Here is an advice on how to deal with thoughts during meditation and work towards experiencing emptiness with consistent efforts. For example If your friend keep talking to you and if you are not interested to talk to him/her due to some other work then what would you do?
You would say I have some personal work, don’t mind can we talk later? If your friend still not listening to you then you will not concentrate much on him/her..your actions will make him/her understand that you are not interested to talk anymore. He/She will think to re-visit some other time and walk away voluntarily for the time-being.
When you don’t give importance to someone then automatically the other person feel ignored and can’t influence your mind, you are not behaving rudely, politely you are trying to communicate to your friend that it’s not the time to discuss, it is just that you are ignoring them for time-being.
Apply the same above style of communication to thoughts during meditation. Counsel your thoughts. Please explain to your thought the reality of its destination and make it weak.
Treat them like an external visitor. Say this “I understand you were born and growing up in my memory, but I am really not interested to see you now or discuss with you, Either you are going to die or change one-day in my mind along with time. At least for time-being I don’t want to show any interest on anything which is not permanent”. Instead I am trying to reach the source of you ( source of thoughts) through which you born. I am trying to reach the source of ‘I’ by asking Who Am I and where it is. Repeat the same explanation if required to make them move away for time-being from your mind during meditation.
Consistently by counseling your thoughts as above will make them weak, thoughts will lose it’s strength, and very soon after couple of weeks of practice thoughts will feel they are not important anymore during meditation to pop up, eventually the mind will understand what you want and it will make you very receptive to experience emptiness soon.
Happy Meditation.