Everyone enjoys space invaders: having to shoot down an unending sequence of little menaces. Each shot successfully eliminates the little menaces, but more appear.
Note that the new ones appearing are further examples, instantiations, of the 'archetypical' space invader. The previous ones were indeed destroyed. As will these be. They're not the same one coming back, refusing to die, to be destroyed. They're all as powerless as each other. It's just that there are a lot of them.
So with thinking. The job is to shoot down any unnecesssary or undesirable thought, by dismissing it and returning to the task at hand, to the moment, or to eternity, as befits the situation.
When the thoughts keep coming, it's not that you're losing a battle against a powerful foe. It's that you're winning but the foe is continuing to shoot pellets. Each thought can be successfully turned away from. Once you turn away from it, that thought has gone forever. Another identically formed one may appear, but it's not the old thought come back; it's a new thought. And it can be dismissed just like the old one. It has no more power than the previous one that was successfully turned away from.
Some people say that they cannot turn away from a thought. That's simply untrue.
Let's test this out.
What is eight times seven?
What is the capital of Ukraine?
What did you have for dinner last night?
As you were considering the answers to those questions, you were successfully not thinking about literally every other think you could have been thinking about and specifically not thinking about what you were thinking about in the moment immediately preceding the consideration of the above questions.
You might even have been interrupted, but note that: you were successfully thinking about those questions; if you had not been, interruption would not have been possible.
It's very easy to dismiss thoughts by substituting other thoughts. If space invaders is fun, this can be fun too.
Why does it appear to be difficult?
Merely because of a secret desire to think those incoming thoughts.
They're a temptation. Pain and suffering, resentment, fear, guilt, shame, condemnation, jealousy, and envy are delightfully enjoyable. People watch films full of these and pay good money to do so. They're the drug. Sure, the side effects are rough, but who cares about those? We want the fix. These thoughts are the antidote to the imagined emptiness left when all there is is the task at hand, the moment, and an unimaginable eternity.
Once the desire has been disavowed, and the decision has been made to live life free of these, the game is simplified. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. Get on with the day. Shoot. Get on with the day. Eventually the space invaders stop coming.
