I had a really hard time trying to do mindfulness last night. It took me a good 30 minutes to even get into my first proper breath that I could focus on. This is unusual for me. At this point I’ve been a pretty decent meditator for about 1.5 years.
What was it? Procrastination. Why? Falling asleep and meditating is effort. It takes effort to not go down 10 million rabbit holes. Saying no is more difficult than it may initially seem. However, it is completely necessary. Focus is the mother of execution. The only way to execute is by focusing on one thing at a time. It’s unitasking. Even if it seems like you are multitasking: you are only ever doing one thing at any given time – just switching more often than you think. Multitasking is a form of hiding: if you fail, you had “so much going on.” Whereas if you are working on just one thing – you can’t really run and hide from it, it is staring you in the face.
The other thing that mindfulness teaches you is that it’s not how many times you fail, it’s all about getting back up on your feet. It doesn’t matter how many times your mind wanders. Every single time you bring it back – you got back up on your feet. The neural pathway that is responsible for bringing you back has just gotten that little bit stronger. It’s like a biceps curl for your focusing muscles.
Does it only do focus? No. It also gives breadth somehow. There’s a technique called noting. So when a memory comes in: you say memory. A plan, an idea, a fantasy, an itch, a dart of pain, a noise and so on. Identifying things helps to deal with them.
Once I was able to get past the initial wall of procrastination and actually went and did it, straight away – I got an amazing reward. I saw the sky as cloudy and then my mind just shifted to the other side of the clouds – where is was sunny and still. Maybe this was just a really small hypnagogic hallucination, but it gave me an insight. Cognitively, it is such an obvious thing: we all know that things have different meanings depending on what side you look at them. To really feel it, to really internalise the meaning of this is something much deeper.
A millennial's musings 
Where is a good place to start? I’ve tried reading books about meditating and they all seem to require so much attention to how you cross your legs, or hold your hands, etc.
I hate superfluous details. They get in my way of getting to the nuts and bolts of how to actually do what I want to do – meditate. I can never get past the BS pages to learn how to condition my mind to meditate.
Does it really take all the positioning and chanting, etc. just get your mind to empty itself of the daily routines and life’s interferences? I picked up a Time magazine last week about mindfulness and can’t even bring myself to even read it in fear that I’m going to have try to tech my old bones to do young bones tricks 🙂
LikeLike
I wouldn’t start with books. Learn by doing! The detail will come later (and in short, no, it doesn’t really matter as much as most places say. There are many ways to skin a cat.) https://thinkingclearly.co/2016/12/17/best-guided-meditations-for-beginners/
LikeLike