Road block

Continuing with muraqaba, I have encountered a hefty challenge, and am not quite sure how to go around it. Basically, I have learned it is no easy task to control your thoughts. It is insanely hard! But we all knew this I am sure... the crux of the problem comes when you have to empty your mind of thoughts and be void of thoughts... void of anything... completely empty.

Initially I start with distractors and jump from a thought to the next so as not to dwell on one specifically (and I am probably doing this wrong)... creating a whimsical frenzy and flurry of non settling thoughts in the hopes that they are so light and feather-like I can blow them away at once. If I settle on a thought for too long, I stop and know I am thinking about something and stop myself... then blow it away. Okay but the problem is here... if you are 'emptying your mind'... clearing it of everything... how do you acknowledge that you have cleared your mind without thinking that 'oh my mind is cleared'. Isn't that a thought.. or recognition... since I acknowledged 'oh yeah I stopped thinking about all those things and now my mind is clear'. What madness! What insanity! It seems impossible to clear my mind.

It is like there are somehow two compartments to how this thing works... the mind itself which holds whatever you are thinking, then the policeman mind portion which polices what the mind is thinking, but in reality it is part of the mind too and when you acknowledge that, the two merge and create chaos in the entire process, ahhh!

I guess I will just keep tooting along, because you know what they say - persistence pays off, practice makes perfect, blah blah blah.

Anyways, I am glad to know I am not entirely crazy, since I found this online which makes sense, but still doesn't help me:

"The theory of ironic processes of mental control hold that both the most and the least desired effects of attempts to control one's own mental states accrue from two processes: an intentional operating process (a conscious, effortful search for mental contents that will produce a desired state of mind) and an ironic monitoring process (an unconscious, automatic search for mental contents that signal a failure to produce the desired state of mind). Although the monitoring process usually functions just to active the operating process, during stress, distraction, time urgency, or other mental load, the monitor's effects on the mind can supersede those of the operator, producing the very state of mind that is least desired. An individual's attempts to gain mental control may thus precipitate the unwanted mental states they were intended to remedy."

[Psychological Science. When the Antidote is the Poison: Ironic Mental Control Processes Wegner, Daniel M.]