Blog 259 – Using Meditation to Leave The Pit, Part 5 – 23 May 2025

In Blog 258 I talked about the purpose of listening to music as a means of enabling you to stop being trapped by the never ending river of thoughts racing through your brain.

If you want to get out of the pit of Depression, you must gain control over your own thoughts.  The river of chaotic thoughts must be brought under your own control – and I fully realise this is not easy.

Although the only vehicle in existence that has the power to help you escape the Pit is you, you definitely have all of the skills necessary to achieve your own great escape.  You have probably been told the exact opposite of this for most of your life, but you are a genuine champion – every human being is a champion.

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I will again repeat my purpose.

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

You are the only hero in the central position in your own life and you hold within yourself, the only key in the whole universe that will ever unlock your exit from the Pit.  Use it.

This is literal truth.

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The creatures who share this world with us are startlingly intelligent and without them, the world would be such a dismal place.  This magpie paid me a visit on 13 March 2011 when I was in Western Australia.

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This is what the Ceduna foreshore looked like at sunset on 1 March 2011.  I was travelling to Western Australia and stayed in Ceduna.

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This is a stretch of the South Australian section of the Nullabor Plain as on 4 March 2011.  Nullabor comes from two Latin words; “null” means zero and “abor” means tree.  The Nullabor Plain definitely has no trees.  I took this photo while the car was speeding down the highway.

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 Look carefully and you will see someone scaling this tree by using stakes that were put into the tree trunk in a spiral all the way up to the top.  This tree is located in Pemberton, Western Australia.  Fire watchers used to scale it and keep watch for bushfires.  The Pemberton Tree is so high that on cloudy days, it goes through the cloud cover.  I was half way up the Pemberton tree in 1975 when it started to rain heavily.  That was frightening because it was just as dangerous to try and get down as it was to keep going up.  I steeled my courage and kept going up through the rain clouds.

I took this photo on 7 March 2011 at Pemberton, Western Australia.

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The beach at Yalgorup National Park, Western Australia on 12 March 2011.  This was as populated as the beach ever got that day and of course it did look much better than shown in my photo.

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How should you go about meditating?

Until you are used to the process of meditating, try and find somewhere that is relaxing.

Sit in a chair, sit on the floor; sit at the top of the Pemberton Tree - sit anywhere you are comfortable.

Find yourself a comfortable place to sit.  I use a cane armchair, but if you are comfortable sitting cross legged – for me that is impossible – then try that until your body tells you it hurts too much.

It is not necessary to close your eyes, but I always do.  It is hard enough to get rid of the rubbish in your head without giving permission for additional rubbish to get inside you by having your eyes open. 

I have read books where experienced meditators have said it is not necessary to close your eyes when meditating.  I know this is factually true, but when you start something for the first time, any distraction can completely eliminate your ability to learn.  Let the genius meditators leave their eyes open.

I always close my eyes when meditating and I have been meditating since 2014 – 11 years as at today’s date.

Try not to meditate in a noisy place.  The noise will distract you.

I found that the more comfortable the environment, the better I was able to get rid of the river of thoughts.

Once I was relaxed and “starting” to meditate, I initially played a cd on a music player.  That did not really help much.  Because the music was coming from an outside source, I focused too much on listening to the music.

I discovered that if I listen to music through headphones, I am more successful in getting the music to fade into the background while I carefully tried to eliminate the distractions rolling around in my own mind.

Can you actually empty your brain of all thoughts?

Maybe meditation saints can do this.  I cannot eliminate all thoughts, but I can stop the great river of thoughts from continuing to be a river.  I am very happy if I can slow the river down to a slow moving stream.  You can definitely slow the river down.

Do not beat yourself up just because you are not able to achieve what you think might be perfection.

The major point of meditation is to enable us to accept ourselves just as we are.

A beautiful hearted so called “idiot” is a much more pleasant person to meet that a mean spirited “genius”.

I will tell you more tomorrow.