Recently, a good friend of mine (over forty) decided to ask her boss for a raise. She worked for several years as an artist-designer in her company and deserved a salary increase for a long time, but she was overcome by doubts. Every day, when she went to work, she was tormented by doubts and worries.
Over and over again, she went through the upcoming conversation with her boss, remembering all her merits - successful projects, advertising design and brochures. Sometimes in her imagination, she managed to convince her supervisor of the need to raise her salary, and sometimes she thought that if she talked about it, she would be inevitably fired. Listening to her conflicting inner voices, she experienced strong emotions ranging from arouse spirits and self-confidence to attacks of fear and doubt.
Sometimes a voice (suspiciously similar to her father's) whispered to her that it was pointless for a gift-giver like her to count on a raise to her salary - let her thank you for not having been kicked out yet. After that, my friend felt hopeless.
Sometimes another voice would suddenly start to sound in her mind - an angry, vindictive voice, saying that her boss was an ungrateful despot, and that it was time for her to finally tell him everything she thought. And sometimes a confident, calm voice reminded her of how much she had done for her company, what a valuable employee and a wonderful person she was. Finally, a voice very similar to her mother's, advised her not to be fervent, to remain calm and to thank God for what she had and for the trials he was sending her.
For about a week, a friend of mine did not eat or sleep, consumed by fierce inner struggle and anxiety, and then made an appointment to see her boss. Overwhelmed by her emotions, she walked into his office and immediately received a raise to her wages, and received much more than she expected! It turned out that all the emotions and doubts that exhausted her completely during the unfortunate week had nothing to do with what really happened.
Has this never happened to you? Like my friend, and even me, you probably spend a lot of time thinking about the fascinating, but completely unrealistic scenarios created in your own "dream factory", i.e. in your head.
As soon as you think about your future - how to earn more money, how to organize a summer vacation, how to impress loved ones, than to surprise children - you immediately capture the dreams and experiences, and behind them hopes and fears. Immediately the memories of the past come into play - why I didn't say then, why I didn't take the job, why I didn't take the job - and you are sorry for the missed opportunities and the mistakes I made.
Like a friend of mine, you may have noticed that you are practically incapable of controlling the anxieties, fantasies, and obsessions generated by your restless consciousness. Instead of being the ruler of your own thoughts and feelings, you are often held captive by them - they dominate you!
What the meditator thinks and feels
If you're worried that meditation will make you lose the ability to think and feel, here are some useful comparisons from one of my teachers, Gina Klein.
Ginu emphasizes the difference between conventional and creative thinking; between functional thinking and psychological memory; between emotion and emotion. (Although Gene Klein preaches a direct approach to spiritual truth through self-knowledge rather than meditation, I have taken the liberty of drawing upon his findings, as I believe these findings have a direct bearing on meditation practice.)
The difference between conventional and creative thinking. When your consciousness is engaged in grinding an infinite sequence of thoughts clinging one after another like train carriages, you fall into a trap of the thought process, and in your consciousness, there is no place for fresh, original ideas, capable to bring the decision of problems which worry you. But when your consciousness is completely open and, as Jean Klein puts it, is not filled with furniture, there appears a free space in which creative ideas can arise, rising like bubbles of air from their source in pure being. Unlike ordinary thoughts, creative ideas are fully relevant to your current situation.