Meditation

Just a quickie about meditation as generally people expect too much too soon and then give it up saying meditation doesn't work (which of course it didn't...for them!!)

Imagine you have a glass of red liquid and you really wanted it to be blue. The thing is it just so happens that you CAN change it to blue but for one reason or another you can only add one drop per day. Now in our quick fix culture most people would try putting drops of blue in for a few days and because they saw little or no difference would think it was a waste of time, that its not working, or that it's simply not happening quick enough. So they give up and go try something else . And then before you know it they get addicted to self-help and ANOTHER cycle quickly comes into being (and they quite possibly do the same with relationships, jobs, musical preferences, cars, friends, furniture, you name it!?!?)

The thing with that analogy is that you KNOW that if you keep adding those blue drops every day EVENTUALLY your glass of livid red liquid will turn into a lovely calming blue. In fact for quite some time you will end up with a lovely glass of purple liquid when there's enough blue been added to the red and you might even end up discovering that you LOVE purple and that's a colour you never ever even considered liking!! (Bonus!!)

So if you have tried meditation (especially if your one of those darn out-of-balance almost purely left-brainers that our so called 'education' systems LOVE churning out!!)...please don't give up. Just give up giving up. Go easy on yourself. Add that one drop every day and it will actually gather momentum after a while and there will be days when you really notice a difference. Heck there will even be days when you get several drops at once! But you just got to keep going...

But none of that matters. Because the moment you congratulate yourself you weaken your resolve. Just think about when a football team is most likely to concede a goal? Its just after they have scored themselves. So honestly, don't strive to be any different that you already are. Just be the best you can today, in THIS moment...and then the next...and then the next...(and its all THIS moment!)...and before you know it...???

What's the alternative? (Don't you already know the answer to that?)

"Easy is right. Begin right and you are easy. Continue easy and you are right. The right way to go easy is to forget the right way and forget that the going is easy." - Chuang-Tsu

One drop at a time;-)

Hope this helps somebody. It did me!

If you found this helpful maybe look at this... http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?2661-Letting-go

 

Hi, yes, I would love to help you with this but got to go see kids, please send me a private message or something to remind me, cheers mate

 

Hi just a quickie about this, it doesn't matter if your mind wanders in meditation and I think this the main misconception and why meditation is either so misunderstood or people give up because they 'can't do it'.

Meditation is a PRACTICE and during a meditation sitting you (literally) practice 'noticing' your mind has wandered and you gently escort it back to your object of focus and that is all you have to do! To me the ultimate aim of meditation is to be eternally present in the eternal present moment. What that means (to me at least) is that every time our mind wanders and we bring it back to THIS moment we are PRACTICING and STRENGTHENING our ability to practice what could also be described as the art of living in the moment and (to me!) there is no more noble art than that and all of our so called problems stem from our lack of ability to be here now, fully present, in THIS moment.

John Kabat-Zinn (see below) describes the kinds of attitudes we bring to the practice of mindfulness etc as follows (and I'm going to put the opposites in brackets to see if you can spot where you are if you are honest about how you/we/most people live our lives)

The seven attitudinal foundations of meditation practice:

1) Non-judging (judging)

2) Patience (impatient)

3) Begginers Mind (know it all)

4) Trust (Suspicious)

5) Non-striving (striving, desperate)

6) Acceptance (begrudging)

7) Letting Go (clinging on)

Google 'The seven attitudinal foundations of meditation practice' for brief descriptions of the positive definitions of above as they are excellent.

And remember when you sit in 'formal' meditation 'practice' you are ALSO pacticing so you can take this practice into everyday life. As Jiddu Krishnamurti said- meditation (the 'practice' of mindfulness-the art of being in the moment) is not just a means to an end, it is the both the means AND the end.

Those are just ideas/suggestions by the way. I hope they help?

 

Interesting related thread/article http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthre...ith-NoFap-and-quitting-porn&p=15536#post15536