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@Jkris Ok i think i figured my problem out Doing nothing to me is misleading because i pictured it as just sitting down not doing any activity and thats it. naturally i let go my mind starts doing something as im addicted to it, the thinking activity in my mind was so automatic and effortless that it is like a task of will to just be, only through hard concentration i can do this, which to me felt like i was going against the whole 'do nothing' and caused confusion. I think im on the right track ? So with that said, my sittings of 'doing nothing' for a few hours should consist of the intention to not indulge in my external addictions, as well as staying present with the moment including feelings and cravings that arise and applying the techniques like the ones you mentioned to help with my thinking addiction as well as external ones. I just want to be clear so i dont waste a bunch of time and do it properly.

@Jkris Ok, Thank you for clearing that up, As a person who is addicted to thinking, the whole bringing attention back to observer state seems like im not actually doing nothing and seems like regular meditation, its confusing

I've been meditating for a couple years now and I seem to sometimes do different techniques on different days and I feel like they mess eachother up. For example I will one day practice staying present and redirecting my attention to the present and other days I will do nothing and let thoughts take over. The thing is, It feels like each time i change techniques It feels like Im starting from square 1 again because if I use the "do nothing" technique, my mind is already trained to notice when Im off track and tries to get me to focus when thats the opposite of what Ive set out to do in that specific session. and vice versa, If i try to constantly redirect my attention instead of letting go it feels like Im resisting my thoughts and being too judging. This all has caused confusion and this confusion gets me mid session where I feel guilty for not concentrating/staying present or guilty for not letting myself go and it's as if I have to unlearn one technique to do the other one. Is this an actual thing? should I just stick to one technique? I want to learn to stay present but I also want to learn to let go Also, does just sitting down and not really trying to meditate count as meditation? like literally just sitting down, and how is this different to "do nothing"

@ground I'm gonna try stick with one technique for a while and see how that goes @PsiloPutty What do you mean exactly by harmful? when I said "let thoughts take over" I just meant that I do the technique, which results in my thoughts going wild and not trying to redirect my attention which I would typically do in a different technique

Sometimes, on the badder days of meditation, I tend to be tempted to alternate between meditation techniques mid meditation. I have 2 ways i like to meditate; actively release thoughts or let go and watch thoughts - They kind of contradict each other say Ive let go and I'm just watching my thoughts(or attempting to) and it just isn't 'working', for a second I try letting go of thoughts and it seems to work so I get tempted to change techniques (these techniques seem to do almost the complete opposite of eachother). and vice versa, I try let go of thoughts too much and it doesn't work so I think I should just let go and watch as it feels too manipulative. Sometimes I find myself doing both at the same time which I'm pretty sure isn't the way to go am I meant to just get through this and stick to one agenda through my whole 30 mins or is it ok to alternate in accordance to my feelings? (I know at that point I'm taking my thoughts and feeling too seriously but it's hard to stop) so what should I do on these bad days? Usually if I stick to one technique on a bad day it'll make me feel like shit mentally, with that I know meditation isn't smooth sailing, been doing this for 2 years dont give me that "just relax and don't expect anything, stop trying so hard" it's not that simple given one of my techniques involve manipulating my thoughts a bit

@the dream the first one is to let go of control of thoughts and feelings and just to watch everything, the second is to actively release thoughts that arise and when that is successful it is peaceful, until another thought comes up. i think Leo has a video on it called 'how to meditate deeper' it's the first two techniques he talks about

This relates to Leo's video on concentration vs meditation, I've been doing the exercise for about a month now, and it is picturing a candle in my head and fully concentrating on it. I've seen that this has improved my meditations and my overall focus which is great, I do at least 3 two minute sessions a day, but slowly this image of a candle I've been using to concentrate is becoming harder and harder to visualise in my head for some reason, like I'm not sure if it's a bad target because my mind seems to find it hard to picture the candle the same each session, for example one session I'll picture a clear candle and others I'll have a very blurry version and it will be distorted in some way or I'll focus on a different part of the candle which makes it hard to focus on it. So basically instead of just focusing on the candle, my mind is trying to focus on a part of a candle, which makes me think I chose a complex target rather than a simple one. Is this normal or should I try a different target like the metronome?, or should I stick to what I'm doing because I know I'm meant to stick to it even though it's a bit difficult right now. This doubting is also screwing me up because sometimes in the middle of my exercises I wonder if I chose a bad target. Anyone wanna help?

I've been meditating for 20+ mins everyday for about a year and a half, and for a long while my meditation habit has felt like a chore that had to be done. I remember the reason I started the habit was to help improve my mental state and be less depressed and think higher of myself and for ego reasons and none of this has improved. After ages of waiting for something like that to happen I realised that it wasn't going to happen and that I should improve my life for those needs. Meditation at this point feels like it's worsening my general well being and 90% of my sits are bad ones where I have non stop monkey mind or just don't feel good, and in fact making my mind dwell on negative thoughts constantly while I attempt at not stopping those thoughts. I've stopped the habit for a week now and lately I've felt a lot better which is surprising, I feel more aware and don't take my thoughts so seriously, can more easily snap out of thoughts, generally more chilled out, no more 'oh I have to meditate' and sitting to meditate unconsciously. I feel this is the last thing I expected from quitting for a week, I guess it made my mind more sensitive or something? can anyone explain why this is happening and if I should just quit or am I making a huge mistake since it's like 1.5 years of learning for nothing. I've definitely learned a lot in those years of how my mind works and to not resist thoughts etc. but nothing huge and most things I've learned could be learned just by growing up (started at 15, am now 17, so am naturally more aware) and I'm worried if I stop I will eventually lose everything I learned and return to a normal state (even though I don't really feel any major differences to before I started meditating and think my Mindstate right now is shared by a lot of normal people) and also quitting before the apparent exponential growth curve. Part of me wants to see what happens if I stop for a few months to see what happens and another part wants me not to stop because of obvious reasons. I know no one can make the decision for me but I'm a bit confused tldr: meditation hasn't really helped so stopped meditating for a week, feel better for some reason like everything is brand new to me, don't know if I should continue this break or this feeling will eventually stop, and don't know why I feel better and more accepting of myself Sorry for long ass paragraphs but would be very grateful if someone could have a read and share relatable experiences and advice/help thanku!

@Nahm usually I do a 2 min concentration then I do a about 25 or 30 mins of do nothing/letting go of the need to control anything, sometimes I do mindfulness but my concentration mostly throws me off on that one and requires too much effort

@OnewithVerse yeah I was thinking along those lines i may just cut my meditation down even though Leo and others always say to do it everyday, would like to know what the man himself would say to this @Leo Gura

Also Is this technique any different to the concentration practice Leo uploaded called 'concentration vs meditation'?

@Vlad Ropotica in the past I think I've overcomplicated this a bit because whenever I pick a target to concentrate on after a while , my mind gets to used to the target and gets bored of it and it's really hard to concentrate on, but I'll give it a go again

@Vlad Ropotica what is it you use for your concentration meditation and is your technique picking an object and just ignoring everything else? I tried it in the past and found it really hard to go for even 2mins so I did letting go/do nothing instead

@Vlad Ropotica Yeah also my meditation has become a bit complicated sometimes I don't know what I'm doing and I'm thinking of just practicing concentration or self acceptance, like something that I can directly see would help me in life rather than feeling like I'm getting no where

@Vlad Ropotica I'm not exactly angry with meditation, I'm more just becoming disinterested and feel like it's not serving me in any way. Also when abouts did meditation start getting better for you? Or is it still extremely frustrating and draining

Oh also an unintentional benefit of quitting meditation is that now I feel more connected with people since before i couldnt really talk about what goes on in my head and about meditation as no one, especially my age does it so yeah I feel more apart of life and life feels more chilled out and less alone in the past days of no meditation

I have been meditating for about a year and a half and im starting to lose interest in the practice, I'm guessing because I've not seen much result of it in a while. It's been feeling like a chore like I procrastinate it until I have to go to sleep and usually I'll just do 20 mins instead of what I used to do which was 30 mins. During my meditations I easily get stuck in monkey mind because sitting in the moment seems boring and I've realised I can't think my way out of thinking or will myself out of it, so most of my meditations are just sitting and thinking and accepting it and it has become boring and it's causing me to nearly stuff up my habit I've built up. So every time I got to sit it feels like I'm just doing it unconsciously because I have to do it, I haven't looked forward to meditating for about a year now, even if the meditation has been being good I've tried rewatching videos to get me back into it and it kinda works for a bit but not really and I can't get my hands on dmt or whatever because of age and I don't know how i also can see that it's partly because i unconsciously think that real enjoyment and happiness can be attained from external things rather than getting it from the inside, what should I contemplate? I tried 'happiness and value can't be got from external things' and 'others opinions don't matter' but I end up deluding myself

@AleksM thank you and just from reading you say 'don't accept this belief' it's opened my eyes to see that im forcing that belief on myself without any experience. I'll definitely try your playlist aswell, also how can I become more in tune with my emotions? What practical things can I do? And won't this amplify negative emotions in some cases if I just let myself be negative

Im the same age ive been through a fair share of toxic people I guess i just made friends with time? keep being yourself and be patient maybe? and i wouldn't worry too much about being so independent, you're still young.

Also tell me the targets yous are all using to concentrate on and how it's working for you that would be appreciated

Aight I'm 16 and I started meditating around 9-10 months ago (around June 2016) and Started with 20mins now I'm up to 30 mins, I also haven't missed a day and I'm mainly doing the technique Leo explained in his no-bullshit guide he made in 2014. So during the first 2 or 3 months I could clearly see benefits in my life and I was more focused (I think I had a jhana), even more than I was expected to be, then slowly I started getting frustrated and these benefits kinda went away during the following months, but I was expecting there to be ups and downs so I kept at it. Since then I've seen little to no signs that I'm improving and it's been this way for about 6 months and it's annoying and I've been tempted to give up. My guess on why this happened is because I remember experimenting with different techniques around 6 months ago like do-nothing, labelling, and many others and I think because I kinda half-assed each of these techniques it made my meditations more complicated as I'm taking bits of each technique and moulding them into one. This has made me a bit frustrated because i feel like I'm not getting far and every time I sit to meditate I don't feel like I know what to do and I end up just sitting there trying to figure out what technique works. I get tempted to just be a normal 16 yr old and strive for building up my ego and going out and not paying too Much attention to looking inward, and instead doing this personal work later on in life because I feel like meditation is making me more stressed atm (nearly every day is a bad meditation day). Is this just a phase I'll get through soon and become more peaceful in the near future or...? tldr; I'm hell not seeing any sign of peace and any benefit even tho I did at the start of mediation, pls help. Also pls share any relateable experiences/ how you felt when you were this far into meditation

Thankyous ^ and I I think I realised why I was frustrated is because Im a very judgemental person (there's another judgement for ya) in my day to day life and my meditations was just me judging how I feel a lot instead of just being in the moment, so I've started to be aware of my judgements, and also I started doing concentration exercises along with my meditations and so yeah