Myke

It sounds like you are doing just fine over here. What beginning meditators tend to assume (at least I did) is that once you have had some success sitting in stillness, you have become a 'good' meditator. This can be a problematic way of thinking because the next time you sit down (or next several times) and can't even stay with a SINGLE breath without getting caught in the thought stream, you may start to feel that you are doing something wrong. You aren't doing anything wrong, this is just the nature of mind. Jack Kornfield relates sitting in meditation with opening the front door of your house, saying that when you open the door you get the weather, whatever it may be at the time, if you sit long enough, you get the weather changes. The same goes with meditation. The practice isn't about controlling the weather (mind), it's more about noticing it. The most devoted form of meditation is sitting when you don't want to. This is when you really have something to awaken from. If you find that the counting is distracting you after a while, try using it at first to bring your attention on the breath, and then let go of the counting completely. I find mantra's help at this point. Something like "What is this?" "Nowhere to go. Nothing to do." "Who am I?" or simply, "I am"

Any use of substances which affect awareness are detrimental to the development of it. Fundamentally, the nature of using substances which alter consciousness is rooted in the conception that there actually is an "out there" which is separate from "in here." By using substances even recreationally (not that I am chastising....I promise) you are further entrenching yourself in the idea that you are here, in the body, separate from everything else. Now, I do find myself open to the idea of using psychedelic's which bring one to question the nature of one's direct experience.....but honestly, if you are already awoken to the fact that there is a misunderstanding with regard to 'what' exactly YOU are, there is no reason to extend your journey to realizing the nature of your True self. Hang Zen, Myke

I would have to imagine this is a common experience for those of us who use Facebook or any other social media. I know at times I can definitely relate. I even for many years considered myself a plagued by Anger, because it felt like it came from no where, and the source was always external. It was always outside of me. I felt like commenting because you used the word 'extremely,' and I relate to the feeling of being overwhelmed by an emotion like frustration. Transmuting emotions was a concept I got from a Ken Wilber article and it helped immensely with anger, frustration, annoyance, any negative emotion that I felt was being caused by someone else. It's a fairly simple practice that you incorporate, on the spot, anytime you are feeling one of these emotions. Obviously you will still encounter people and situations that make you angry, even if you successfully gave up social media until death, there's no escaping that. You can however learn to literally turn those situations into opportunities to deepen your understanding of your own psyche.

Like breathing. You wouldn't get mad at your breath for being on an inhale when you were hoping for an exhale. There's also no holding onto the previous breath because you enjoyed the taste of it. It goes, and the next one comes; without concern for your preference or even attention to it.

It actually really is. It's a lot easier than holding on.

Just turn it off and see. It definitely won't kill you. It also won't completely disconnect you from the entire world. There is a shift that happens in the focus of your creative energy when you close an outlet which releases it and is not without a sense of gratification.(we all love when people love our pictures) This is where ego starts to separate itself from literally all of reality, but you can actually pay attention to the isolating feeling that resonates underneath an emotion like pride. It's that "I am better than, or I am worse than" mentality that reinforces the perceived boundary between us and it. There is a lot of comparing and contrasting that I would get stuck in when I was cruising around on facebook. Not that it was destroying my day to day sense of peace, but there was a sense of freedom in feeling ambivalent. Try 2 weeks without social media to interrupt that behavior for a bit, see if it adds or detracts. You will at least have a clearer idea of how much or little social media affects your sense of peace.

I love this topic. I am going to lean in the direction of discipline though. The creativity that arises from emptiness is so fundamental that it seems to be even in the nature of ego to yearn for creativity. All reality understood as the manifestation of a that which creates. Discipline on the other hand seems to be more foreign a concept, requiring rules and even discomfort at times. Without rigorous intention to build discipline one may never awaken to the creativity that is emerges, arises, and is let go with each breath, every single moment, regardless of your attention to it.

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Once you awaken from the mind, concepts like good, bad, ethical, unethical, are merely judgements which the ego, or Myke, has applied to a situation in which it feels separate. There is literally no where for the conceptual to exist other than mind. Once awakened, there is the realization that there are no beings separate from you and never were, that was all ego bull shit. Not only was the boundary separating you from the rest of reality not real, someone made it up, told you, and that's been your perspective since. You realize that there is no such thing as death because you were never actually born. A HUGE misconception about enlightenment work is that the ego has anything to gain from it at all. Yes there is peace, and yes there is pure openness...but the ego won't benefit from any of that. Die before you die. Die to the posture.

Mooji actually addresses this subject directly in a 6 minute video, right here. Mooji addressing hash The idea that some thing outside of you needs to be added in order to feel whole is rooted in the minds dualistic nature. Inevitably you will more separate and more incomplete.

just awakened to your foolishness.

I can't wait to check out some of the ones I am seeing pop up on here. Here are my 5. 1. Ken Wilber - The Spectrum of Consciousness 2. Chogyam Trungpa - Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism 3. Pema Chodron - Going To The Places That Scare You 4. Adyashanti - True Meditation (I saw this up at the top, but it is so wonderful I had to include it) 5. Osho - Mindfulness for the Modern Era

@walt is pointing at it perfectly. Remember that when you sit, the goal is not to awaken the mind, but to awaken from mind.

Amazing. "I am God...well, I'm a god...I'm not THE God...at least I don't think"

What you might try is giving up the idea of 'tapping' into anything that seems like your higher self, and focus all of that extra energy into the letting go of the ego or lower self, like honestly letting go. When you truly surrender the ego, or the lower self; the higher self, or your true nature automatically fills that void.

Zazen, skateboard/longboarding, walking with the dog, Aikido, Yoga, Reading, I will also do some basic sewing and stitching. I just finished my new zabuton (big square pad) for meditation. If you are watching tv; I would just say set a pure intention for what you might gain from watching tv whatever that may be. @Keyblade Viking - Tobias is on point! I couldn't agree more. A deepening experience I have had within the past year came after reading Osho's Mindfulness for the Modern Era where he really pushes this point of adopting a meditative mindset regarding EVERY aspect of life. 15 minutes here and an hour there doesn't really stand a chance against the complex tapestry that is being woven together before you.

@Jay S you beat me to the punch. I was going to liken the progress and benefits seen in meditation to that of learning to play the piano. Everyone is going to move at their own pace, but no one is going to be playing Rachmaninoff at the end of the first week. It will be more like better and worse versions of chopsticks. The initial benefits of meditating or learning piano do seem to be subtle, but at some point you realize there has been a profound shift, almost without your noticing it. If you have had the experience of sitting in meditation and it literally feels like your thoughts are a runaway train that you have no control over, you are on the right track. The very acknowledgement that this is the nature of the mind and you aren't controlling it is huge.

Aside from the past year of sitting meditation, have you worked with any mindfulness practices at all? In terms of practicality they are great. There is a mindful eating practice, and one for walking, and listening....I won't go on and on, but if you are getting frustrated to a point where it's affecting your motivation to continue to practice, this could be a nice way to shake it up. I highly recommend anything by Jon Kabat-Zinn or Jack Kornfield; whether it be their books, audiobooks, videos, podcasts. The last advice I really have is to just keep meditating; the benefits are there. I can't remember which teacher was talking about this, but they had brought up the notion of a kind of spiritual relapse that happens with each deeper and deeper insight you witness. I think there is a lot of truth in this. I notice it with myself all the time, and it seems like what you are describing. It's that you have this really deep wonderful insight into reality and suddenly it is like the mind retreats. Literally 2 steps forward and sometimes what feels like ALL of the steps back. You also said you were meditating for up to an hour a day which is a very healthy practice but could be working against you if its causing the loss of the intention to sit in the first place. Cut it down to 5 minutes, hell cut it back to one breath. I will still sit in my posture to this day and go a half hour, sometimes more, without staying with one breath all the way in and all the way out. Meditation eventually clues you into the fact that there's nothing wrong with that, it just is. My apologies for the ramble, but I feel like I struggled through a similar experience and want to help all that I can.

Zen teaching would tell you that even the thought "back to normal" is itself an attachment to a concept. Good. Bad. That's all ego-land. As I experience different states of what some call Samadhi, or Loving Awareness (whatever label works for you) I tend to notice a sense of ambivalence in regard to this perspective which I refer to as Mike. The true goal of meditation is not to awaken the mind into a special mystical/peaceful state; the true aim is pure seeing of what actually is, whatever that experience may be. Adyashanti warns of holding onto states of enlightenment or pure seeing when one does have the experience, as the memory of this state is just another concept. In Zen Mind, Beginners Mind Shunryu Suzuki gives the teaching in relation to zazen posture saying "These forms(the seated posture) are not the means of obtaining the right state of mind. To take this posture is itself to have the right state of mind. There is no need to obtain some special state of mind." I don't know if any of this helps in terms of not judging your practice, but the goal of meditation is not to become a good meditator, it is clear seeing...whatever that may be. Pema Chodron also has some great teachings that may be helpful if you haven't already come across her. She carries the lineage of Chogyam Trungpa who passed on the practice of Tonglen, which is focused on dealing with difficult situations.

New Noise - Refused "We need new noise - new art for the real people"

I would be practicing Zen in South Korea, preferably at the Sudeok-sa temple that is about 1,300 years old. I work as an Art Director on films and it is definitely a dream of mine to one day make films that point to the concept of awakening. I am a huge fan of Lana Wachowski, and it is very clear that her intention to point toward that concept in projects like The Matrix or Sense8, comes from a deeper understanding of something as non-conceptual as enlightenment.