Sincere practice and dispassionate detachment are the keys.
Notes on meditation in general.
The guided meditation offered by Swami V and other meditations offered at his website help me focus on the breath. Lately, this has been my primary objective when not practicing alongside Swami Vidyadhishananda or other external guidance. I am realizing my attachments go beyond physical gratification but that the mind is also attached to emotional experience, even when those feelings are producing heartache. We have the right to choose and we can choose to discard thoughts as they arise.
I have also discovered that, while we can only experience one thought at a time, a restless mind often bombards our stillness practice and gives the sensation of a whirlwind or storm of thoughts happening at once. As we calm the thoughts down we also recognize that there are some thoughts which are louder than others, some require effort to construct and some seem to take a form of autopilot. Some come with emotion and produce action while other thoughts are easy to discard.
The point being it is important to focus on the breath, where we can tone down the rate of oscillating thoughts to find even-mindedness in our day to day living. Gurunath has said we don't meditate, we concentrate and then meditation happens.
As said by Paramahansa Yogananda from GTWA Vol. 1 Chapter 2 Verse 38,
A basic principle of yoga is that practicing mental equilibrium neutralizes the effects of delusion. Without the involvement of the emotions of the dreamer reacting to the sensations and incidents of a dream, the dream loses its significance- and especially its hurtful effects. Similarly, the cosmic dream of life loses its delusive power to affect the yogi who with unruffled inner calmness and evenmindedness views the dream of life without emotional involvement.
