Thoughts and meditation are things that may or may not go together well. It is okay to have thought filled meditations, don’t loose site of the idea that Meditation is not about having a quiet mind, but the goal of meditation is about a gradual quieting of the mind acccording to Depac Chopra. So just keep at it and don’t stop.
Is having a thought filled meditation really meditation?
Yes i know what you are thinking you are thinking that okay I sat down to meditate and to try to clear my mind and instead of clearing my mind I was having thoughts. And you are all mad at yourself that you were not able to just once quiet your mind. You could not do it. And your answer to yourself is that I didn’t meditate because when I sat down to meditate I couldn’t keep myself from thinking. And yes you did meditate. The important thing to understand is that you cannot control your thougths. Yes you cannot control your thoughts and you probably never will be able to control your thoughts. I have been meditating for a while and I still see that with meditating that I am not able to control thougths running through my head.
How do I handle all of these thougths that are running in my head?
This is a great question because it then starts to address the topic of how to do you reach a point where you can bring a state of silence to mind? It brings up a very short history of meditation and of course the many divergent schools of thought that arise to answer this one question. The history of meditation that we know of starts off in India with the Vedas. The Vedas produced the first texts on meditation, yoga and other topics. Alot of Vedic meditation is about using a mantra called a mind vehicle that you repeat to yourself over and over again with your eyes closed and that can bring you to a sense of quiet. Then came the buddhists that were not about using mantras but where all about focusing on ones breath in order to achive that state of absolute freedom from suffering.
So just deal with thoughts as they come and then just let them go as they once came in, but refraim from beating yourself up if you have have the inevitable thought because that is just going to happen. In short try to treat your thougths like the passing of the clouds.