My Experience with Stillness Meditation and ending the Blah Blah narrative mindtalk.
While I have been meditating off and on since 1976, this was spotty and mostly just “easy” contemplative meditation – hanging out with my thoughts – not really doing stillness/mindfulness meditation: focusing on a point and bringing the attention back to that point when thoughts intruded. I started meditating consistently, every day, for at least 30 minutes in 2010. I was a bit better about focusing my attention – but not much. Still, I did notice that I felt better after meditating.
In late 2022, it became obvious I needed to do something to quiet my excessive thinking. Most of my internal thoughts were problematic and created emotional suffering. And I was thinking all the time about nothing. Almost OC thinking. I found Eckhart Tolle’s technique for focusing on the body – my hands, in my case – and after a few miserable days of sitting for 45 minutes, the thought stream broke and the thoughts began to lessen.
I combined this with Ramana Maharhsi’s Who Am I meditation, and I was meditating longer: 45 – 90 minutes at a stretch and found this incredible stillness inside. It had always been there – but I simply didn’t notice it through all the internal thought-noise. Once the thoughts subsided with the self-inquiry, the stillness came to the foreground.
Around this time, I began to notice infrequent periods of stillness when I was doing mundane tasks: walking the cat, making a sandwich, sitting quietly, or just spacing out. I began to wonder if they were related. Indeed they are. I discovered that the inner peace and stillness was available any time I was awake…if I remembered to notice it.
I continued to meditate – even looking forward to spending 45 – 90+ minutes in stillness internally with only minimal thoughts arising and those in the background or “sides” of the huge spacious stillness in front of me (prepositions don’t make sense here) and long periods of no-thought. Note: it usually takes about 25 minutes for my mind to quiet down, though nowadays it’s a bit quicker.
It was around this time I noticed the nature of my internal thoughts changed from problematic, painful thoughts, to ones of mostly commentary, which it is now to this day. Suffering had ended for me. But the internal narrative continued.
A few months later I found I was deeply in love with the stillness. This is a deliberate choice of words.
A few months later, I noticed the periods of stillness in daily mundane/practical life were becoming more frequent and longer. It is at this time I started reading Gary Weber’s book, Happiness Beyond Thought” and started watching the videos I have on the Getting Started page. He has many more videos and if you find his message resonates with you, I strongly urge you to check them out. I’ve also included some of on my Videos page.
Watching his videos, I began to wonder if stopping the narrative completely was possible for me. I decided to go 100% and see what happens. While I may not hit the 10000 hour mark and have it turn off like Gary, I consider every second without narrative thought be a gift and a blessing that I am grateful for.
So now my sitting becomes more still, I have less narrative during daily life and more and more am still and peaceful internally.
I offer this to you as a gift in hopes you benefit from it as much as I have.