10 Jan 2011, 2:34 am
10 Jan 2011, 5:54 am
10 Jan 2011, 8:33 am
10 Jan 2011, 11:31 am
Aimless wrote:
I read The Power of Now and found when I was successful in being completely "in the moment" I felt a surge of joy, almost like an automatic physical reaction.
I remember a couple of years ago, for some reason I just spontaneously existed entirely in the present without monkey mind chatter, and it was so weird and beautiful. I spend a lot of my time making conscious attempts at being back in that state.
10 Jan 2011, 12:32 pm
Moog wrote:
I remember a couple of years ago, for some reason I just spontaneously existed entirely in the present without monkey mind chatter, and it was so weird and beautiful. I spend a lot of my time making conscious attempts at being back in that state.
Have you tried just listening to the monkey chatter, just letting it be in the background, behind your breathing and the creaking of floorboards and all the other things that you are aware of? Perhaps like sitting in a (safe) jungle and letting the noises of animals waft over you without trying to identify what the animals are doing, or even which animals make the noise. At some point the monkey chatter just slides away into the third person, instead of occupying your whole mind.
10 Jan 2011, 3:38 pm
StuartN wrote:
Moog wrote:
I remember a couple of years ago, for some reason I just spontaneously existed entirely in the present without monkey mind chatter, and it was so weird and beautiful. I spend a lot of my time making conscious attempts at being back in that state.
Have you tried just listening to the monkey chatter, just letting it be in the background, behind your breathing and the creaking of floorboards and all the other things that you are aware of? Perhaps like sitting in a (safe) jungle and letting the noises of animals waft over you without trying to identify what the animals are doing, or even which animals make the noise. At some point the monkey chatter just slides away into the third person, instead of occupying your whole mind.
That's how I overcame my insomnia when my mind wouldn't shut up.
10 Jan 2011, 4:16 pm
Aimless wrote:
StuartN wrote:
Moog wrote:
I remember a couple of years ago, for some reason I just spontaneously existed entirely in the present without monkey mind chatter, and it was so weird and beautiful. I spend a lot of my time making conscious attempts at being back in that state.
Have you tried just listening to the monkey chatter, just letting it be in the background, behind your breathing and the creaking of floorboards and all the other things that you are aware of? Perhaps like sitting in a (safe) jungle and letting the noises of animals waft over you without trying to identify what the animals are doing, or even which animals make the noise. At some point the monkey chatter just slides away into the third person, instead of occupying your whole mind.
That's how I overcame my insomnia when my mind wouldn't shut up.
Me too.
I came to it in a peculiar way. I had some insomnia experiences where the monkey mind would chatter at warp speed until I thought I would go insane from the mental yammering combined with insomnia exhaustion. Then suddenly there would be a loud electrical buzzing in my head combined with a flash of blue light. After the buzz/flash, the monkey mind would still be chattering but I could just observe the thoughts and let them go. It was this meditation practice but it happened by itself after the buzz/flash rather than me intentionally doing it as a meditation practice.
Recently somebody made a thread about a similar insomnia experience and somebody else posted a wiki that gave it a name.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome
After perhaps a dozen of these insomnia experiences, I decided not to wait around for the buzz/flash that would allow me to detach and observe the mental chatter so I could fall asleep. I decided to try detaching and observing as an actual practice rather than letting things get to the crisis point that would lead to the buzz/flash and then detached observation. Over time, I got to the point where I could detach and observe the chatter and fall asleep. I've been doing that for many years now and it has become a bedtime habit. Since I started, there has been no more Exploding Head Syndrome buzz/flashes because insomnia never gets to the crisis that causes that.
I now highly recommend it to anybody who says they have insomnia.
10 Jan 2011, 7:30 pm
MasterJedi
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Joined: 22 Oct 2010
Age: 53
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,160
Location: in an open field west of a white house
10 Jan 2011, 9:19 pm
10 Jan 2011, 9:34 pm
11 Jan 2011, 4:02 am
11 Jan 2011, 5:02 am
11 Jan 2011, 9:43 am
StuartN wrote:
Moog wrote:
I remember a couple of years ago, for some reason I just spontaneously existed entirely in the present without monkey mind chatter, and it was so weird and beautiful. I spend a lot of my time making conscious attempts at being back in that state.
Have you tried just listening to the monkey chatter, just letting it be in the background, behind your breathing and the creaking of floorboards and all the other things that you are aware of? Perhaps like sitting in a (safe) jungle and letting the noises of animals waft over you without trying to identify what the animals are doing, or even which animals make the noise. At some point the monkey chatter just slides away into the third person, instead of occupying your whole mind.
Hi Stu. Thanks for the advice, though I am well acquainted with the workings of my inner monkey. I am slowly becoming a full time meditator, so me and my monkey are extremely intimate, if I may say so without conjuring any unpleasant images.
MasterJedi
Veteran
Joined: 22 Oct 2010
Age: 53
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,160
Location: in an open field west of a white house
11 Jan 2011, 10:49 am
jhaarbur
Butterfly
Joined: 4 Dec 2010
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 17
Location: In my mind but physically in Cleveland, OH
19 Jan 2011, 7:00 pm
20 Jan 2011, 5:09 am
