Tag Archives: mindfulness

Meditation fail

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I’ve been ‘pretending’ to meditate for years now. I’m not berating myself. I know that meditation is a journey, not a destination, and that the practice itself is as much about bringing your focus back as it is staying focused. I get it. I just haven’t really done it.

My monkey mind doesn’t stay on anything long enough to call it meditation. In a typical meditation I’ll focus on my breath and that won’t last 2 minutes. I’ll do a guided meditation and not too far into it discover that I haven’t been listening for a while. I’ll get to the end of a meditation and realize that I’ve been daydreaming for as long as I can remember trying to meditate.

My mediation time in any given session last as long as the dog’s attention in the movie ‘Up’, where every few seconds he’s distracted by the idea of a squirrel. This isn’t once in a while, this is… Every. Single. Session. And it has gotten worse rather than better.

Meditation time has become distracted time. A pause in my day where I put a meditation on, but my mind doesn’t stay on it. In a 10 minute meditation I might count 6-7 breaths before my mind wanders or wonders. Even if I recognize that I’ve drifted away, I don’t really get back to it. Or my attention is even shorter the next time.

I need to change things up. What I’m currently doing is not working for me, and I’ve been at it way too long to accept that my poor follow through is the best that I can do. I’m not sure what I’m going to change yet, but I can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. And if I’m honest, for the amount of time I’ve put into meditation, I really suck and have seen no improvement. It’s time to take a break and come back to this habit later. Hopefully with a new, more effective approach.

Quiet of the morning

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There is a pleasure that I get being the first one up. There’s a certain kind of quiet that mornings alone seem to have. Perhaps it’s because this is one of the only times that I sit in silence. Think of how infrequently we allow ourselves to be in silence. No TV, radio, or audio distractions from our phones; no background noise of other people around us.

I just heard a car drive by. In the evenings I can’t hear this because the volume in the house is too loud. But in the quiet of the morning, a car passing by is heard, and even the occasional sound of a train. Suddenly the furnace turning on is noticeable too.

But beyond these small distractions what is observable is the quiet. Not quite silence, but a wonderful quiet nonetheless.

Pause and think

A few days ago a quote was said in my morning meditation,

“Mindfulness is a pause – The space between stimulus and response: That’s where choice lies.” ~ Tara Brach

It’s amazing how seldom we give ourselves the time and space to pause, especially when we are making decisions. We feel the urge to respond, to fix, to appease, to vent, to impose, and most of all to decide… without a lot of thought, without reflection, and without hesitation… without being mindful.

“Let me think about that.”

“I’m not sure, give me a bit of time.”

“Let me ask a few people how they’ve handled situations like this.”

“I’ll get you an answer by the end of the day.”

Often a thoughtful delay brings a far better response than a knee-jerk reaction. Gut instinct can work, but our gut need not be the default decision-maker, when contemplation can provide us with insights not immediately available to us.

Sometimes a slow and thoughtful response can help things settle down a bit and reduce the tension or the anxiety around addressing the actual problem, rather than creating more problems by dealing with the symptoms of an issue and not the underlying problem itself… a problem that would be easy to solve, if we just allowed ourselves a little time to think.

Mindfulness is witnessing the dance

“Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance.” ~ Amit Ray

Today’s meditation was about meditation as a means to become a witness, and thus using meditation as a way to disconnect and observe rather than experience.

While I understand that meditation can be used to do this in a positive way, I wonder how many people bare witness to their own lives without actually living, not feeling anything? Kids cutting themselves because that’s when the feel the most; zombies moving through life from sleep to work to alcohol and/or television before sleeping again; people bitter about the hand life dealt them, who live in disappointment, numb to everything around them; lonely people, who may or may not actually be alone.

I think too many people are already witnesses to their own lives. I’m not saying meditation isn’t a good way to do this, but I wonder how many people need to do the reverse? I know that there are times in my own life where I’ve felt like I was existing rather than living, the observer rather than participant, but family and friends are good at snapping me out of this.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but there can also be paralysis by analysis. You can watch a surfer and see all their moves, you can know everything about the wave, it’s energy and flow, but if it’s you on the surfboard, it’s probably best to be enjoying the ride than trying to witness it.

Happy surfing!