Friday, March 15, 2019

Where do thoughts come from and where do they go?

I started meditating again recently. About 10 minutes a day, using Sam Harris's "Waking Up" phone app. Often I feel very restless during the meditation sessions. Thoughts come up and I feel like "I've got an idea for a post in my blog!" But I force myself to sit through it, and then 1 minute later, the idea is gone again.

Often I feel like I have something in my mind that I have got to put into writing. The ideas remain coherent. However, sentences I type up are totally different than the ones that come up in my head. I have no idea why that is the case.

Or I get the feeling I have so much thoughts I need to express, and then three sentences later, I have no clue how to complete the paragraph, let alone a whole post. The brain just feels like the idea came out the tap and is lost in the drain, and I only managed to catch a few drops on the page. I know that to be able to write better, I really need to force myself to write more often. More practice will improve my writing skills.

As the guided meditation suggests, thoughts seem to come out of nowhere. If I just observe the thought, it disappears into nothingness too all of a sudden. Sometimes the restlessness persists, then more random thoughts appear into consciousness. Occasionally, I can attain a state where it feels great to sit still for several minutes, where I can just observe the breath, feelings in the body, random sounds in the environment, with no random thoughts materializing from the ether to distract me.

In my climbing, I do notice that sometimes the random thought of fear of falling comes out of nowhere, and I suddenly believe I should get down to the safety of the ground right away, but if I just hold on and breath, then that thought goes away and everything is fine. Or when my forearms start feeling the burn (from fingers clenching the holds too hard), the immediate fear that my body can't handle the stress arises. However, the moment my feet land on the ground, I would suddenly think that I probably could do one more route no problem.

My problem is that considering too many issues leads to indecision and inaction. I hope to be able to be less distracted and be able to accomplish more goals in the future.

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