells you to, so why should you blindly assume that your thoughts portray an unerringly accurate picture of the world? Your thoughts are thoughts. They are your servants. No matter how loud they shout, they are not your master, giving orders that have to be obeyed. This realization gives you immense freedom; it takes you off a hair trigger and gives you the space to make more skillful decisions—decisions that can be made with your mind when it’s in full awareness.
There are two key elements to the Sounds and Thoughts meditation—they are receiving and noticing.
Receiving
We receive sounds as they come and go. We see the body as if it were a living microphone that indiscriminately receives sounds as vibrations in the air. We tune in to the raw sensations of each sound with its own volume, tone, pitch, pattern and duration. In the same way, we move from receiving sounds to “receiving” thoughts and any associated emotions they carry—seeing the very moment they appear, seeing how long they hang around and the moment when they dissolve.
Noticing
We notice the layers of meaning that we add to the experience of sounds. We may find that we habitually label them, pursuing those we like or rejecting those we dislike. We see if we can notice this as soon as we become aware that we are doing it and then return to simply receiving the sounds. In the same way, we notice thoughts and feelings and remain fully alive to the way in which they create associations and stories, and how easily we get sucked into their drama.
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Sounds and Thoughts meditation4
Start by sitting for a few moments, grounding yourself by paying attention to your posture, and bring your attention to the breath and body, as described in the Breath and Body meditation on page 127.
When you are settled, bring the focus of your attention to hearing, opening to sounds as they arise from near or far—sounds from in front, the sides, behind, above and below. Notice any tendency to label sounds as they come or to judge whether you want them to be here, or not. Notice how easily distractions can come, and how easily sounds can create a story. If you notice this, as best you can, bring your attention back to sounds themselves, and allow them to be just as they are.
Imagine hearing these sounds for the very first time, as if each sound you heard were new to you. You may discover a sense of wonder for this ability, which we so often take for granted, to hear so much.
See if it’s possible to really hear the raw sensations of sounds—their pitch or loudness or rhythm—and the sounds within sounds.
Some sounds are easily hidden by other more prominent sounds. See if you can be alive to these too, and notice as well if there is a quieter space between sounds.
As you focus in this way on your hearing, be aware of the space out of which the sounds arise.
Then, at a certain point, let the sounds fade into the background, and bring your awareness to your thoughts.
These may be thoughts about what you’re doing now, or what you’re going to be doing, or thoughts about the past. They might be worries or anxieties, or sad, happy or neutral thoughts.
There’s no need to try to control your thoughts in any way. Let the thoughts come and go on their own, just as you did with sounds.
Perhaps, when thoughts or images arise in the mind, you might experiment with seeing them like clouds passing across the sky. Your mind is like the sky, and your thoughts are like the clouds—sometimes large, sometimes small, sometimes dark, sometimes light. But the sky remains.
Or you might imagine you are sitting on the bank of a small river or stream, seeing your thoughts as leaves floating past, carried downstream by the water.
Whatever thoughts there are, see if it’s possible to see them as mental events that arise in the mind, stay around a while and then move on.
You may be aware of emotions coming up as well. See if it’s possible to be open to it all, no matter what it is. Rest in awareness.
If your mind keeps getting drawn into the story created by your thinking, remember that it’s always possible to come back to the breath and a sense of the body as a whole, sitting and breathing. This is an anchor to stabilize your awareness in the present moment, before returning again, if you choose, to focus on the coming and going of thoughts and feelings.
For the last few moments of the sitting, focus again on your breathing.
Remember that, wherever you are and whatever your experience, whenever you find your mind scattered and dispersed by the events of your day, the breath is always available to help bring you back into the present moment. It offers you a “place to stand” from which to view thoughts and feelings coming and going in the mind. And as you learn to see your thoughts as mental events, arising and dissolving, you are cultivating, underneath them, a sense of deep stillness and peace.
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Observing thoughts and feelings
What do you notice when you do the Sounds and Thoughts meditation? Remember, there is no right or wrong way to feel—no success or failure.
Dana found something strange happened when she turned toward thinking: “When I was focusing on the sounds, then the thoughts were coming thick and fast and interfering with the sounds, but when I started actually to focus on them, the thoughts themselves seemed to go away altogether.”
This often happens. In the full daylight of awareness, thoughts seem shy. Why is this? We can think of it like this: thoughts consist of a momentary flicker of activity in a network of the brain, followed by a slower spreading of activation along a much larger network of associations. The flicker may be a very short “pulse” (probably corresponding to a brief image), but what we think of as a “thought” is made up of both that momentary pulse and a following tail. The tail follows the pulse like a retinue following a king or queen. The r
etinue is more like inner language with subject and object, verbs, nouns and adjectives, all strung together in a daisy chain of associations that, themselves, provoke further images that evoke further inner speech. Because much of the retinue that follows the pulse comprises mere associations triggered by habit, the act of bringing full awareness to the thinking process dissolves the daisy chain of inner language, leaving you more aware of just the pulses themselves. So, the thoughts soon lose their momentum and run into the sand. Of course, it’s often not very long before the thoughts find a gap in awareness just long enough to start another daisy chain, and then, once again, you start to see the retinue that follows the pulse. And so the whole train of thought begins to gather momentum until you are again pulled into the thought stream. It is truly intriguing to witness the activity of your own mind/brain.
During the Sounds and Thoughts meditation, Simon could not focus at all: “I have tinnitus—a high-pitched noise in the background all the time. When I was listening to sounds, the tinnitus became really prominent. I didn’t like it at all. Normally, I just try and shut it out, but I get so frustrated. It really spoiled it for me.”
Many things can disturb our practice, but tinnitus can be a particularly unwelcome visitor. It is like chronic pain, so unremitting, so intrusive and so intimate. People vary in how they cope with it. During the day when there is a lot of other sound around it can seem OK, but at night, when trying to get to sleep, it can be very troublesome. Meditation on sounds seems just the opposite of coping. So why persist? Simon’s experience begins to show why: “I experimented with allowing the ringing in my ears to be there, together with all the other sounds around the place. The noise in the ears did not seem to get any quieter, but my thoughts about it seemed to lessen—I think I was fighting it less, so I was able to relax more. I’ve tried to relax before, but relaxing always seemed to be about desperately trying to ignore it. I’d never tried allowing it to remain. It felt different somehow. And liberating.” Notice Simon’s willingness to experiment, to explore. In “turning towards” the very thing that was bothering him, he was noticing that the “tinnitus” consisted not only of the sound, but of the sound plus the whole retinue of “not wanting” and angry thoughts and feelings that were, in the end, attacking him and disturbing his peace of mind.
Sharon’s experience shifted dramatically just a few minutes into the meditation. “It felt easy at first because I had no thoughts, I wasn’t drifting away. Then—I know this sounds silly—I felt as if my whole body was getting light, floating; it was great, but when it disappeared I felt really disappointed. Then I started to remember other times when I’d felt let down … and this made me really sad. What a roller coaster.” Sharon had experienced the way in which the weather pattern in the mind can change in an instant. One moment she was enjoying the floating feeling, the next it was gone, and the resulting disappointment left her with a stream of unwanted thoughts and associations.
The thought stream is so powerful that it can pick us up and whisk us away before we’re even aware of it. You can imagine yourself sitting on the edge of a stream or small river, watching your thoughts as if they were leaves on the stream floating by. The next moment, you find that you’ve left your seat and sleepwalked into the middle of the stream. It’s only a little later that you wake up and see that, yet again, you’ve become immersed in your thought stream. When this happens—as it surely will—you might congratulate yourself for having woken up, then compassionately acknowledge that your mind is wandering, gently haul yourself back on to the bank of the stream and start over again. The experienced meditator is not someone whose mind does not wander, but one who gets very used to beginning again.
If you’re feeling especially wound up or tense, the thought stream isn’t a gentle babbling brook, but a tsunami of enormous power. It drags you along, kicking and screaming. It might take several minutes before you even realize you’ve been swept away from the meditation. And, even then, you’ll forget where you were. You can struggle to remember if you were focusing on the breath or the body or sounds. This confusion often happens if you’re beginning to do the meditation without listening to the audio files. When this happens, you can steady yourself by focusing on the breath as it moves in and out of the body, without giving yourself a hard time. After a few moments, you’ll remember the point that you’d reached and will be able to start over, picking up the thread from where you left it.
Tom’s story
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Today I learned that failure really doesn’t matter that much. I’m still alive. I have all four limbs and my mind seems more or less intact.
While I was meditating, I realized that I was continually losing focus. My mind felt out of control. No matter what I did, my mind would not settle. This was partly because I’d had a particularly bad day at work. I’m a legal clerk. I pride myself on always getting everything ready for a case, come what may. Today I didn’t finish on time: I’d mislaid some of the paperwork. I could tell my boss wasn’t pleased.
Normally, when I’m stressed, I’ll go down to the bar and have a few drinks and then get up the next morning, ready to get going again. But today was different. Instead of drinking, I decided to meditate. It was hard, hard, hard. I hate this feeling of being out of control; I feel as if I’m not good enough—just a failure—and after a while, it felt that I was a loser at meditation too. After twenty minutes of struggling, I opened my eyes and realized that compared to before, and to my normal state of mind, I was actually quite calm. Everything seemed a little bit clearer and more transparent. Far from being a loser at meditation, I’d succeeded in gaining perspective. I learned that when you “fail” at meditation you are actually practicing. If your mind didn’t hop around, there would be no chance to spot your furious thoughts in action and to regain awareness of your mind. They kept telling me this during the mindfulness course, but somehow it didn’t sink in until I saw it for myself.
After “failing” at meditation I put on a jacket and went and watched a wonderful sunset. I had a glorious night’s sleep too. Tomorrow I’ll probably learn the same thing again. And the day after that as well …
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What is particularly difficult is to notice the thoughts that somehow get under the radar, and are not seen as “thoughts” at all.
You may be sitting quietly, observing thoughts as if they were appearing on a screen or stage in front of you, or as if they were leaves floating past on the stream. Some thoughts are easy to see: perhaps you find yourself thinking, I wonder what’s for dinner tonight? And very quickly see, “Ah—there’s a thought about dinner.” But, sooner or later, you may suddenly remember an email you meant to send, and you find yourself planning when you can get back to the computer. Even then, you may eventually see that this too was a thought. But what if you then say to yourself, “This is not going well—I shouldn’t have gone off for so long” or, “I’m just not getting this.” It is much more difficult to see these intimate self-judgments as “thoughts.” They feel more fundamentally true—realistic comments on “me” and how I’m doing.
So if we are imagining watching a movie, we need to be aware, not only of what’s on the screen, but the whispers that come as if from the seat behind us. The cinema has “surround sound”! And if we are imagining sitting on the bank of a stream, then we need to be aware that there may be a tributary to the same stream that is running behind us as well as in front. Some thoughts just don’t feel like thoughts, and these require our special attention, and special reserves of quiet patience. In these times of maximum stress and confusion, we learn the most, for it is when we see the most compelling thoughts as mental events—rather than truly reflecting reality—that we glimpse the possibility of freedom most of all.
If some of these practices seem a little repetitive, it’s because they are. Meditation is a simple practice that gains its power from repetition. It’s only through this that we can become aware of the repeating patterns in our own minds. Ironica
lly, meditative repetition frees us from endlessly repeating our past mistakes and the automatic pilot that drives self-defeating and self-attacking thoughts and actions. Through repetition, we gradually tune into the subtle differences that each moment brings.
Think of the meditation as planting seeds. You give young seeds the right conditions, but you don’t try to dig them up each day to see if they’ve grown roots. Meditation is like cultivating a garden: your experience deepens and changes, but this takes place in horticultural time, not clock time.
The Three-Minute Breathing Space meditation
Now that you have become familiar with practicing the Three-Minute Breathing Space meditation twice a day (see p. 132), you can also use it any time you feel under pressure or when you think it will help you. In time, you will find that you can effortlessly slip in Breathing Spaces whenever you need them. Don’t be afraid to use it as many times as you wish. If you feel unsettling or self-attacking thoughts welling up inside you, you can take a Breathing Space to regain perspective.
Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World Page 14