"This is definitely the first hurdle I encounter. The handful of times I have attempted this, I end up thinking about not thinking (isn't that silly?), or a song comes into my head, or I hear a noise in the distance, and attempts to clear out those thoughts lead to, well, more thinking!"
Yup, that is exact right. The guy who taught me that it was about 'being the stillness' (I know, I know, but this was they 70's). Lets say you are looking at pond, smooth as glass and a pebble falls, ripples spread out. You can't stop the ripples, you can just note them and wait for them to pass. So you note the thoughts as they pop unbidden into your brain, and then wait for them to pass. If you were in a horror movie and the killer was walking in your house, you'd be scared to death trying to be invisible. That is 'being the stillness'. Actively not thinking.
"I struggle with even imagining what it's like to not think about something. Something new or something old. Anything at all. I will note that I also have trouble sleeping for the same reason, ..."
There were lots of people who fell asleep in our class. I did too a couple of times. One of the party tricks you can do while meditating is what some folks call 'lucid dreaming' which is you are balanced on the knife edge between consciousness and unconsciousness, you can learn to let your unconsciousness start up without leaving consciousness completely behind. Me, I end up going to sleep if I try that.
But having a lot of stuff happening at work, at home, and in the world, sometimes I meditate to go to sleep. But its a two step process, meditate, then once there allow yourself into the unconscious state rather than holding on to the conscious state.
There was an engineer at Google who had dug up a lot of interesting references on meditating. Some folks have decided it is a form of self hypnosis since the mental state most closely resembles that of being hypnotized.
Yup, that is exact right. The guy who taught me that it was about 'being the stillness' (I know, I know, but this was they 70's). Lets say you are looking at pond, smooth as glass and a pebble falls, ripples spread out. You can't stop the ripples, you can just note them and wait for them to pass. So you note the thoughts as they pop unbidden into your brain, and then wait for them to pass. If you were in a horror movie and the killer was walking in your house, you'd be scared to death trying to be invisible. That is 'being the stillness'. Actively not thinking.
"I struggle with even imagining what it's like to not think about something. Something new or something old. Anything at all. I will note that I also have trouble sleeping for the same reason, ..."
There were lots of people who fell asleep in our class. I did too a couple of times. One of the party tricks you can do while meditating is what some folks call 'lucid dreaming' which is you are balanced on the knife edge between consciousness and unconsciousness, you can learn to let your unconsciousness start up without leaving consciousness completely behind. Me, I end up going to sleep if I try that.
But having a lot of stuff happening at work, at home, and in the world, sometimes I meditate to go to sleep. But its a two step process, meditate, then once there allow yourself into the unconscious state rather than holding on to the conscious state.
There was an engineer at Google who had dug up a lot of interesting references on meditating. Some folks have decided it is a form of self hypnosis since the mental state most closely resembles that of being hypnotized.