How Do I Ignore My Noisy Mind?
“When you meditate, just let your thoughts be.”
“When your mind makes a load of noise, just ignore it.”
“When that voice in your head is starting to terrorise you, just don’t pay it any attention.”
It’s easier said than done sometimes. Our minds have such a pull, with each thought cleverly leading our attention into it, only to lead into another all-encompassing thought, that the idea of even trying to ignore thoughts can feel strenuous, even painful to bear.
If it isn’t easy to ignore the chattering mind, it is usually because we are still interested in the value it holds for us. If you weren’t interest in it, it wouldn’t take any effort to ignore it. You would just start to ignore it naturally, because you would have no reason to pay close attention to it.
If you struggle with the advice that you might sometimes hear about simply ignoring your thoughts, then forget it. Take a different stance.
Let each thought be itself. You don’t have to ignore it or pay attention to it specifically. Let it be its own thing.
Each thought and feeling we have is secretly saying “Stop putting pressure on me! Leave me alone! Let me be who I am!”
If you start to treat your thoughts and yourself like that, even now, you may start to detect an increasing sense of ease and relaxation.
Our ideas about our thoughts and our secret, hiding resistance to our own minds is what makes them impossible to ignore. We can create another separate self which is “trying to ignore thoughts”, and soon we are in another mess of confusion and strain, trying to do something so we can feel something else.
Let this be the end of struggle. Rather than taking it on yourself to decide how your thoughts should be, how much you should be ignoring them and how frequently they should arise, let them be responsible for themselves.
This might feel strange at first, because we are used to thinking we are in charge of every thought. Obviously, we are not. Not yet, anyway, otherwise we would be experiencing nothing but the good stuff.
Say yes to the thinking process rather than trying to ignore it with any shell-like constriction. Say yes, this creates space, and notice that when you let thoughts be themselves, they start to lose their power, which came from you trying to own them.
Let me know if that helps, and until next time, have a great week.
All the best,
Adam
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