Spiritual Essence: Quote of the Week #89 - Stopping the Mind from Thinking

SPIRITUAL ESSENCE:

Focusing on the essence of spirituality from all times, places, cultures…and beyond. Serving and cultivating the innate, inherent spiritual nature contained within all: the religious, the non-religious, the spiritual but not religious, the atheist, the agnostic, the mystic; whatever one does or does not consider oneself. We are beings at many different levels with many different aspects: physical, energy/life force, mind, intellect, emotion; but at our deepest common core, we are all spiritual beings. We all yearn to love and be loved, to nurture and be nurtured, to express and serve and realize each of our unique destinies. We can all help each other along our individual journeys, united by our common needs and yearnings.

Quote of the Week #156 - Listening/Hearing for Non-material Sustenance

Quote of the Week #156 - Listening/Hearing for Non-material Sustenance

Every one who is thirsty, come and drink. He who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good. Let your soul delight in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, that your soul will live…

--Isaiah 55:1-3, The Living Torah translation by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Quote of the Week #89 - Stopping the Mind from Thinking

Question:

I’ve been meditating for years but I have yet to stop my mind from thinking. What is your trick for quieting the mind?

Answer:

There is no trick, and I don’t try to quiet my mind. The mind babbles, chatters, and spews an endless stream of thoughts, stories, feelings and distractions. Rather than quiet your mind during meditation, realize that the “you” that observes the unquiet mind is always and already quiet. Rest in that and leave the mind alone.

--Rabbi Rami Shapiro in “Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler” column, Spirituality & Health Magazine, May/June 2016 Issue

Elaboration from Steve Gold:

Rabbi Rami hits the nail on the head in calling for us to focus on the part of us that is not the chattering mind, but rather the quiet observer always present if we can connect with it. Who/what is it that is aware that our mind is thinking, chattering?

Meditation is abiding in that part of us that is separate from our lower minds, that part of us that is variously referred to as the observer, the witness, the intellect, the higher quiet mind, and bringing it to the foreground, and basically ignoring the chattering mind, which eventually begins to recede to the background.

However, for those familiar with the Yoga Sutras and other meditation teachings, like the person who posed the question, there are many such teachings that maintain that the mind can be quieted, that the goal of meditation is to quiet the mind and cease the flowing of thought waves. The magic to the practice that Rabbi Rami suggests is that through that practice, the lower, chattering mind will eventually slow down, and once in a while shut up. These magical moments allow for a greater expansion and sense of thrill of the inner peace always present in the space of the quiet observer. But such a state cannot be forced by resisting the chattering mind. Although I wouldn’t call these “tricks”, use of intoning and focusing on mantras within, or inner visualizations are some of various techniques to re-direct the insistent, lower chattering mind by giving it something spiritually productive and soothing to do until it finally shuts up.

Spiritual Essence

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