Ha! I love that.

I was also amused by your Myth #6. Along that line of thought, I’ve heard people say that they can’t do yoga because they aren’t flexible!

You are absolutely right, I find that if one goes into meditation with a goal to stop all thoughts, the practices becomes frustrating and unnerving. If, however, the intention is to become a fully present and aware observer, amazing realizations and moments of epiphany begin to happen. And with enough practice, the thoughts simply go away on their own, the monkey/mind chatter quiets down and one day vanishes all-together. Your comment on being an observer from the outside is very deep, and deserves much further exploration. Just as a quick comment, I will borrow the terms association and dissassociation from NLP to say that it is extremely helpful to have the ability and flexibility to go in and out of experience. As a first person observer we are completely associated into the experience and therefore can’t see outside the boundaries we have drawn up for ourselves. Once we have the freedom to dissassociate out and look at the situation from outside the worry bubble, everything changes and new possibilities arise.

Concentration techniques–such as focusing on the breath–do not have the end goal of clearing the mind or getting really good at noticing the breath. Rather, they are simply anchors that help us to see the rapid momentum of the mind as it repeatedly wanders away from the anchor. It’s good news to be aware of the activity of the mind!

Anything that we are aware of, we are not as stuck in. For example, if I notice I’m worrying about a project at work, I can just name what’s happening (“worrying about work project”) to no longer be stuck in the worry. Sometimes the worry then goes away, sometimes it doesn’t. What’s important is that I’m no longer stuck inside the worry bubble; rather, I’m observing from outside the worry bubble that there IS one.