A Marvelous Blankness of Mind

Do you meditate? I do, somewhat. I have, off and on for thirty years. If you are wondering whyfore, look at the most recent research. Longterm meditators enjoy less stress and better health. Also their brains became physically different from non-meditators.
You have possibly heard that the idea of meditating is to empty the mind. You may scoff and you are right to do so. It is obviously impossible to empty the mind, an information processing machine that can be equated to the Mississippi river, in terms of how much goes on.
Take for example Joe and Mike, the two guys in charge of monitoring the heart beat. All they do is check to see that the heart is beating at the correct rate for the circumstances. Joe sits in front of about a hundred guages; external temperature, oxygen level of the blood, pretty girl walking by, police car behind you, on and on. Mike operates the control lever that speeds-up or slows-down the heart. They are constantly shouting to each other. They are shouting because of all the noise in the brain. Gaggles of socialites whining and groaning and wringing their hands, worried about what other people think. Neural pathway construction guys hollering: "what was that measurement? What?". The serotonin hawker with a bullhorn:"Get your feel-good here, folks. Come and get it." In the background of all that, the unmistakeable voice of God:"You are going to hell!" Booming and damning. So, obviously, no way to still all that.
What to do?
We should be learning to not identify with the fracass in our heads. Get some distance, a lot like the listening block a husband develops to the nagging wife.
If you want to realy quieten the mind, become a writer. Even though the mind is full of ideas, endless dialoge and witty observations, when you sit down to get some of that brilliance onto paper, you may achieve a marvelous blankness of mind. It is called Writers' Block.