It’s a bit of a strange question but i’m curious to know if anyone has a possible answer to why I am doing this.
For context i’m quite a newbie in terms of practicing, but I have been on/off meditating for the past few years (though with poor consistency).
I have an issue where, during meditations related to specific entities (such as the King Paimon guided meditation) I will begin having inappropriate background thoughts. This causes me to pull myself away from the meditation because it’s like the thought pops up (for example, so-so sucks or whatever) and then because i dont want to think it, it begins repeating over and over. I pull myself away from that meditation because I don’t want to accidentally offend anyone (even if what is said is not how I feel) and frankly it’s quite embarrassing. It feels like a bit of a trivial thing to have an issue with but it greatly affects the quality of my meditation.
I suppose this could fall under the general chatter of my mind as it is very talkative and hard to ease, so when it is not saying things that it shouldn’t be saying it is just overall distracting me from entering the zone.
What techniques can I employ to help with this? I’ve done a fair bit of googling and I tend to cycle through several different methods during meditation but I usually can’t shut myself up.
I’d really appreciate any advice or anecdotes!
Light a candle, and simply focus on the flame to the exclusion of anything else. When thoughts come up, just let them flow away or see them burn up in the flame. Your mind will begin to quiet quite rapidly.
For some reason I never really thought of that actually. I’ll change my meditation method for a few days and i’ll see how it goes, thank you for the advice.
I’ve seen this time and time again. I think what your describing is intrusive thoughts. They are a medical thing that happens with certain disorders in my case OCD. Theirs a couple things you can do. First contact and entity primarily a god or angel or demon and ask them to help get rid of the thoughts for you. Intrusive thoughts have no medical cure but I’ve read and met people who have greatly improved or even gotten rid of them through magick. They are normally a symptom so they can be treated. Second is you could just explain that they are thoughts you can’t control to the entity which is what I tend to do. Usually in my experience with the demons of the goetia they tend to understand. When you start to feel a thought coming on or it pops into your head just verbalize out loud to the entity you don’t mean it and that it’s an intrusive thoughts. You may even want to explain what they are to the spirit. You might want to google intrusive thoughts and coping skills too since from what I’ve seen they are a medical or mental disorder sort of thing. Hope this helped.
Yes, I often had (perhaps a bit “still have”) this problem too, thinking e.g. “Crappy (Spirit’s name)” or “Kill (John Doe)”; then I’d immediately proceed to correct myself, BTW indeed: meditation by concentrating on something or mental void etc.
Yeah, I have GAD (was diagnosed a few years ago) and I feel that what you said makes a lot of sense regarding that; I have noticed specific subjects tend to persist in my mind during meditation, and while the actual illness itself has greatly improved (yay!) it tends to rear its head suddenly and randomly and could definitely be what is causing my intrusive thoughts.
I successfully invoked King Paimon without any showing up which was really nice, but it was only during the meditation in which they showed. As you said, I promptly apologised and explained that it wasn’t how I actually felt but I still pulled myself out as, recalling what others have said about him, he’s lovely, understanding and patient but also very formal and It didn’t feel right to have my first proper conversation with him while these pesky thoughts were there, lol.
Guess the point is thanks, for sharing that, and I feel relieved that it is something I can actually manage and fix because I feel like a dick about it sometimes, haha.