Member-only story

You Can’t Turn Off Your Brain

You can, however, change your mind.

Murray "MJ" Blehart
5 min readJul 8, 2024
Button marked “emergency engine stop push”. You can’t turn off your brain
Photo by Matt Walsh on Unsplash

One of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to meditation is that you need to turn off your brain. Quiet the mind, silence the chatter, and so on.

This is, of course, almost impossible to do. Sure, you can get some peace and solitude of mind for a time. But you can’t turn off your brain.

The meditation that I practice is mindfulness meditation. I know, as such, that my brain is going to be active. The idea is to accept this, and not deny the thoughts that come. Rather, what you do is see them, acknowledge them, but then release them, rather than examining them or holding onto them.

Hence, when a thought comes in, I see it, acknowledge it, and then release it, usually with a breath out. Then, I breathe in peace and calm. That’s meditation.

But what about other times when you’d like to escape the endless chatter, the thoughts, the constant flood of data? You can’t turn off your brain.

You can, however, change your mind.

How to change your mind

You are always empowered to change your mind. How? Via active conscious awareness.

Yes, that means mindfulness.

--

--

Murray "MJ" Blehart
Murray "MJ" Blehart

Written by Murray "MJ" Blehart

I explore mindfulness, positivity, philosophy, & conscious reality creation. I love to help & inspire. Also, I write sci-fi/fantasy. http://mjblehart.com

No responses yet