Daniel

Keep in mind that thoughts and emotions are two sides of the same coin, and then notice what sorts of emotions are driving the mental activity. Be as aware in your body as you are in your mind, people often approach meditation as a purely mental activity which seems like a rather misguided, limited way of going about it, given that thought is only one half of the equation.

@Phil Love it.😂 I've just a mushroom biryani for dinner, too, funnily enough (very nice it was, too). @Rose I hadn't notice, no, though now you've said it I'll probably start seeing shrooms everywhere.😂

I remember Eckhart Tolle saying in 'The Power of Now' that at the root of sexual desire is the unconscious desire for union, wholeness, and when I pay close attention to my own sexual desires I've found this to be true. If you really want to truly understand, you'll have to do the same and become intimate with the visceral experience of sexual desire - notice what's going on physically, emotionally, mentally, energetically. It isn't something you're going to be able to figure out on a purely intellectual level. Not quite, around 10% of the population is homosexual.

Because you're resistant, maybe, and you don't really want to do it. Time always seems to drag when that's the case. If that's the case, bring attention to that resistance - feel the tightness and tension in the body, and allow it to release. Notice any other sensations and emotions that arise as you do this, and just keep allowing the body to breathe and relax.

@Someone here I completely get where you're coming from about not having interest in anything, I've been in that mindset myself many times. Maybe you just need to sit and ponder what's truly important to you, what your deepest desire is.

The first step to overcoming an issue is to become conscious of it, and you've done that - I know it can seem hugely frustrating when you do start to become aware of these sorts of issues, but it's actually a huge step in the right direction. On the subject of addiction specifically, I'm reminded of a quote by the spiritual teacher Amoda Maa Jeevan: Addictions are coping mechanisms, they're conditioned and often deeply-ingrained patterns of behaviour through which we're trying to avoid some unsettling or painful thought or feeling. So the next time you notice yourself slipping into an addictive pattern, ask yourself, what thought and/or feeling am I avoiding right now? Notice what's going on inside you at that moment, become intimate with your visceral experience, notice where you might be feeling tightness and tension, and let those parts relax and breathe. Maybe you notice the arising of certain emotions as you do this, which would be completely normal, so again, just notice, and allow.

I feel for you, these sorts of things can be so upsetting and there's no way of un-seeing them. I think the most useful thing you can do is to notice what sorts of feelings get triggered in you, and to relax and breathe into those feelings - you mentioned that you experience strong hate, can you feel any more vulnerable feelings underneath this? Emotions like hate are what's known as secondary or 'cover' emotions which tend to be covering up more painful emotions like grief and despair, and the human tendency is to get caught in the surface negativity when it's those deeper emotions that need to be felt.

Go to war with the mind and you'll be at war forever - and it's a war you can't win, it'll just wear you down. The problem is that you want to be having an experience other than the one you're currently having, and that's just a recipe for discontent; that's understandable, of course, it's just human to want to feel better, but that wanting just tends to make us suffer all the more. I struggled for years to meditate in an effective way, mostly because I was doing what you're doing and trying to silence the monkey mind, and the fruitlessness of this approach became especially apparent when I started to experience severe anxiety and depression; in the end, I found that the most useful approach was to shift attention from the mind to the body, and focus on simply allowing my body to relax and breathe. By practising in this simple way, the repressed emotions that were fuelling my chaotic mental activity gradually started to release, and I found that my monkey mind started to slow down all on its own, with no conscious intention on my part to do so. But I needed patience and discipline - lots and lots of it. And I needed a willingness to sit with the discomfort, to relax any resistance to it that was present in my body, which could be felt as tightness and tension. It was a very rocky journey in all honesty, I would start to feel worse before I started to feel better as all the repressed grief, anger, fear, etc., started to arise. But it was worth the effort, I feel so much better now.

Looking at my immediate family, either this is a highly questionable notion or I'm completely screwed.😳 Hoping to buggery it's the former.