Guided meditations can settle an active mind, wake up a drowsy mind, or entertain a bored mind. They are fun and a variety of teachers present different styles: sleep, breath, mountain, inner critic, body scan and others.
A while ago, I realized I had been meditating almost exclusively to guidance. The mind had come to rely on the effort of the guiding teacher to become steady and concentrated. So I stopped using guidance for my longer morning meditation sitting. What I noticed was really interesting.
Without the voice prompts, I saw the mind flooding with planning activity. During one recent sitting, I mapped out my travel plans for 2019 down to airport connections and ground transportation. The 45 minutes were over in no time. Problem was none of the plans were of any use when scrutinized later in the day. Yesterday, my mind played a thought loop over and over to solve a challenge at work. I was aware that this was happening and returned to watch the breath multiple times but somehow this thought loop insisted on interrupting the focus on my breath. It wasn’t even a useful solution but somehow the mind was trying to convince me that if I just thought this same thought one more time, it would become the solution.
The meditation teachers say this is normal and the most important part is the noticing and returning to the breath over and over again. That’s the practice.