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.

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.

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.

In absolutely everything you do, be, intensely, mindfully, wholeheartedly creative, even if what you are doing at a given moment is no more than enjoying, for even in the way one enjoys one can be thusly creative. Without really needing to achieve anything, let everything you do every moment be as beautiful as possible, as though it were a work of art — not only in your actions but also your experience. In this way, one may grow through every moment, and every moment will contribute to one's constant growth. In this way, one can both experience and improve at the same time, at all times.

1) Experience (Input)

Be lovingly, curiously, intriguedly aware of your current experiences;

Be thankful for them, knowing that they might as well not be there, that they will not last, and that they are unique for every moment, and beautiful in that unicity;

Perceive all things as being novel and impossibly, paradoxically wonderful in the fact of their existence;

Perceive all things as though they were living beings, and lovingly interact with them, while forgiving them for any disharmony felt with it.

Take a walk, remembering to be fully anchored in one's experiences;

Say to yourself repeatedly "I live" whenever you find yourself slipping into unconsciousness, and set your determination to stay firmly in your experience;

Meditate, focussing on absolutely everything you experience, and let the experiences come to you rather than seeking out the experience;

Repudiate judgmental thoughts.

2) Imagination (Processing)

Perceive the world as being a dream, and as such part of oneself over which one has full control;

Trust that everything that happens has a meaning and reason, and perceive them as being part of a design;

Feel the infinite love of the universe;

Ask for whatever you want, trust you will get it in time, and wait for it, as on a parcel;

Feel a connection with the earth (yang) which keeps you firm, and a connection with the sky (yin) which keeps you open-minded;

Imagine whatever you dream of, or whatever would make you feel happy, as vividly as possible.

Whenever you catch yourself in an unpleasant daydream, mend whatever has happened in the daydream, and make it become as positive as possible.

3) Activity (Output)

Do whatever you feel like doing, without thinking about it whatsoever;

Always keep busy with at least one thing (even if it's just experiencing in some way, as long as you commit yourself to doing so wholeheartedly);

Take a walk or engage in other kinds of exercise, remembering to remain aware of doing so every moment;

Review your past achievements, and compare them as a proof of your progress so as to gain confidence and motivation;

After having accomplished something, spend some time contemplating it, either to figure out what you need to work on, or to reinforce your self-esteem;

Experiment and playfully try new things.

If you deeply aspire to achieve something, then by all means do all that is in your ability to achieve it, but remind yourself that you can do no more than just that. When you are already doing your best, you should not try to push yourself further, for it will not work, on the contrary, it will then only demotivate you. When you have reached the limits of your abilities, accept them as long as they are there, until you manage to push them further.
When you are already working hard to achieve your dreams, it is time to once more avert your focus from those dreams and turn it back on your experience. In this way, not only will it become more pleasant to work to achieve them, but you will also become better at it because you do so with more focus.
In this way, one can have very high goals without being pained by them. Whatever efforts you exert to achieve your goals, you must always do so step by step, departing from where you are to then arrive as close as you can get to your goal; if you have made up your mind what your goal is, it is no use of thinking about that goal when you are already doing everything to move closer towards it; instead, focus on how you move closer towards it and that alone. Devote yourself to what you do now, not to thinking of what you cannot do yet.

In the meantime, as you work to achieve your goals, enjoy what you have achieved so far and what you are achieving as you work. In this way, a compromise can be made between the need of achievement and a need of happiness without compromising either of both, and indeed actually improving both; similarly, such there are for all things.

At times our thoughts crowd in on our experience, the transition from one experience to the next becomes more difficult, and we must instead make use of the transition from thought to experience, meaning that we must seek out experience through thought, as a detour. Often when we want to become conscious of our experience, we try to do so; but experience itself cannot be a goal, and when we try to experience, we do so from our thought; when we are trying to become more conscious of our experience, we must therefore realize that we must be patient till the trying wears off, and we can truly experience, not departing from thought but from feeling.

We slip into unconsciousness not because we are forgetful, but because consciousness tends to hurt at times. If we wish to be conscious, then we must endure it. Discursive thought is a means of dissociation. We must face this shame to recognize that we are afraid of every single moment, lest we never conquer that fear — everything we feel would become overwhelming were it not that we seek to escape from it.

Nothing is in itself superficial; only our own perception can be superficial.

Everything is relative. Nothing by itself is good or bad, small or large. For example, the Earth is large compared to our body, but small compared to the sun. Many have heard such rhetoric before, but it goes much farther than that; as another example, a sociopath may be cruel compared to the average person, but kind compared to Hitler, and in a world where almost everyone would be a cruel as Hitler, sociopaths would be Saints.
When we judge something, it is not by itself true, and therefore meaningless; for this reason, judgment has no use. Judging something, be it as good or bad, is the cause of attachment, which in turn is the cause of all suffering.
There is nothing that does not depend on subjective experience; the only absolute truth, then, is subjective experience itself, although it only is for some people, and sometimes for only one. True is only that which is experienced, that which has been experienced and that which will be experienced.
What one will experience in future depends on the causality of that experience. For instance, if one will put one's hand in a fire, one will get burned. If one jumps up, one will come back down. We know things like these because we have experienced it before.
Furthermore, if other people say something, it is sometimes, but not always, true: for instance, your mother might have told you that you will get burned if you put your hand in the fire. In this case, you have not experienced it before, but you have experienced that when you are a child, it is often best to listen to your mother. As another example, scientists might have told you that certain medicines aid against certain diseases. You have not experienced this, but they have experienced it through experiments. In this way, much of human experience can be shared by all humanity.
Any thought that is not practical, however, is pointless. But thought may have another practical use except for predicting causations; thought may help us to imagine things. Through thought we can create an entirely different world within our minds, the world of concepts. Knowledge is not only something we memorize, and ideas aren't just things that we think; both are also things that we experience. If we could not experience these things, they would be quite uninteresting. But thoughts are more than just tools; they are patterns which have their own beauty. In a way, notions are experienced in a way similar to sensations, but less vividly.
We could classify thought in three categories:

1) Judgmental thoughts
2) Causal thoughts
3) Conceptual thoughts

Of these, the first is the most common, followed by the second and third in that order. Conceptual thought is beautiful in itself, in the same way that anything else we experience can be, such as a flower or a sunset; causal thought is not beautiful in itself but is useful, meaning that it may lead us to greater beauty (but also to lesser beauty, when it is used to destroy rather than create). Judgmental thought, however, mostly impairs the quality of our lives.
When you realize that everything is relative and so nothing by itself is good or bad, however, judgmental thought, which is in effect attachment, starts to disappear. Finding it to be unneeded, you slowly let it go over time. It is an immense liberation when you find that there is no need to see anything good or bad, and that you can therefore just experience it.
Try to pay attention when you have judgment. Also, try not to judge your judgment itself. Your judgment itself is, after all, part of the current moment, just as every other pattern that is part of it; instead, try to experience even your judgment, the emotions it brings about.
Whenever you find that you judge something, try to see the relativity of whatever it is that you judge, and your judgment will no longer distract you from your experience. Judgment in itself is beautiful if that's how we see it; judgment is merely not conducive to greater beauty.
For instance, suppose a driver comes at a zebra crossing where an old man is very slowly (of course, relatively) shuffling to the other side. The driver may feel impatient and hoot, judging the old man slow. The old man may then feel annoyed, judging the driver hasty. Neither point of view is absolute. Thirty seconds may be a lot of time to cross a zebra crossing, but nothing compared to an entire day, let alone an entire lifetime.
In this way, the meaning of every word is relative. This does not mean that we can never speak the truth, however, as much of what we mean in what we speak is not said. Every statement depends on context and otherwise makes no sense at all. (For instance, the old man is slow compared to the average human we know, but we do not mention this as we assume that the other knows what context.) This is, however, more an issue of linguistics than of ontology.
However, by realizing that everything is relative one may be more able to experience is as such. This will make it easier to detach from judgment and just experience everything in itself. In our thoughts we must make comparisons; but not in our feelings.
In one's experience, the best frame of reference is that of nothing. If one compares everything in one's life, anything at all, with nothing, one will always find it to be better than nothing. Ask yourself the question: would I rather have what I have now, or rather nothing at all, though everything has its beauty? In this way, one will be more able to appreciate the value of what you already have. By thus assuming a more neutral attitude, one will enjoy more and suffer less.