Meditation Journal

[Mondsee]

Day 28

(Report from Wednesday the 26th)

Days in a row: 3

Start time: ? 

Finish time: 35 mins later

Location: Balcony at my parents house

Technique: Mindfulness meditation

Eyes: closed

Highlights: I didn't post my report because I had no internet. I can't recall many details, but I remember focusing a lot on the noises I could hear, and trying to grasp them as the noise itself, and not as the result of something I could recognize and label as a car, a bird, etc. Also the session didn't feel too long.

Day 29

Days in a row: 1

Start time: 12:30 p.m.

Finish time: 12:50 p.m.

Location: My room at my parents house

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: closed

Highlights: Monkey mind, monkey mind, monkey mind. I focused on sounds a little bit, but then went back to monkey mind full on. Also at some point I couldn't help but shake my head because I heard a mosquito flying by.

[Mondsee]

Day 30

 

Days in a row: 2

Start time: 9:40 a.m.

Finish time: 10:05 a.m.

Location: Balcony at my parent's house

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: closed

Highlights: Story-mode thoughts about love and becoming one with other people.

Edited August 1, 2017 by Mondsee
day count

[Mondsee]

Day 31

 

Days in a row: 3

Start time: 9:30 a.m.

Finish time: 10:00 a.m.

Location: My room at my parent's house

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: closed

Highlights: Many thoughts about my ex-boyfriends. I could recognize how that triggered some emotions and sensations to which my ego is kind of addicted. It wants to feel loved, but funnily enough, also as a victim. Those thoughts felt like porn to my mind, it didn't want to stop watching, although it is toxic and useless. When the time was over, I noticed how I wouldn't have minded sitting there for somewhat longer thinking about the same.

[Mondsee]

Day 32

 

Days in a row: 4

Start time: 11:55 a.m.

Finish time: 12:30 p.m.

Location: Balcony at my parent's house

Technique: Mindfulness meditation

Eyes: open at the beginning, then closed

Highlights: Long but comfortable meditation. I was labelling sensations under the categories of "seeing", "hearing" and "feeling. At some point I was doing the same but the label wasn't a word I was repeating in my mind any more, although the word labels came back after a while. I closed my eyes at some point and recognized very clearly how I was still "seeing" things, but now internally. Everything I was seeing from that moment on, were images created inside my mind, but those things still felt very real, as if they were really out there, and not only in my mind. I shake my head a couple times, when flies came too close to my eyes.

[Mondsee]

Day 33

 

Days in a row: 5

Start time: 9:25 a.m.

Finish time: 10:10 a.m.

Location: My room at my parent's house

Technique: Mindfulness meditation

Eyes: closed

Highlights: By far the absolutely most powerful meditation that I've ever had. I focused in what my senses were perceiving and at some point it was absolutely clear to me how the only thing that existed was the pitch darkness, not even the darkness but the space in which all those sensations were entering. If nothing but that space existed, that also meant my body didn't exist, what existed were the sensations of my body that were entering into that space, same with all sounds and smells. If my body didn't exist, and the sensations were no different to the sounds I was hearing and the smells I'm smelling, and the mental images that were crossing my mind, then why would I be only the sensation of my body? I started becoming a sphere of nothingness which was filled with different things, sometimes the sound of a bird + the mental image of a bird, the numbing sensation of my leg, the mental words of my mind, the sound of my AC and even the alarm of my cell phone going off. Before opening my eyes, I told myself "nothing is going to change, you are still going to be this nothingness, but this nothingness can also be filled with colors and shapes". I opened my eyes and the sensation lasted for a little bit, but not so powerful. Right now I actually know that I have no legs, as I can't see them right now, I only have the sensation of legs. The feeling isn't as powerful anymore, but if I focus on it, it's so incredibly obvious I actually laugh.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Mondsee
typo

[Mondsee]

Day 34

 

Days in a row: 1

Start time: 10:40 a.m.

Finish time: 11:00 a.m.

Location: Balcony at my parent's house

Technique: Mindfulness meditation

Eyes: open

Highlights: Today I sat in full lotus. The posture was okay until the very last minutes in which my left leg got numb. I labelled every prominent sensation under the categories "seeing", "hearing" and "feeling", all of which included an external and an internal dimension, and "feeling" a physical and an emotional one. I was able to keep my attention into the practice for most of the time, and after a while I started seeing the sky on the same plane as a short wall in front of me, loosing the illusion of depth. That was interesting.

[Mondsee]

Day 35

 

Days in a row: 2

Start time: 8:15 a.m.

Finish time: 8:40 a.m.

Location: Balcony at my parent's house

Technique: Mindfulness meditation

Eyes: open

Highlights: Sitting in half lotus. I labeled sensations under the same categories as yesterday, but had many more thoughts crossing my mind that often went unlabeled. While thinking the labelling process felt somewhat mechanical. My right leg got numb and in the end I was focusing a lot on "feeling" that.

[Mondsee]

Day 36

 

Days in a row: 3

Start time: 19:50 a.m.

Finish time: 20:20 a.m.

Location: My room at my parent's house

Technique: Mindfuln

Eyes: closed

Highlights: Sitting in half lotus I focused my attention on the sound of the A.C., noticing how I was that because that sound was no different than the sound that my breath was making. It felt like me just for a few sparks of seconds, nothing very significant. Some distracting thoughts crossed my mind several times

Edited August 10, 2017 by Mondsee
Day count

[Mondsee]

Day 37

 

Days in a row: 4

Start time: 10:10 a.m.

Finish time: 10:45 a.m.

Location: Balcony at my parent's house

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: open

Highlights: It started as a weak meditation session, with a slow pace of monkey mind, but monkey mind nonetheless, i.e. I was jumping from topic to topic all over the place and even to short mindfulness meditation moments. This continued until the end, but brought me to an insightful thought. It is a little bit difficult to put in words, but it was that I am everything, both my body and also everything surrounding it, and that it isn't "me" (i.e. my body) which moves around the world, but that it could be that the entire world moves around my body, and because the only constant there, is my body, that is the only thing I can find at any moment, then I think I am the body, but in fact I am everything moving around the body, and the body too.

To use a metaphor it's as if the universe was one single thing (which might very well be, but that isn't the point, just bare with me). So the universe is one whole single thing, but the Sun is convinced it is the Sun and it lives in the universe, sometimes it goes and visits Mercury, sometimes it visits Venus, and some others it goes and visits the Earth, but in reality it is everything moving around that center which is the Sun, and the Sun isn't actually a separated piece, it is both the Sun and everything around it. The confusion arises because at any moment, no matter what is around, it can always find the Sun, so it thinks that it is the only thing that it is. So that was my insight, with my body being the Sun in this metaphor.

Note: the metaphor was only to explain and not part of what I thought during the meditation

Edited August 10, 2017 by Mondsee

[Mondsee]

Day 38

 

Days in a row: 1

Start time: 02:45 p.m.

Finish time: 03:05 p.m.

Location: My room at my parent's house

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: open

Highlights: Sitting in full lotus I had random thoughts during the entire session, not focusing on any topic in particular. I had stomach ache and I managed to start seeing that pain as something that didn't cause me suffering. It was as when you are in a museum and you see something and you don't like it that much, but it's not as if that thing is causing you to suffer. The same happened with my left leg during the last minutes given that it got numb, and I would just see it as something that wasn't mine and therefore wouldn't cause me to suffer. All touching sensations became really interesting because after contemplating on them on a while I couldn't explain what those sensations were and how one sensation was different from the other.

[Afonso]

Keep it going! I remember when I had a super crazy monkey mind. I still do have monkey mind, but it's more relax. (Although it annoys me even).

The key is not to quit.

[Mondsee]

@Afonso I'm working at it! Thanks for your words of encouragement

[Mondsee]

Day 39

 

Days in a row: 1

Start time: 11:25 a.m.

Finish time: 11:50 a.m.

Location: Balcony at my parent's house

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: open at the beginning, then closed

Highlights: Very comfortable meditation sitting in half lotus. I didn't feel any physical discomforts whatsoever and I had very positive thoughts about friends. Some were memories and some were stories of my mind. I had to remind myself a couple time to remain aware of the thoughts.

Edited August 17, 2017 by Mondsee
Day count

[Mondsee]

Day 40

 

Days in a row: 2

Start time: 12:20 p.m

Finish time: 12:50 p.m.

Location: Balcony at my parent's house

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: open

Highlights: Sitting in half lotus. I thought about many different things including why I felt bad for not have been accepted in a job I applied for, about my ex-boyfriend, about friends and how it is necessary to find a balance between working to survive and not doing anything and just being, because if we dedicate to just "be", then we will die because we won't have a structure sustaining our lifestyle of just being, but if instead we work just enough to sustain as much time as possible to "just be" then we will be able to do that for much longer. I also thought about how things that don't come easy are good for us because they let us know if we really want them, if we keep fighting to get them. I thought about how failure is better than no failure, because it means that we're trying something. Every now and then, I reminded myself to be aware of what I was thinking.

[Mondsee]

Day 41

 

Days in a row: 3

Start time: 11:00 a.m.

Finish time: 11:35 a.m.

Location: Balcony at my parent's house

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: open most of the time, closed for short moments

Highlights: Extremely interrupted meditation session. I had to take a phone call from my father at the middle of it, and towards the end my mother started looking for me all over the place, until she found me meditating and told me "we are leaving in 15 min!". The rest of the time I had random thoughts and was able to maintain an awareness state of the fact that I was thinking stuff

[Mondsee]

Day 42

 

Days in a row: 4

Start time: 12:30 p.m.

Finish time: 01:10 p.m.

Location: Balcony at my parent's house

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: closed

Highlights: Super comfy meditation considering the length of it. At some point I thought that I could stay like that all day long, but if I wasn't going to do it was because "I had other things to do", and I kept repeating that same phrase several times as a mantra, kind of savoring the lack of meaning of it. At some point I disappeared, I was still thinking stuff, but I wasn't aware of absolutely anything, I wasn't observing my thoughts, nor was I conscious that I was sitting there meditating. It was almost as if I had fallen asleep during the meditation, although I wasn't sleeping. I reminded myself to raise awareness more after that. Also, at some point, the shape of my hands became very very confusing, it was as if I couldn't remember the position of the fingers in my hands, and I couldn't know in which position I had them. During all that time I didn't move them, I just realized that I genuinely couldn't understand the shape of my hands at some point, as if they were things I had never seen before.

[Mondsee]

Day 43

(Report from Monday the 28th)

 

Days in a row: 1

Start time: around 4 p.m. (maybe)

Finish time: around half an hour later

Location: Garden at J.G.'s house

Technique: Do nothing + mindfulness meditation

Eyes: open, closed at the end

Highlights: Maybe the most beautiful meditation I've had. I sat down next to a friend of mine under a tree in the garden and melted into nature. I picked a yellow flower as a focus point and let my mind free, and it started labelling some of the external stimuli (hear, feel, see). I had no major distractions, and reached an amazing state that felt as if I had reached a perfect balance. At some point I thought I could stay there forever, but my friend finished his meditation and told me some words, so I decided to stop there too and give him my attention. Finishing that way felt very organic (compared to waiting for an alarm to ring) and everything appeared more "real" or more "alive" after it.

 

Day 44

 

Days in a row: 1

Start time: 9:25 a.m.

Finish time: 9:40 a.m.

Location: Room at my old flat

Technique: Do nothing

Eyes: closed

Highlights: Monkey mind all the way through. I could feel tension in some parts of my body. I thought about things that I have to do, about things that I should have done and how my peers are accomplishing more in their lives than I am. Deep down I could feel myself observing those thoughts and knowing they don't mean anything, but on the surface they felt very real. Towards the end I wanted the meditation to end to be able to stand up and go and do something.

[Lynnel]

I'd advise you stop switching techniques so much and also start with 20 minutes and once you can do it daily without fail, then up it till 30 minutes and then maybe an hour.

Being consistent wins over length every time.

[Mondsee]

Hey @Lynnel , thanks for your comment! See... the only two techniques I actually use are mindfulness meditation and do nothing. Personally I would like to be able to do a mindfulness meditation every day and work towards raising my awareness more "actively", but there are days in which a do nothing meditation just feels more natural to me. I don't decide what technique I'm going to practice until I'm sitting and I've taken some deep breaths and recognized the direction in which my mind naturally wants to go.

What is the technique you use? It sounds like you are a bit more advanced, how did you get to that point?  I'd be interested in your experience!

[Lynnel]

@Mondsee

I use a form of Trataka where I stare into a single given point and clear the mind of all images trying to be extremely focused and present.

Also it's a Strong determination sitting as I do not move, and if I have some cleansing to do I do not even blink

And when focusing becomes easy or too difficult I may just stare blindly and it's a form of do nothing.

Honestly the SdS is the main compotent and Trataka is just so nice for concentration.

I've been doing 30 minutes for more than a year every single day ( I've done one hour sits but those are not sustainable as I have quite a chaotic schedule).

It's actually quite easy because you get used to it after a while and it can get very amazing if you have a yoga practice, then after 10 minutes or so you will plunge into a state of focused and relaxed attention/ inner peace. ( Focus being relaxed means that you drain less energy while focusing because it becomes effortless to some extent => you are wayyy more effective during your daily life).