To deal with something is the work of the thinking mind. Our thinking mind is just one small aspect of our whole mind but it occupies all our mind space and time. In fact our entire life is taken over by our incessant engagement with the thoughts in our thinking-mind. So much so that we don’t even recognise all the other aspects of our mind. Throughout our waking time and also during sleeping time our mind is engaged and busy with activities in it. These include the monologues in our mind with ourselves, the dialogues we carry out mentally with an imaginary person, the voices of others in our mind telling us what not to do, memories of past events, worries about the future, planning, working, calculating, computing, watching something, reading, studying, fantasising, imagining, dreaming, etc. We are habituated to this and so it seems to be happening effortlessly and automatically although we are doing it.
Meditation is a practice of sitting with our Aware mind and allowing our thinking mind to quietly take rest. Meditation is the only way that gives complete rest to our mind and that is why it is so rejuvenating and stress relieving. But due to our deeply ingrained habit of engaging with our thinking-mind, we jump out of the resting state to react or respond or control or regulate or deal with something that arises during meditation.
When this happens next time, notice that there is a sensation in your body (vibrations and pulsations in the head) and notice that this also gives rise to thoughts saying this is not ok. Allow both the sensations and the thoughts and simply continue to be a witness of whatever arises in the moment. It is not what happens that distracts us, but our mental reaction to what happens. We tend to conclude that this is not ok, it shouldn’t be happening, this conclusion forces us to take action to stop it from happening. It is a choice we are making to react this way although it seems like the circumstance has forced the reaction. Unless something unbearably painful happens, simply choose to notice and allow whatever arises. It would also help to balance your energies with some practice of Energy Movements or gentle yoga movements before sitting to meditate. You can find some useful videos on my YouTube channel linked below.
It may help to slightly change your stance towards your practice. You are not immersing yourself deeper, this implies an action whereas meditation is a state of non-doing being, a non-action. What is actually happening is that as you sit being an alert and aware witness, accepting and allowing all that arises in the moment, the mind progressive becomes quite. This quietening seems like going deeper and deeper. You are not going anywhere, nor are you concentrating on anything, you are simply being. Both going and concentrating seem to imply activity and activity is the domain of the thinking-mind which is supposed to be at rest for meditation to happen.
The article below may help you to get a better understanding of this.
Selvan Srinivasan · 2y
How can meditation help people live?
To live means to be conscious or to be aware that Life is being alive within me right now. In my experience, I think I started becoming conscious only after I first started my practice with meditation thirty years ago. I think, we are all unconscious all the time except when we meditate. There is an aliveness in us, in our body, in each cell of our body and in the space around our body. We are usually unconscious of this aliveness as we remain stuck in our cycle of thoughts in our thinking-mind which is focused on the world outside. Meditation starts happening when we return back to the awareness of the aliveness within our body. The breathing process is one of the biggest clues for us that something amazing is happening inside us right now. We are not doing the breathing, it is happening within us. Although we can engage with this process and play with it by changing the pace and rhythm of our breathing, we did not start it by ourselves and we are not going to voluntarily stop it by ourselves. Someday for sure however, it is going to stop. Until then we do have a choice of whether to be conscious of it or unconscious of it. Whether to be alive each moment of life or just robotically go through life. To be alive right now is to be conscious of our breathing and expand this consciousness to the whole aliveness in us. I call it Awareness, to hold a background state of awareness throughout our life. In the beginning it would be momentary and we end up loosing consciousness as soon as we go back to our routine monotonous life to which we have become habituated. As we gradually give up our ingrained habits to replace it with a new habit of holding a stance of active acceptance, it becomes easier to not lose consciousness for progressively longer duration. Please read some of my other posts and answers to see what is meditation and how to inculcate the practice of meditation into our life and what goals can be aimed for with such a practice. I have linked one specific answer that may be relevant to your question.
Selvan Srinivasan
This channel is dedicated to the healing of the suffering humanity. May this content guide you to find the path to the place within to experience and live a life of complete freedom from suffering. We provide Mentoring and guidance along a journey into your Awareness to help you cultivate a habit of staying in your happy place as your default mode of being. www.awarenessjourney.org