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I started meditating about 2 years ago because I liked the idea of having better 'control of my mind' - at the time I thought it was a gimmick but to my surpris

I started meditating about 2 years ago because I liked the idea of having better 'control of my mind' - at the time I thought it was a gimmick but to my surprise it actually works. To begin with I found that after 20-30mins of closing my eyes and trying to think of nothing, I always came out of the session feeling a lot calmer. Fast forward to today and I can now isolate thoughts and throw them away if they are garbage, which I'm not gonna lie is a pretty useful tool to have. The brain has a tendency to replay bad memories over and over again (recent embarrassing social situations, or even random events from years ago can suddenly pop up) and they can affect how you go about your day to day when you overthink them - you get overly nervous about a presentation you have to do later for example. But now I can stop the thought in it's tracks and just 'let it go', returning my attention to my work. Because you calm and slow your mind in meditation you are able to separate out how thoughts are formed and observe how they change your mood and how they make you react, which gives you more power over them in daily life.

amelius 11y ago
Very interesting. What timespan did you need to start seeing good results? Are you still improving after 2 years?
- hacker_9 11y ago
  Not very long at all. You'll notice a positive feeling even after your first session. I have a lot of room to improve but there really is no end. Really you just learn more about yourself and how fast your brain is always working as it jumps between memories. You see how it focuses, and observe how certain thoughts drift in and set off a cascade of reactions and so on.
- hosh 11y ago
  @amelius It's been in my experience "results" vary widely with a lot of people. Part of the reason is that calmness is not the ultimate aim of meditation, but rather, a side-effect. For some people, the practice of meditation will quickly surface up a lot of anxiety and existential issues. It won't feel calm at all. Having been lured into thinking calmness is the end-goal, meditation is written off as "not working", when in fact in this case, it worked all too well. Just some food for thought. I had written quite a bit more on different threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156240
  - willhinsa 11y ago
    Thank you so much for your writing on this issue. I second others' motion that you should write a book, but until you do, what book would you recommend for someone who wants to get started?
    - hosh 11y ago
      I usually give out book recommendations based on the person's interest. So I'll give my best shot for making a generic recommendation. The first thing to understand is that books on meditation are not going to help you all that much. This is not something you try to understand intellectually. It is experiential. You are much better off attempting to practice. If you need help with practice, there are various groups and flavors of mindfulness meditation: vipassana, zen, insight, etc. There's going to be a flavor, and a group of people with whom it will feel right. Barring that, hacker_9's suggestion of the Meditation sub-reddit is not bad. My suggestion though is to ignore the people talking about theory -- practice, find people who practice, and allow the issues and observations to surface up from there. It's a kind of empirical inquiry into yourself where you drive the discussion through your observations, rather than the other way around. Now having said that, the most generic book on helping you practice meditation that I recommend is Mindfulness in Plain English. You can find this for free online. I have also heard about Calm and Headspace apps and knew people who tried it. They are probably not a bad way to start -- though like all things, it comes and goes, and there will come a time to drop it and move on. Traditional Buddhist teachings don't necessarily get into the psychological aspects of it. Or let me be more precise: the psychological descriptions don't seem to resonate well with Westerners, and is typically dismissed as part of empty ceremonies, or pre-modern descriptions of psychology. (For example: what does the Padme Family or the element of Air have anything to do with your day-to-day life?) So a meditation practice can be paired with therapy, and will work very well if the therapist also practices. That leads to the other book I would recommend, since people are interested in healing their neurotic patterns. There is a great book whose technique complements mindfulness meditation: Tsultrim Allione's "Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict". This book distilled out an older practice in a way that combines with gestalt therapy and presented in a way that is much more accessible for people who grew up in the West. Like the tradition it comes from, although the full method uses visualization methods, it ends with mindfulness meditation. Along with a regular practice of meditation, it's a great way to deliberately gain some insight into your subconscious. Hope that helps.
thornofmight 11y ago
How often were you meditating and how long on average was each session?
- hacker_9 11y ago
  Twice a day, morning and evening for 30 mins. I go on for an hour sometimes too. Once you get the hang of it though it is much easier to get into deeper meditation quicker. Thesedays I do 30 mins before sleep every other day. I know if I need to do more when I start feeling anxious more often in the day. Check out reddit.com/r/meditation for a place to start.
  - thornofmight 11y ago
    Thanks!
chrismealy 11y ago
You can really nix unhappy thoughts? How can I do this too?
- hacker_9 11y ago
  This stuff is hard to explain textually as it's more about feelings you have, but if I were to try.. during meditation bad memories will enter your focus and set off a cascade of negative reactions. But the deeper into the meditation you are the harder it is to shake your focus. Instead you end up observing these patterns of thoughts and how they evoke one another. Your let them have their moment in the sun and then they fade into the background as they failed to provoke you. Some stuff I've read suggests that the brain also may rewire these memories to permanently have less of an emotional impact. After many sessions you literally have to go out of your way to bring these memories back up!
  - hosh 11y ago
    @hacker_9 there are various "acceleration" techniques to help surface things up faster.
    - hosh 11y ago
      @lostinbass I'm not sure why your two comments were marked [dead]. If you're curious about the acceleration techniques, feel free to email me. You might know some of them already.
- hosh 11y ago
  It's not really about nixing unhappy thoughts. A lot of people misunderstand that as the purpose of meditation. It's possible to get into bliss states through some form of concentration exercises, and among my friends, we call them bliss junkies. Rather, it's the avoidance of unhappy emotions and thoughts that create distortions, leading to neurotic emotional and mental patterns. These emotions and thoughts will arise on their own regardless of how you try to suppress them (and often times, suppressing them will make them grow stronger). The basic practice is very simple at it's core: what arises will arises, what passes will pass. So when it arises, you allow it to arise -- and remain aware. When it passes, you let it go -- and remain aware. As things that have normally been suppressed start surfacing up, it's as if you are "sweating out" these toxic thoughts. It will get worse before it gets better. It goes deeper than that, since detoxifying isn't the ultimate aim either. It's the direct experience that what you think of as "self" is really an illusion. It's only after that, that things start get really interesting.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
I don't remember how I started with meditation, but it was working in data entry that prepared me for it. Figuring out how to speed up my typing led me to the realization of how the mind is just layers of processes, and how training through repetition is just a matter of setting up a cue/response behavior in sub-conscious processes. Which can be physical (training to hit a baseball or ride a bike) but can just as easily be mental (training to become calm on cue).

amelius 11y ago

Very interesting. What timespan did you need to start seeing good results? Are you still improving after 2 years?

hacker_9 11y ago
Not very long at all. You'll notice a positive feeling even after your first session. I have a lot of room to improve but there really is no end. Really you just learn more about yourself and how fast your brain is always working as it jumps between memories. You see how it focuses, and observe how certain thoughts drift in and set off a cascade of reactions and so on.
hosh 11y ago
@amelius It's been in my experience "results" vary widely with a lot of people. Part of the reason is that calmness is not the ultimate aim of meditation, but rather, a side-effect. For some people, the practice of meditation will quickly surface up a lot of anxiety and existential issues. It won't feel calm at all. Having been lured into thinking calmness is the end-goal, meditation is written off as "not working", when in fact in this case, it worked all too well. Just some food for thought. I had written quite a bit more on different threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156240
- willhinsa 11y ago
  Thank you so much for your writing on this issue. I second others' motion that you should write a book, but until you do, what book would you recommend for someone who wants to get started?
  - hosh 11y ago
    I usually give out book recommendations based on the person's interest. So I'll give my best shot for making a generic recommendation. The first thing to understand is that books on meditation are not going to help you all that much. This is not something you try to understand intellectually. It is experiential. You are much better off attempting to practice. If you need help with practice, there are various groups and flavors of mindfulness meditation: vipassana, zen, insight, etc. There's going to be a flavor, and a group of people with whom it will feel right. Barring that, hacker_9's suggestion of the Meditation sub-reddit is not bad. My suggestion though is to ignore the people talking about theory -- practice, find people who practice, and allow the issues and observations to surface up from there. It's a kind of empirical inquiry into yourself where you drive the discussion through your observations, rather than the other way around. Now having said that, the most generic book on helping you practice meditation that I recommend is Mindfulness in Plain English. You can find this for free online. I have also heard about Calm and Headspace apps and knew people who tried it. They are probably not a bad way to start -- though like all things, it comes and goes, and there will come a time to drop it and move on. Traditional Buddhist teachings don't necessarily get into the psychological aspects of it. Or let me be more precise: the psychological descriptions don't seem to resonate well with Westerners, and is typically dismissed as part of empty ceremonies, or pre-modern descriptions of psychology. (For example: what does the Padme Family or the element of Air have anything to do with your day-to-day life?) So a meditation practice can be paired with therapy, and will work very well if the therapist also practices. That leads to the other book I would recommend, since people are interested in healing their neurotic patterns. There is a great book whose technique complements mindfulness meditation: Tsultrim Allione's "Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict". This book distilled out an older practice in a way that combines with gestalt therapy and presented in a way that is much more accessible for people who grew up in the West. Like the tradition it comes from, although the full method uses visualization methods, it ends with mindfulness meditation. Along with a regular practice of meditation, it's a great way to deliberately gain some insight into your subconscious. Hope that helps.

thornofmight 11y ago

How often were you meditating and how long on average was each session?

hacker_9 11y ago
Twice a day, morning and evening for 30 mins. I go on for an hour sometimes too. Once you get the hang of it though it is much easier to get into deeper meditation quicker. Thesedays I do 30 mins before sleep every other day. I know if I need to do more when I start feeling anxious more often in the day. Check out reddit.com/r/meditation for a place to start.
- thornofmight 11y ago
  Thanks!

chrismealy 11y ago

You can really nix unhappy thoughts? How can I do this too?

hacker_9 11y ago
This stuff is hard to explain textually as it's more about feelings you have, but if I were to try.. during meditation bad memories will enter your focus and set off a cascade of negative reactions. But the deeper into the meditation you are the harder it is to shake your focus. Instead you end up observing these patterns of thoughts and how they evoke one another. Your let them have their moment in the sun and then they fade into the background as they failed to provoke you. Some stuff I've read suggests that the brain also may rewire these memories to permanently have less of an emotional impact. After many sessions you literally have to go out of your way to bring these memories back up!
- hosh 11y ago
  @hacker_9 there are various "acceleration" techniques to help surface things up faster.
  - hosh 11y ago
    @lostinbass I'm not sure why your two comments were marked [dead]. If you're curious about the acceleration techniques, feel free to email me. You might know some of them already.
hosh 11y ago
It's not really about nixing unhappy thoughts. A lot of people misunderstand that as the purpose of meditation. It's possible to get into bliss states through some form of concentration exercises, and among my friends, we call them bliss junkies. Rather, it's the avoidance of unhappy emotions and thoughts that create distortions, leading to neurotic emotional and mental patterns. These emotions and thoughts will arise on their own regardless of how you try to suppress them (and often times, suppressing them will make them grow stronger). The basic practice is very simple at it's core: what arises will arises, what passes will pass. So when it arises, you allow it to arise -- and remain aware. When it passes, you let it go -- and remain aware. As things that have normally been suppressed start surfacing up, it's as if you are "sweating out" these toxic thoughts. It will get worse before it gets better. It goes deeper than that, since detoxifying isn't the ultimate aim either. It's the direct experience that what you think of as "self" is really an illusion. It's only after that, that things start get really interesting.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

I don't remember how I started with meditation, but it was working in data entry that prepared me for it. Figuring out how to speed up my typing led me to the realization of how the mind is just layers of processes, and how training through repetition is just a matter of setting up a cue/response behavior in sub-conscious processes. Which can be physical (training to hit a baseball or ride a bike) but can just as easily be mental (training to become calm on cue).