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After reading about meditation recently, I felt inspired and have been trying to meditate for 10 minutes every night before bed. I started this around a week ag

After reading about meditation recently, I felt inspired and have been trying to meditate for 10 minutes every night before bed. I started this around a week ago. In the last two days I have begun to wonder if I should find a good teacher. I find it _insanely_ hard to hold my focus for that ten minute period. However much I try, I often catch myself thinking about something else - without realising how I got onto that train of thought. I then try to steer my mind back. The other thing I noticed is that I don't know if I made any progress at all over the last week. I don't know if I am trying the right things or whether just sticking to this will some day bring about an improvement. This makes me feel that though no one can be _made_ to learn anything, a good teacher can definitely make one learn faster (and in some cases learn what one may otherwise be unable to figure out by oneself).

vidarh 13y ago
Stick with it. A week is nothing. And try this series of audio recordings which include short guided meditation periods: http://www.audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/ http://www.audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/ (Gil Fronsdal, Introduction to Meditation) They're a good secular introduction to mindfulness meditation. (Gil Fronsdal is a buddhist, but in this series he takes great care to avoid mixing the religious aspects with the meditation teaching, to the extent of jokingly referring to the "b-word") I've also mentioned "Mindfulness in Plain English" elsewhere: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html Both of them address the problems you mention. And actually they're not so much problems as your perception of them are - you get better by practising observing and guiding your attention back to your breath (or whatever other object of focus you choose), and you get that practice by constantly losing focus. Some people will experience it getting much worse after a while, even. After a few weeks I went through a period where I'd get really intense "monkey mind". That is, I'd sit down to meditate, and my mind would go completely crazy. All kinds of things would pop into my head, including totally ridiculous and pointless concerns, and concentration was impossible. Then I had a period where I'd get an intense feeling that I hadn't set my alarm (I was meditating before I had to leave for work, and this feeling indicated that I was running late, and needed to look at the watch immediately). If I looked at my watch, the feeling would still reassert itself a few minutes later. I had to look at my watch several times, and confirm and reconfirm that the alarm was set and the countdown running before I started meditating to weaken the feeling, and then still spent weeks overcoming the desire to look at my watch before it finally subsided. But it all passed, and while I don't meditate as often as I like to, it's gotten a lot easier with time. That is not to say it is easy, and as with pretty much everything else, you can always push further into more advanced practices. But you get to a stage where you feel that you are actually meditating rather than fighting off total chaos in your mind, and that makes it a lot easier to want to sit regularly. Note that I'm not saying you shouldn't find a teacher. By all means. But you can make a good start by yourself, and you can find a lot of good (and free) guidance online as a starting point.
- bloodorange 13y ago
  Thank you! I feel encouraged to persevere.

vidarh 13y ago

Stick with it. A week is nothing. And try this series of audio recordings which include short guided meditation periods: http://www.audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/ http://www.audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/ (Gil Fronsdal, Introduction to Meditation) They're a good secular introduction to mindfulness meditation. (Gil Fronsdal is a buddhist, but in this series he takes great care to avoid mixing the religious aspects with the meditation teaching, to the extent of jokingly referring to the "b-word") I've also mentioned "Mindfulness in Plain English" elsewhere: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html Both of them address the problems you mention. And actually they're not so much problems as your perception of them are - you get better by practising observing and guiding your attention back to your breath (or whatever other object of focus you choose), and you get that practice by constantly losing focus. Some people will experience it getting much worse after a while, even. After a few weeks I went through a period where I'd get really intense "monkey mind". That is, I'd sit down to meditate, and my mind would go completely crazy. All kinds of things would pop into my head, including totally ridiculous and pointless concerns, and concentration was impossible. Then I had a period where I'd get an intense feeling that I hadn't set my alarm (I was meditating before I had to leave for work, and this feeling indicated that I was running late, and needed to look at the watch immediately). If I looked at my watch, the feeling would still reassert itself a few minutes later. I had to look at my watch several times, and confirm and reconfirm that the alarm was set and the countdown running before I started meditating to weaken the feeling, and then still spent weeks overcoming the desire to look at my watch before it finally subsided. But it all passed, and while I don't meditate as often as I like to, it's gotten a lot easier with time. That is not to say it is easy, and as with pretty much everything else, you can always push further into more advanced practices. But you get to a stage where you feel that you are actually meditating rather than fighting off total chaos in your mind, and that makes it a lot easier to want to sit regularly. Note that I'm not saying you shouldn't find a teacher. By all means. But you can make a good start by yourself, and you can find a lot of good (and free) guidance online as a starting point.

bloodorange 13y ago
Thank you! I feel encouraged to persevere.