Hello everyone, this is my first post.

I've realized that I have constant background music in my head, that sometimes keeps me happy but sometimes is terribly annoying, specially if I try to meditate, I don't know what to do with it. I just started in the Mahasi Style, so I guess I could note "music, music", but that is going to keep me busy for the rest of the meditation time

Do any of you have any suggestions? My levels of concentration seem to be fairly good (when studying and paying attention) but for a very short period of time.

Thanks, and have a very good Christmas,

Alba

I don't have music in specific, but my level of mental noise is pretty high. Concentration meditation should help with this. Read B. Alan Wallace's "The attention revolution".

I would recommend the Kasina thread over that book when it comes to concentration meditation.

To your question: When songs get annoying, I imagine two vibrations, one with the in-breath, and the other one with the outbreath, pitched a major second lower than the first . You don't need to add a mantra on top, but you can; I use so-ham. You can try different intervals, but a major second works fine for me. And as soon as I lose concentration, it'll get annoying again, so a good feedback. When i am alone, I chant it a few times. Also your song may come back ... so if nothing works, you can at least focus on suffering. Maybe that should be the first recommendation if you value insight over relief; I'll try it myself next time.

edit: a preventive measure I found useful is starting the day with a good song (sing it, listen to it, whatever) that sets you in a good mood. Take the same song for months. I used songs from Taizé.

and check out this thread, it's about meditation with music as the object, created by someone who had the same problem as you have.
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/100737

Hi Alba,

I myself suffer from a combination of Tinnitus and musical ear syndrome. I find that when I observe the breath at the nostrils, I become overly conscious of the music, hence I changed my meditation object. It may help you to change to the rising and falling of the abdomen , as then the mind would be focused away from the head.When I tried focusing on the sounds, I found it got louder, so I began to just ignore the sounds.There have been instances where the mind gets concentrated, and then I hardly notice the sounds.

Hope this helps.

Natasha

I'm not a meditation teacher, but I wanted to answer the question just for the sake of my own learning. Kinda like I'm answering it to myself. If it helps you too though, that's cool.

As far as I understand Vipassana, the point isn't "what to do with it." The point is not to do anything with it. Just observe it. The nature of the mind is that things arise "in your head" and then pass away. Music comes, music goes. Thoughts come, thoughts go. You just observe and let the Dhamma do the rest.

So, I think you're on the right track. Note the music. When you get happy, note happy. When you get annoyed, note annoyed. When you get impatient, or bored, or whatever - note that. If it keeps you busy, at least you will be busy noting thoroughly - and that's what you're supposed to be doing anyway.

In my experience, however, if I note something like music vigilantly, attentively, precisely, patiently, calmly, quietly, equanimously... the music can't stay more than a few minutes at most. And, in those few minutes, every moment there is change. Notice the change. Notice that it's not "your" music, there's no "me" singing, there's no "me" that's happy or annoyed. It's ALL just arising and passing phenomenon.

enjoy yourself

- Daniel

music, music, music, music, thinking, rising, falling, music, seeing, music, rising, rising, falling, music, etc.

Any object is a valid object for insight practices. All demonstrate the Three Characteristics.

I tend to have a lot of songs go through my head: never slowed down my practice as I understood they were just part of this fluxing field of stuff.

Thanks for all the responses. I have tried to note it as music and then go back to rising and falling, but soon it starts to be mechanical and my mind starts wandering somewhere else (not music). I will keep working on it and hopefully it will be a matter of time.

thanks again,

Alba

Alba,

When I saw this thread, I thought "that's me! That's what I get!".

For me the songs seem to be constant all day and all night - but i guess my work is to realise they come and go. I'd say the looping songs are in the pre-conscious part of my mind, since I have to listen into it before I'm aware of it. Often it's just the last thing I heard on tv, radio, but sometimes the lyrics point to something troubling to me at the time and I guess my subconscious is wrestling with it. The looping over and over and over and over and over means my mind doesn't get much rest.

Before I really started properly looking into what meditation is, I used to just try to willfully FORCE my mind to stop. Any little thought appeared I'd kill it as quickly as I could. One day I did this for a few hours whilst playing a round of golf. I played better than I ever have before, and then about 5 hours later, a horrible aching came over me. It was so severe that I couldn't lie still in bed. There was also a coldness that two doonas and 3 blankets couldn't warm up - I remember the bedding was so heavy! I'd get into the hot shower every half hour all through the night just for some relief. It left me incredibly washed out the next day. No virus, no cold symptoms, none of that. I have done the same on one other occasion with similar results and since I never saw any benefit to all the suffering I'm not going there again.

I actually wonder if the constant songs are somehow protective or adaptive in nature, because if you switch it off, you just get huge amounts of pain (it did for me anyway). Slowing the mind down doesn't seem to be the right thing for people with depression - in fact some will say it's absolutely contraindicated. But I guess it depends on the type and severity. Bruno says it cured his depression, which I believe.

One thing I did find helpful is sitting in one of those vibrating lounge chairs. Ever seen them? Huge things with vibrating parts here there and everywhere! If I sit in one of those, run it for 10 minutes then stop it, all the music has gone and I just have some nice stillness to enjoy and perhaps work with. Someone will probably tell me that's the wrong thing to do, but it definitely works, and quickly.

Any one tried this?

CCC, I did not end my depression by slowing the mind down, I ended it through doing insight practice all the way to stream-entry. During insight retreats the mind, quite far from slowing down, becomes very very powerful and intense. As is explained in the book I recommended earlier in the thread, there are two ways to bring the mind to silence. One way is to cause "mental tension" that doesn't let the thoughts "pass through." We can all do this, it is very easy and fast. If done for a prolonged period of time, it will cause tremendous amounts of stress and fatigue, as you have been able to verify.

From my understanding of the literature, silencing the mind is not done by suppressing thoughts, is done by purifying the mind in the places where thoughts are created, until they no longer occur. This is done by being aware of thoughts as they occur until they can be seen arising very close to the place where thought arise from. This awareness should eventually work to clear the impurity. A silenced mind is not a slow mind, in fact we could argue that it works faster than a noisy mind, at least it certainly works better. While it might subjectively be described by saying, among other things, that the torrent of thoughts slowed down, that doesn't mean that the cognitive faculties themselves slowed down.

Since stream-entry my mental chatter has diminished, but far from completely. My depression did go away.

That vibrating chair trick sounds cool, I'll try it out when I get the chance :-)

Also kasina meditation might be an interesting thing to try.

Thanks for that Bruno. Yes I was creating mental tension to stop the thoughts, and I can see that's quite different to what you did. I'll check out those refs.

One thing you can do is try turning down the volume. I know, sounds stupid - but I have used this at times. Imagine that there is a volume control and then mentally (of course) slowly turn down the volume while paying close attention to how the volume actually goes down. See how long you can notice this change. One thing you might notice when doing this is that the background subtle hissing or ringing sound might become more prominent (as the volume goes down). As this is usually a pleasant sound, you can just allow it to be there mixed-up with the sound of the song.

I have used a similar technique for troublesome thoughts: Ask yourself 'What would my experience be like if my mind was calm?' and then pay close attention to what happens and see how long you can be aware of it.

I call these 'stupid mind tricks'. Though it may sound like a violation of the noting practice, I submit that it is not. If you are noting through walking, eating, going to the restroom, etc. then you are already making decisions outside of pure noting regarding what you are doing.

-Chuck

That sounds to me a lot like NLP! And if I remember correctly what you are doing there is playing with the 'submodalities' of your experience, just like you would change a visualised image from your head from color to black and white so that it has less effect on you (this could be used for a bad memory, etc.)

Alba, how is it going, have you been practicing a lot lately? do you still have free music in your head? It's been a while since you first asked :-)

Other thing is, you may not want to get rid of it, just make sure you play good happy tunes so that you have fun. Or match the song to the mood you want to be in

It's been a long time since I looked at NLP and didn't have that in mind when I made my post - but I looked up 'submodalities' and I think you are right!

Here are a few approaches I had with varying degrees of success

1. deal with the annoyance - using the annoyance as an object of meditation

2. use the song worm as an object of meditation. See if you can observe it clearly and see it's illusory nature. Usually the attention itself gives you a measure of concentration to overcome it.

A few ways I've tried:
-Look up the song on the internet and dance or sing out loud to it, really enjoy it and be with it.
-play with the volume, turning it up or down
-let it rest in the background as the rising and falling of the abdomen moves into the foreground
-play with the annoyance, as suggested, and let that be the foreground
-chop it off, simply saying, "enough!" sometimes works
-drink more water
-humbly ask that it be removed
-notice any rigidity in posture or internal stance
-listen in between the notes of the song, or the words
-note this as "hearing", then move on to other sensations as they arise at the moment of the arising
-when there is a certain phrase in the song, tune into it closely and watch that particular song fragment pass away, does it pass away on your left side or right side, investigate this closely

my best to you, Constance

Just deleted my last post on this thread because last night I realised the constant music is a way of avoiding painful feelings - the mind's way of saying "lalalalala.... I can't hear you...lalalalala".

I'm only very new to meditating, but whenever I am 'successful' at it, I feel worse, a lot worse. Sometimes feelings of dread and death come up, sometimes horrible loneliness and sadness. But these only come up when the music has been successfully stopped.

What used to happen is that when these feelings came up, my mind would switch straight into aversion mode, for obvious reasons - they are overwhelmingly bad feelings. Thanks to this forum and a few of my pile of meditation books, I now can interrupt the automatic aversion mode and watch the painful emotion *as a sensation in the body*.

It can be ~fascinating~ to try and find out what emotions are made of. There are mental and physical components, and investigating the physical components can be a great tool for disengaging from the story/content behind them. The mental components will probably not be too easy to observe during the dark night, but they will be ripe ground for exploration later in equanimity where they are not only less compelling and entangling, but they're also just plain easier to see because of the panoramic attention. So good on you for investigating the physical components of emotional reactions right now!

Do realize however that you don't HAVE to watch them all the time. They can be fascinating (what are the physical sensations associated with fascination?) but you can also switch to the breath if you're starting to burn out.

Forgive me,

but have you tried taking your head phones off !