Meditation harder?

Need help learning how to Meditate? Know any tricks on how to achieve it? Post here!
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cairngorn
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I am not new to mediation, but I am new to making it a regular practice, which I've done for about four months now. It is a lot easier to hold communion with a spirit than working with normal mediation, I've found.

However, it's started to become almost a chore. A wandering mind was always a problem, but it's starting to bug me even more. Does anyone know anything that might help?


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cairngorn wrote: Sat May 22, 2021 2:18 pm I am not new to mediation, but I am new to making it a regular practice, which I've done for about four months now. It is a lot easier to hold communion with a spirit than working with normal mediation, I've found.

However, it's started to become almost a chore. A wandering mind was always a problem, but it's starting to bug me even more. Does anyone know anything that might help?
I'm not sure whether to say I do - or I don't.

But the wandering mind is as much a feature of meditation as sitting cross legged. By that I mean it's something just about everyone who has had a longstanding, regular meditation practice is very familiar with. In fact probably most Buddhist monks, for example, are used to dealing with this every time they sit down. And there are many thousands of them across the world.

Every major system of meditation teaches a way of dealing with this. If you're lucky, you may go for years without your thoughts bothering you much. But if you want to, you can take heart from the fact that top notch Tibetan monks actually go through a stage of their spiritual progress in which they confront their darkest mental and subconscious processes - literally confront their inner demons.

The 'beginner' level of paying no attention to our thoughts, or adopting a neutral attitude towards then, is also likely to be something that even your most enlightened highest level monks still need to do each time they sit down too...as long as they still have a mind that functions.

I always say follow the method taught in the system of meditation that you've learned.

I'm not a fan of mixing and matching bits from different systems. Any complete system will have recommendations for dealing with the wandering mind for anyone to make use of. But they can be subtly different and make the best sense as a part of an overall teaching...in my opinion.


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Does your mind have time to process during the day? I mean phases of calm and silence, where your thoughts and mind are allowed to wander. We rarely have phases like this nowadays, because we're always surrounded by something that (unconciously) stimulates us. Writing on bottles, advertisements along the streets, flickering lights, noise, our mind tries to constantly process all of it. When I started knitting I realized how my mind used that time to process a lot of stuff I usually don't have time to think about. It made calming my thoughts a lot easier.


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cairngorn
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But the wandering mind is as much a feature of meditation as sitting cross legged. By that I mean it's something just about everyone who has had a longstanding, regular meditation practice is very familiar with. In fact probably most Buddhist monks, for example, are used to dealing with this every time they sit down. And there are many thousands of them across the world.
Lewk, thanks. I do cope with the wandering mind, so I guess you could say the problem is me being more impatient. Or maybe mixing up mediation with hopes of being able to communicate better. And not getting enough sleep maybe. I've been dropping off.

Maybe following a system would help. I've just been focusing on breath and returning every time I'm distracted. Or simply feeling energy around me.


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cairngorn
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ilinga wrote: Sun May 23, 2021 11:55 am Does your mind have time to process during the day? I mean phases of calm and silence, where your thoughts and mind are allowed to wander. We rarely have phases like this nowadays, because we're always surrounded by something that (unconciously) stimulates us. Writing on bottles, advertisements along the streets, flickering lights, noise, our mind tries to constantly process all of it. When I started knitting I realized how my mind used that time to process a lot of stuff I usually don't have time to think about. It made calming my thoughts a lot easier.
I drive through the country to get to work a lot. Though that's just as much processing as anything else. Hmm.


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I found this somewhere before and I think it is really helpful.

Thought-Control Exercises
Breathing Thoughts Away: Center your attention on the process of breathing, using this to hold your mind totally clear. Feel each breath entering your body and filling your lungs, then feel it leaving your body. Follow the breathing process with your mind, but do not think about it. Feel it, be aware of it, let the feeling of breathing occupy your entire mind. This exercise is enough to occupy the surface mind and to keep its rambling thoughts at bay.

If you need more than this, count your breaths. Count up to ten breaths, then start over again. Mentally counting is not a breach of thought-control discipline. When you count each number, drag out the mental word over the whole of each breath. For example, follow the IN breath carefully and then count (mentally) "Onneeee" (one) for the entire OUT breath. Hold your mind clear during the next IN breath and count (mentally) "Twwooo" (two) for the whole of the OUT breath.

While you are holding your mind clear, surface thoughts will attempt to creep back into your mind. When this begins to happen (and it always will in the early stages) quickly and firmly push them away before they have a chance to take hold and complete their message. You will get progressively better at this with a little practice. You will soon be able to detect thought pressure alone, and thus stop thoughts before they have the chance to form into actual mental words inside your surface mind.
When you get to the stage where you can sense the pressure of thoughts as they are about to start, you are really getting somewhere. You can then begin pushing thought pressures away before they can form into actual thoughts.

Eventually, with a little practice, you will be able to hold your surface mind totally clear, like a blank slate. The pressure of thoughts wanting to start will stay with you for some time, even after you master them. This pressure will, however, progressively ease with regular practice.


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Perhaps try a bit of compartmentalization. You can breath automatically like you can choose to breath. Develop a side process of being aware of your self without the distraction of trying a method.

Sometimes it's good to explore things like a wandering mind if only to see what it dose. Meditation should never amount to a chore as it can harm the process. It may help to objectively view these thoughts as a 3rd person, even perhaps to study how your mind wanders. This I'm turn could help you see patterns that you could take advantage of.


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