PsiloPutty

@Rilles Yep, and they also visualize sexin' up rotting, putrefied corpses to stave off carnal desires. I believe it would work, but I'm not gonna try it.

@AleksM Hey man, good to see you back here!!! Mister Onthebreath! I've taken 500-600mg of lion's mane mushroom a day for the past 5 months. I don't know whether it's helped in my meditation practice, but I really do think I've noticed it making me sharper mentally. It's hard to know, because that effect might be from meditating, diet, etc.

You come back to the breath because that's the object of your attention in breath-focused meditation. In a mantra-based meditation, your mantra is the object. Another term for object is "anchor." This is your homebase; the default point of focus. It holds Center Stage in your mind. When something else temporarily steals Center Stage from the breath, like a loud noise, a compelling memory, gas pain, thinking about the laundry you need to do or whatever, you greet (but don't engage or judge) that stimulus and then, when it starts to fade and loses its intrigue, you come back to your breath, your homebase, your anchor. How long to stay with a thought before coming back to your breath isn't so clear cut. Some folks say to grab that sucker as soon as it starts to coalesce. Some folks say to see where the thought wants to go, and advise you to stay with it but don't influence it any. I was confused about this at the start too, so I just gave each thought 3 or 4 seconds of focus and acknowledgment before going back to my breath, and that has become fairly automatic now. This is stuff that you'll answer for yourself after a few weeks of daily meditating. Prepare yourself to be mentally frustrated with the whole process for the first few weeks. You'll feel like you're doing everything wrong......but nope, you're not.

I really enjoyed not talking on my meditation retreat a couple months ago. Made me sort of wish that talking wasn't such a big part of American life.

You'll never be able to control your thoughts, because you don't generate them. They pass by us like cars on a highway.....some are interesting and some aren't. If an interesting thought comes up while you're meditating, and it takes your focus off your breath, you can focus on that thought for a few seconds or so, without engaging the thought or steering it at all, and then come back to the breath. The quieter thoughts that come and go in the background but don't take your focus off the breath can just be left as background noise and don't need to be focused on. The simple act of coming back to your breath after noticing thoughts, feelings, emotions, sounds, etc. is the most important action in breath-focused meditation. So, when you realize that you've been thinking instead of meditating, don't scold yourself, but rather give yourself a mental pat on the back for catching it, and go back to your breath. This action, repeated hundreds of times over many meditation sessions is what strengthens your "meditation muscle" and lays the basic groundwork for focus and mindfulness in general. Come back to the breath. Come back to the breath. That's the gold. You'll have to trust us that soooooo many of your questions will be answered experientially after a few weeks of meditating. I know you want to do it "right" but don't bog yourself down with wondering too much.

You're waaaay overcomplicating it, friendo. I suggest you start simple and listen to the friendly "monkey mind" monk who said to follow your breath. Start with 15 mins a day and increase it 5 minutes per week until you're doing 30 mins a day. That's a decent maintenance routine, but absolutely feel free to slowly increase up to an hour or whatever your schedule allows. My suggestion: set a timer for 15 mins, sit in a chair or on the floor, close your eyes and become VERY interested in the breath. Follow it in through your nostrils, and then out through your nostrils, noticing as much about it as your can, like the temperature of the air going in as opposed to coming out, etc. You'll still have thoughts that pop into your head (maybe LOTS!), but just silently say a non-judgmental "hello" to the thought and come back to your breath. Next thought, do the same thing. Next thought, same thing. Loud motorcycle goes by outside, give it a silent greeting of acknowledgement and go back to the breath. Nasty emotion like sadness or despair comes over you, greet it without judging it, and go back to your breath. I think you see a pattern. So really, that's basic breath-focused meditation, and you'll reap meditation's benefits even if that's as far as you ever take your practice. There are other effective techniques, and Vipassana is of course one of them. Most people give up meditating while their body and mind are still getting used to it (first month or so), but stick to it and you'll start to see the benefits of it. At that point, you won't have to try so hard to make yourself do it. Once you start to see the way it positively affects your life, it will be a self-sustaining practice.

@Wyatt Hahaha!

@Wyatt Are you sure we're talking about the same person here? I've watched dozens of Koi's videos and have never heard or gotten the impression that money has ANYthing to do with his message. To the OP, I like his stuff for the most part. Seems like a peaceful, well-intentioned guy. It's a judgment and an assumption on my part, I admit it, but I get the feeling that he strives for the "guru look" too much. I mean the dude already looks like Jesus, no need to push the look further than that. Overall, he's good stuff as far as YouTube spirituality goes.

Do you think your wishy-washiness is based on fear? I have a friend who is always saying that he wants to get into meditation but he never does. I think he's afraid of it, but satisfies some need in him to feel normal by saying that he's going to do it. I think deep down he knows that he won't. If your deal is fear-based, discovering and admitting it would be a good starting point.

It's hard, and I sometimes struggle with it too, but you're going to have to surrender the need to MAKE anybody do anything. Even though you know they can be helped by it, most people are going to completely ignore your efforts at best, and start to resent you and avoid you at worst. It's typically a lose-lose endeavor. Again, I have those wants and urges at times, too.

A guy I met on a retreat suggested it, but I didn't see a use for it until I checked it out again last week. In addition to lots of free guided meditations (not my thing), I realized that you can customize your own meditation with it. Let's say I want to do a 1-hour silent meditation, but I'd like to have a periodic bell to keep me on task. I can control how frequently the bell sounds (I like every 10 mins), and there are 5 or 6 different bell sounds that I can choose from. I set the bell to sound so quietly that it's almost inaudible, but it really helps me to re-focus when I hear it.There's also the option of having background sounds, like rain, a stream, guitar music and a bunch of others. Yeah, I know this isn't some breakthrough technology, but dammit I love this app! Plus, you can "friend" people like on Facebook or whatever, and see when they are meditating and you can message them if you like. This function can be totally shut off to keep yourself 100% private, but I like the community and find it motivating. Anywho, just a heads-up for you guys. If you haven't loaded it, try it and check it out. Coolest meditation tool I've found.

Someone's got a lotta time on their hands. (That said, I laughed at the "hey...." at 1:14 )

@Michael569 That post was out-of-the-park perfect.

I've been waiting for it to zoom out.....I want my money back!!

It sounds to me like you're falling asleep or getting damn close to it. I know my head does the same thing when I'm flirting with sleep while meditating. While sleeping is of course not "allowed" during a SD sit, having your head lift up automatically doesn't break the rules of a SD sit, since it's not a conscious movement. Same as having a twitchy muscle. If it's beyond your conscious control, and it's not caused from sleep, you're still doing a SD sit.

That's a hell of a good schedule. It's not like I don't have time to do it a few times a week.....just don't have the balls! Once a week is long-term doable for me. LOL, I had a couple fatass bean burritos the night before I did the 2-hour sit. I had a monster bubble of a fart in me, but I knew that pushing it out would ruin the sit, so I just let it churn in there. At times it felt like the pressure would just naturally let some of it out, but nope, it was in there the whole time, grumbling and knockin' at the door. I'm sure you wanted to know that!

Never had that, but it can't be bad.

Have you watched Leo's solo retreat video? I've done a 3-day weekend with ~6hrs of seated meditation each day, but I was also running errands, exercising, texting, Youtubing, etc. So I don't count that as a retreat. For a dedicated solo retreat at home, I'd guess that staying focused would be the main thing. When you're in your house, you're in your comfort zone, and that can lead to sloth. I've thought about doing like Leo did and renting a cabin for a week to 10 days, but I think I'd be able to keep my focus at home as well. Still thinking about doing an at-home darkness retreat for a few days. Locking myself in the pitch dark basement the whole time.

Well, you beat my record of 2 hours and 2 minutes. I'm going to do at least one sit like this a week for a while and see how that goes. Saturday mornings are easiest for me. I was only doing them once every few weeks, but I'm now starting to see their potential.

Unless I'm dreaming, I wrote a reply to a question like this just yesterday. Hopefully it wasn't a dream, that might freak me out a little. Anyway yeah, when I sit for an hour meditation, I do the first 10 or 20 minutes as mantra repetition in my head. That empties out my head and for the last 40 minutes I do vipassana. I haven't noticed anything negative about it, but truthfully I have wondered if it's proper or not to do it that way.

I like what Ram Dass said. Your mantra is like a bridge on which you stand, and watch your life passing in the water beneath you. I have some shit going on in my life right now, and woke up a bunch in the night. Ordinarily I would have spun my wheels, unproductively thinking the same negative thoughts over and over until I fell back asleep, which would probably give me a bad dream, but instead I used my mantra every time I woke up last night. Probably said it 500 times during the night, and I feel fairly chipper and ready to tackle the day now. This stuff should be taught in kindergarten as a way to mitigate negative thinking, and I wish I had known about it years ago. Oh well, I'm happy to have found it now.

I use my mantra a lot in a day's time. The one I use is the classic (well, half of the classic anyway): Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. During the day, whenever I feel my monkey mind kicking in and worrying/pondering something repetitively, I just start up my mantra and repeat it in my head for 5-10 minutes. Your mind can't concentrate intensely on more than one thing at a time, so the mantra overlaps the silly thoughts and they eventually give up and leave. It's like bringing your big brother with you when a bully is harassing you. I often leave the radio off on my drive home from work and do my mantra instead. You can still drive fine while doing this. I arrive home feeling a lot calmer. I did it for 90 mins on a bike ride a couple weeks ago. I was "Hare Krishna-ing" the entire time and it was a freaking great bike ride. Helps to keep me in the present moment.....noticed many things on that ride that I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Flowers, clouds, etc. Try it. Pick a phrase and repeat it to yourself for 20 minutes as a seated meditation session. It's not something that you have to do for months to see it working. You'll see it the very first time you do it.

@Girzo A lot of retreats supply the zafus, cushions, etc. Not a bad idea to get your own, but you might check and see if they do.

@Tony 845 Ha, yeah you're definitely not the only one. When the end is near and I'm starting to flip out and about to quit the sit, I try to stay with it just another minute because I know that THIS is what I was waiting for....what I was doing the entire sit for. I can almost feel it helping me in those final minutes. I never EVER get that feeling from a regular 45-min meditation. I can't truthfully say that it's "the taste of purification" that Shinzen Young talks about in his strong determination video on YouTube, but it's in the ballpark. To folks that have never done it, it seems like it should be easy to drag the session out another 1 minute or even 30 seconds, but you know what I'm talking about, it frazzles the mind like nothing else I've ever done. It's almost like being at the pool and trying to force yourself to stay underwater for 30 seconds longer. It feels that impossible when you're at the end.