Cloudscape

When you are too distracted by thoughts during meditation while being still, try to meditate more while moving, for instance, in yoga, tai chi, dancing, walking, exercise, work, or another activity. If you are too distracted by thoughts during active meditation, try a more passive meditation, like insight meditation, mantric meditation, prayer or hypnosis.

Since meditation is merely mindful experience, meditation can be both active or passive. There must be a balance between active and passive meditation, and if this balance is not respected, then the meditation may cease to be effective or even become harmful. People have slipped into psychosis from too much passive and too little active meditation. On the other hand, too much active and too little passive meditation will only lead to an obsessive concentration.

In any case, however it is very important that any activity during meditation can be more or less automatized, that is to say, that it can happen without much thought, as it is not concentration, but experience, that matters in meditation. It is impossible to experience if one is forced to concentrate on thought.

People who have too little yang might focus more on active meditation, lest they only lose focus in passive meditation. People who have too little yin might instead focus more on passive meditation.

When you are in sadness, try to let go of attachment as much as possible: let go of greed, of anger, of fear. Let go of all things you tell yourself that must or must not be. Letting go of attachment is easier when sad, and in this way, sadness can come to its use. It can thus cleanse your being from impurities and, like winter, creates an emptiness from which new life can grow in spring. The faster you are able to let go, the less painful your sadness will feel, and the quicker it can also pass. Thus, do not resist sadness, but try to make use of it until it is gone. The use of sadness is to make one let go how things go, not as a punishment when things do not go your way. In your sadness, let go off all control and let everything be. Thus, it will come to its use.

Sometimes the best thing you can do when you are in sadness is to make use of your sadness' purification abilities, and the best way to do this is to turn inwards. Meditation, or, if you are religious, prayer, can be a good way to do this. In your sadness, you are more able to let go of control, thereby creating an emptiness within yourself. Learn to appreciate the silence this brings, and in that silence try to find grace.

Above all, when you are sad, think about what you want to do with your life. Sadness is an emptiness which creates a panorama within your mind. Hear the silence. See the darkness. Feel the cold. In this emptiness, find purity. Once you have done this, your sadness has served its purpose, and the light may come back once again.

In everything there is infinite beauty; in what things one sees beauty is but a matter of preference. To say that the beauty of something is greater than that of something else is prejudice, for if all beauty is infinite, there is none that is greater than any another. There is inexhaustible beauty in all things, and to be fully conscious of it would mean to be God.

Since everything is perception and so everything is but as we perceive it, everything is of infinite and therefore equal beauty. It is therefore impossible to do or create anything that is more or less beautiful than anything else, except to oneself or to a specific other person. There is beauty only in love, the appreciation of beauty.

As everything is equal in beauty, it is meaningless to seek beauty in anything but the perception of the beauty in all things in itself, which is love. To seek to love all things is the only thing we ever need to do, but unfortunately, since we are unable to love all things, we must often confine ourselves to the things we have already learned to love, lest, in trying to love the things that are still hurtful to us, we would destroy ourselves. Yet our task remains but to learn to love those things we cannot yet love, and to more fully love those things that we already do.

It is a question of balance, therefore, between loving what we find (yin), and finding what we love (yang), in order to find love, which is the only thing we should seek.

Ultimately, love itself is the only thing of value, that is to say, the only thing that gives value to our lives. Thus, everything is of infinite value, and yet nothing by itself is of any value whatsoever.

Destruction is sometimes needed for construction. But if you destroy out of hate, destruction is your ultimate goal, and not a means to an end. If you destroy out of love, then creation becomes your ultimate goal.

You've created this perception of good and bad and do not realize that this is but a perception of your own creation. The only thing that is good is the perception of good, and that perception doesn't even need to be in your experience; it can just as well be in your experience of your experience.

Worries are often the result of indecision. We worry about things if we aren't sure what to do about them, or even what to think about them. In fact, worrying is basically about making decisions: the mind recognizes a problem and debates what to do about.

When we think of doing something but dither about what we should do, or if we should really do anything at all, this vacillation may resound in our minds for some time, and for some people longer than for others; at first, consciously; then, when our minds are distracted by other matters, this may go on on a subconscious level. When this happens, we may have the feeling that we have forgotten something we need to do. The feeling that something needs to change leads to unrest. We have a nagging feeling without knowing just why.

At this point, we may struggle, perhaps without being fully aware of it, to remember what it was we still needed to decide about, sometimes to such extent that it causes us to forget to enjoy. We know not what to think about, but we know that we should be thinking about something, a matter which still needed to be settled upon. Since we forgot what it was, we simply go on thinking about what we were thinking until our thoughts wander. The more frequently it occurs that we cannot decide on something, the further we get lost in our thoughts.

On the other hand, indecisiveness may also be linked to philosophical abilities, since people who are indecisive about what to do may also be unable to decide on what to think, allowing them to keep their mind open to possibilities.

Another phenomenon where indecisiveness can lead to anxiety is in an undesirable situation which may or may not be changed. The mind cannot relax and accept the situation before it knows that it will not change it, as it otherwise wishes to seek a way to change it. However, it may be difficult to change the situation, which may lead to indecision whether or not to change it. To make matters worse, to change the situation one may have to sacrifice something else, further making the decision harder. As long as this has not been decided on, the mind will remain in a state where it sees the given situation as something it wishes to change, and therefore it will become more frustrating. As long as the mind thinks of changing the situation, it cannot accept it. However, someone who is indecisive may also be indecisive about whether or not to even think of changing the situation or accept it.

In addition, indecisiveness is also likely to generally slow people down in everything they do, as they spend a large portion of their time deciding what to do, so that, in this way, indecision may significantly make their lives less fulfilling and more frustrating.

Many people may be faced with indecision now and then, but for some people, this may become so frequent that a chronic sense of uncertainty settles in their minds. If this problem becomes severe, these people may eventually develop depression. It has indeed been observed that in depressed people, the prefrontal cortex, the brain's decision center, is hypoactive, which is one of the most characteristic signs of depression. Perhaps indecision is not just a symptom but also a cause or contributing factor of depression, though it is certainly not the only one. Either how, it seems clear that people who are indecisive run a higher risk of developing depression at some point in their lives.

To be mindful of every experience can uplift one to such state of bliss that, ironically, there is soon the danger that one becomes attached to it, which, once you are no longer in a state of mindfulness, causes negative emotions which prevent us from becoming mindful again. In order not to become attached to the state of being mindful of your experiences of every moment, try to see the transience of every moment, which, after all, lasts only for a moment before it is replaced with the next.

Do not regret when you have allowed an experience to pass you by without you having thankfully enjoyed it, for every experience lasts only an infinitely short time. It does not matter to have lost it, for in doing so, you have lost nearly nothing. In the awareness that every moment fades after an infinitely short time, you may better be able to detach from it.

Whether you were mindful or not at some time in the past does not change your chance of being mindful now, for if at a given moment you wish to be mindful merely for the experience of mindfulness at this moment, and not for its effect on long term, then you certainly will be at that given moment. You may no longer be so the next moment, but that does not matter, for if you do not, it is because you no longer wish to be mindful for that moment, and that, at most, you wish to be mindful merely for the long-term effect of it.

If you try to be mindful but fail, it is because you have forgotten why you want to be mindful. At this point, you no longer truly want to mindful to experience, but merely to be in a state you can call mindful.

Emotions are, for a large part and perhaps entirely, experiences which are embedded within sensations, in the form of impressions. The sensations in which emotions are imbued may be real or exist only in imagination. Thus, to better become aware how you feel, try to attribute emotions to your sensations, including sight, sound, touch, smell (and to a lesser extent, perhaps taste). When you are aware of how you feel,  to feel better, try to imagine that you fill every sensation with positive emotions.

The exaggeration of a point of view will automatically give rise to a counteraction from its opponents, rather than suppressing them. It does not help at all to exaggerate in order to convince your opponents, contrariwise, it will give them an opportunity to further contradict your point of view.

Exaggeration will make you seem less plausible, so that your arguments are more susceptible to skepticism. Once the error of your exaggeration has been uncovered, you are no longer trusted in anything you say or do. This can be dangerous, because you may in fact represent a point of view that, except for its exaggeration, may in fact have a core of truth.

Do not try to argue against the opponents of your point of view, but instead try to argue with them. Be as objective as possible, so that you may invite your objectors to do the same. Rather than trying to show how much we are right and the other is wrong, let us seek for the truth together.

Be open to all points of view, and do not cling to your own. Not only will this help you to find more insight into truth yourself and not be blinded by attachment to your own opinion, but by following another's line of thinking, you may also better be able to falsify it, and so share your own insight into the truth with others.

A common example of how exaggeration has led to increased skepticism is global warming. By announcing the end of the world, many people, including scientists, have only brought about only more controversy about whether or not global warming is effectively happening. With all the prophets around to declare doomsday, many people eventually came to see climate change as a pseudoscience.

If you have a view which is extreme and seems exaggerated because of being controversial, then when propounding it, try to remember to state that it is a mere possibility, a hypothesis, so that others may be more open to it. After all, thought experiments, even when untrue, can always be interesting.

When you do or think something negative, it is not enough to resolve not to do so again. You must also counterbalance the destructive thought or deed with a constructive one.