JediArron

a) Could you elaborate on what a personality dynamic of control is? b) Might sound silly, but what exactly is do nothing meditation? Just literally sit in my chair and not even focus on my breathing, and just close my eyes and watch my thoughts, or not even that?

I think I do see it as an achievement that I have meditated every day for 6 months for an hour, yes. But the thing is, if I ask you 'how do I meditate towards humility and contentment, right now', will you give me a practical answer?

Hi everyone. I have been meditating for 1 hour a day in the morning every day for 6 months. I have been doing mindfulness meditation, where I am focusing on my breathing. I breathe in from my nose and out through my mouth, out loud. Most days of meditation, I am unable to focus on my breathing for longer than 5-10 seconds before getting distracted. On average, 85-90% or more of my meditation session is me getting distracted and 'going into' my thoughts. I feel like I am forcing myself to meditate most of the time. I don't enjoy it, and also, most of the time I don't have any will power behind it. I just brute force it. It doesn't feel relaxing most of the time, or nice. Occasionally, such as when I a) make a change in my life (e.g. start running), or b) when I have strong willpower (e.g. watch a video on a meditation technique), I notice that I am significantly more focused and relaxed during my sessions and actually enjoy them. It feels like I concentrate for 85-90% of my sessions (so the reverse of what happens when I do not have this strong will power/major change in my life. However, this only lasts for a few days or a week at most, and then even after continuing that good habit (e.g. running), my focus, willpower, enjoyment of meditating, and concentration on my breath completely drops off again. Overall, I have not noticed any significant permanent effects from meditation, so I wanted to ask you guys: a) Why do you think this is happening? b) What would you recommend for me? (should I stop, should I continue but make modifications, etc). Thank you for your help.

Take a look between: 8:30 - 12:30 When you wrote the above sentence, I think you are referring to the general interest in the mind, the nature of thought, and enlightenment. However, what I am referring to is what he mentions in the video. I am interested in enlightenment, but I don't know if I have had enough suffering (I feel like I have not had a happy life so far, though, I'm 23) to allow my mind to be aware of my thoughts (which is one of the many meditative exercises I can do), and therefore, for the first few days I'm quite intense and aware, however, eventually, it feels as if I am just not interested anymore, and I get sucked into a lot of thoughts, and I catch less and less thoughts, day by day, and I identify with them more and more, and now I am at a point where I am close to being completely unaware at all. On some level I care though, because I am making this post and looking into enlightenment.

Is it possible that I don't want or care enough to become mindful? Eckart Tolle mentioned that you need to have suffered enough to be able to maintain the ability to focus on your thoughts, otherwise, if you don't care enough, then you cannot be present. And maybe the first few days I was doing it, it was the initial motivation, which faded. This is what I'm thinking.

This is a good video. I can relate a lot to it, I'm not entirely sure it relates to my specific problem in this thread, because here I'm conciously trying and forgetting, and it feels like I don't have the ability to choose, but for other things, it definitely makes sense.

P.S. I did meditation earlier and it literally felt intolerable. I gave up after less than 10 mins, when I usually go for 20. It felt unbearable.

I think it was working, but then it died off. I feel like I can't be aware of my breathing or my bodily sensations, because I forget after 3-5 seconds lol, and it takes me a while to realise that I'm not focusing on them again. And with my thoughts, I am at a point where I am almost totally identified with my thoughts again, I only have some (small) awareness of that, and a change in my behaviour because of this, and that is the only thing I am conscious of now. Yeah I am stressing quite a bit. *I updated my main post btw.

Sure I can try a different way. I currently meditate 20 minuites a day in the morning.

Even when I was mindful of a lot of my thoughts, I could never really feel my breathing or the tingling sesnsations in my feet/hands for very long. I would always get distracted after about 3-5 seconds, no matter how hard I tried not to. Occasionally I could keep hold of it, if I put intense effort into being concious of them. It was like I was fighting tooth and nail to stay at that rate though. But yeah, I find being concious of my mind easier, so lets forget about my emotions and breathing for now, if I am loosing track of something I could do more sucessfully, it is even harder to be mindful of my breathing/tingling of my body.

Hi guys. I have recently finished reading Eckart Tolle's 'The Power of Now'. I have being mindful of my thoughts for the past week or so now. Initially, whilst I don’t think I was present, I was constantly catching thoughts throughout the day, at a rapid pace. However, within the last 5 days or so, it seems like I am catching my thoughts less and less, and it has almost come to a halt entirely. I feel that I am growing less and less mindful. I am not sure what is happening. It also feels like I care less and less about catching my thoughts. Firstly, I remember to be conscious significantly less compared to before. I also feel like I care less and less about being conscious, and for the times that I do remember to be mindful of my thoughts, I am almost forcing myself to be mindful, whereas before I was more willing and able. I have always said ‘that’s a thought that came into my head, and here I am’ when I consciously catch a thought, but recently when I say that to myself, the tone sounds like I don’t care as much anymore or take it as seriously, and it feels like when I do think that, it is said in the back of my mind opposed to being at the forefront (where it was initially). People also say that being conscious is a choice, but I don’t feel like it is a choice, because if you don’t remember to be conscious, then how can you choose to be conscious? It is a choice when I remember to be concious, and then I force myself to be concious. I don’t know what is happening, and I feel like my ego is taking over, and initially, I started off very strong with being mindful of my thoughts, now I don’t know what is happening. A lot of my thoughts strengthen my identity as ‘the victim who has suffered and can’t answer his problems’, which I considered may be happening, and I am trying not to do that, but I also feel like what I wrote above is happening how I described it. The strength of my identity as the ‘sufferer’ made me also think that I don’t want to be helped because my ego is attached too strongly to it. I have also noticied this same pattern in video games. It might seem silly or unrelated, but when I wanted to increase my ranking in League of Legends, I focused really hard on it for a few days. I became extremely focused on the minimap and interpreting things from it. However, after a few days, it got to a point where no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember to be aware of the minimap anymore. This is similar to what is happening now and I think there's a connection. If anyone could help me realise what is happening, and what to do, I would greatly appreciate it. Wake me up if I need it, I’m open to hearing what you say. TL;DR: I am becoming less conscious of my thoughts than I used to be. I feel like I care less about being aware of my thoughts and feel like my ego is taking over. Why is this happening/What are your thoughts?