The Mind Doesn’t Seem To Want Peace
Your mind doesn’t like meditation as much as you think! But it needs it. I am sure you would probably agree that you don’t take enough time to regularly sit quietly and detach from your surroundings in order to deeply reflect on your inner world, quiet the mind, and listen for the messages from your inner guidance. Most people don’t.
Break The Meditation Resistance
I have personally noticed that whenever I suggest meditation to someone in a conversation, many often reply with their version of what they see as soothing, such as listening to music, watching a movie, going out for a cigarette, lighting a joint, praying, or spending time with loved ones or pets. A true meditation, although it can be customized, involves building the skill of physical and mental stillness, being present, subduing the persistence of thoughts, and most beneficially being practiced while alone, or at least in a quiet space. Thinking about your life’s troubles while smoking a cigarette on your porch rather doesn’t pass for meditation. Additionally, most of the mentioned activities involve other people, or entities in some way, as music is accompanied by singers telling a story, and praying satisfies the feeling of loneliness with the perceived presence of a deity.
Shock Value
A psychological research study, by Timothy Wilson and colleagues, reviewed the behavior of randomly chosen volunteers. They were left alone in a room and instructed to sit for a moment and think. This room had a device that could deliver a mild electric shock with a press of a button.
The study revealed that most of the time people do not like to be alone with their own thoughts, at least not for too long. It was found that “participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative.”¹
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¹Wilson, T. D., Reinhard, D. A., Westgate, E. C., Gilbert, D. T., Ellerbeck, N., Hahn, C., Brown, C. L., & Shaked, A. (2014). Social psychology. Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind. Science 345(6192), 75–77. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1250830
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