Have Been Meditating Constantly For 4 Months\not Much Progress

[Ether]

Anyone experiencing the same?

[Max_V]

The first week you feel a big impact, after that it takes a year or so to really notice a change. 

The difference in effects you get from 1 year and 10 years is unimaginable. You just have to keep at it. It will be the best habit you ever implemented in your life.

[Arman]

41 minutes ago, Ether said:

Anyone experiencing the same?

Were you feeling frustrated or in an uneasy place when you wrote this post? I ask this because I have found that when I am upset and in negative emotions, I often weave a narrative that nothing I have been doing is working and that everything is the same. When I am clear and happy however, the gains are obvious and encouraging.

Can you be sure that you are the same person you were 4 months ago? Often if we are changing constantly and incrementally, it is difficult to be aware of just how much growth we have made - particularly if we are focused on the challenges in front of us. A puppy can double in size in a few weeks but I doubt he hardly notices. Four months is not necessarily a lot of time, but still, if you have been practicing regularly then I expect there will have been some changes in your life. Are you being completely honest to your whole self? 

What are some of the smaller gains you have experienced? Can you share those? 

[Forestluv]

I can get trapped into the concept of "progress".

I remind myself that meditation is not linear progress toward a destination. It is learning to be aware and experience the present moment. I'm always zero steps from what I seek.

[HII]

34 minutes ago, Arman said:

I have found that when I am upset and in negative emotions, I often weave a narrative that nothing I have been doing is working and that everything is the same. When I am clear and happy however, the gains are obvious and encouraging.

Thanks for the reminder! Any tips on how to avoid getting into this narrative when one is in that state?

[LaucherJunge]

@Ether Depends what you see as progress. You will most likely fall back into old problems and patterns multiple times with the opportunity to heal them even more with every single time until they are completely gone. So at times you might feel terrible even though you have been very consistent because this is the only way you can still be growing at one point, new challenges have to come.

Edited November 9, 2017 by LaucherJunge

[Adam M]

How do you measure progress in meditation? 

That's like trying to measure the weather with a ruler.

[cetus]

@Ether You don't notice the mind is much quieter after meditation? Or that it completely stops during meditation? If not, your either not doing something right or you need more practice. After 4 mos. you should be seeing these benefits with them gradually expanding with practice. For instance, I just finished a meditation session and needed to look at the clock when finished so I knew how long it was. I had no idea. It was 42 mins. Seemed like 5 mins. to me. There was empty awareness the whole time, but not in any relationship to the the body/mind existing within time. In other words, it was a timeless state of empty awareness.

[Ether]

1 hour ago, Arman said:

Were you feeling frustrated or in an uneasy place when you wrote this post? I ask this because I have found that when I am upset and in negative emotions, I often weave a narrative that nothing I have been doing is working and that everything is the same. When I am clear and happy however, the gains are obvious and encouraging.

Can you be sure that you are the same person you were 4 months ago? Often if we are changing constantly and incrementally, it is difficult to be aware of just how much growth we have made - particularly if we are focused on the challenges in front of us. A puppy can double in size in a few weeks but I doubt he hardly notices. Four months is not necessarily a lot of time, but still, if you have been practicing regularly then I expect there will have been some changes in your life. Are you being completely honest to your whole self? 

What are some of the smaller gains you have experienced? Can you share those? 

I have made progress in time i have been meditating

[Ether]

@cetus56 I meditate for 20 minutes, and the mind is just as it is when i begin meditating, but this might be because i give my thoughts no attention all day. THere is not one day where i dont give them no attention.

 

 

[cetus]

@Ether Just as a suggestion, you may want to try listening to this. I do when the mind has a lot going on and it works quite well for me. I put on headphones and place awareness on the breath. Which I feel plays a role in meditation. Slow inhale, slow exhale.   Slow inhale with the OOOOO- than slow exhale into the MMMMMM. Get a rhythm going and stay focused on the rhythm of the breath. Give it a try sometime. Maybe it will work for you too. Good Luck!

 

 

[cetus]

@Ether One quick note to add. Have no expectation! Just be the breath.

 

[Nahm]

keep a journal, it helps when you go back and read what you wrote weeks or months ago, to see your expansion. in a couple months, read your old posts through your profile page.  you will see a big difference.  it can be tricky, because one of the benefits is longer term thinking.   you want and need it, we all do.  just keep meditating, twice a day is twice as good.  you are here, at actualize.org, you have come far already.  A case could be made that you have done the hardest part, the part anyone rarely does. you made the decision to make yourself a better person.  ?pretend somebody else wrote this post, and read your contributions a few times from top to bottom.  I wager you'll see something right now.  

[Leo Gura]

@Ether First few years are pretty slow, especially if your meditation is sloppy and weak.

Stick with it anyways. It gets exponentially better with practice. And take some week-long retreats to super-charge your practice.

Or add some psychedelics to it and you'll get 10 years of growth in 6 months.

[Ether]

@Leo Gura Im not into drugs, hopefully never will be.

 

Im in school, dont have time for retreats.

[Ether]

@Leo Gura How is a retreat like?

[Antonius]

1 hour ago, Ether said:

Im not into drugs, hopefully never will be.

Sounds like you bought into too much bullshit society and government sold you about drugs.

Maybe try doing your own research on drugs, see what you find

[Nahm]

@Ether what meaning have you created for  “drugs”? 

[Arman]

22 hours ago, HII said:

Thanks for the reminder! Any tips on how to avoid getting into this narrative when one is in that state?

I'd be a liar if I said I was good at avoiding it. The narrative seems to be the natural and spontaneous product of the negative state itself because the thoughts are just resonating at that frequency. How to avoid negative states is another thing altogether. I've found that recognizing what's happening (that caught in illusory narrative) is what slowly starts to release the power from it. Frankly, trying to avoid it seems to make it worse so my advice would be not to try to avoid it but recognize it as a natural thing to enter contracted states as a result of expanding and growing, and to surrender to that experience as best you can when it arises. 

[Source_Mystic]

What are you looking to gain from meditation ?  What kind of meditation are you doing and for how much time  each sitting ?    You have a couple of choices one refine and hone the type of meditation you are doing to make it more productive or find another type. 

Edited November 23, 2017 by Source_Mystic