Am I meditating poorly?

[TruthSeeker47]

I have been meditating for 40 mins a day for around 4 months now but it's come to the point where it feels like more of an obligation rather than something I enjoy doing. I don't really do anything else besides sit cross legged on the floor and think about the implications of non duality, or relive memories of me as a kid. I think its good for my discipline but I also feel that I'm not really on the right path to enlightenment. Also do any of you experience pain in your back or legs after 20 - 30 mins of meditation? and if so what helps you cope with it?

[Rilles]

To the ego its an obligation but the ego shouldnt be involved in meditation at all. You shouldnt be actively thinking during meditation at all just sit and be aware of your breath or the moment. If you have backpain I suggest you use a chair and sit straight. Lastly you cant meditate badly as long as you are aware, if a hundred thoughts come racing towards you just notice them, dont judge your sessions. Peaaaace

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LkoOCw_tp1I

Edited March 29, 2018 by Rilles
added a link

[TruthSeeker47]

@Rilles Thank you

[Neo]

 

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

[Leo Gura]

@TruthSeeker47 Hate to break it to ya, but you haven't been meditating. You've been doing the exact opposite, driving deeper into monkey-mind.

For meditation to be effective, it must be done properly, rigorously. You need to pick one proper technique and master the shit out of it. Like:

• Do Nothing
• Labeling
• Observing the breath
• Kriya yoga
• Concentration
• etc.

Pick up. Read the instructions for it. Then follow the instructions rigorously.

I have several good books about meditation in the book list. Might want to check out the Consciousness section there.

[TruthSeeker47]

@Leo Gura That sucks! So I was better off doing nothing lol, and I will thanks

[Rilles]

Just start over in the morning! Ive fucked up this habit a few times too, good luck! 

[kieranperez]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

For meditation to be effective, it must be done properly, rigorously. You need to pick one proper technique and master the shit out of it.

I FINALLY completed a whole month of consistent meditation every single day after 2-3 years of inconsistency. My meditation technique has been Do-Nothing. Are you saying to literally it's best to just commit to that? As in, if that's what I've been doing, don't dabble around with other meditation techniques? I know there's nuance to this which is why I just want to clarify. 

[thehero]

@TruthSeeker47 

 

Do nothing is a specific meditation technique, check out leos vid that goes into detail, its a bit nuanced 

[Colin]

I Just read a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris. It was very enjoyable, peppered with humor throughout. It might be of some interest to those in this thread

[PsiloPutty]

9 hours ago, TruthSeeker47 said:

@Leo Gura That sucks! So I was better off doing nothing lol, and I will thanks

Well, what you were doing sounds better than sitting there thinking about chicks or the new season of your favorite TV show. If you were thinking about non-duality, that's at least worthwhile, so don't kick yourself too hard. Just make the switch to an actual meditation technique and you'll see the progress you were wanting. Meditation can be as simple as sitting there for 40 minutes just paying close attention to your breath going innnnn and ouuuuut, over and over. When a thought or image pops up, acknowledge it and let it go, coming back to focus on your breath. That's a simple breath-focused meditation. Better to find this out after 4 months than to never find it out, so get back at it.   

[Matt8800]

12 hours ago, TruthSeeker47 said:

I have been meditating for 40 mins a day for around 4 months now but it's come to the point where it feels like more of an obligation rather than something I enjoy doing. I don't really do anything else besides sit cross legged on the floor and think about the implications of non duality, or relive memories of me as a kid. I think its good for my discipline but I also feel that I'm not really on the right path to enlightenment. Also do any of you experience pain in your back or legs after 20 - 30 mins of meditation? and if so what helps you cope with it?

That used to be me until I discovered DMT. I started combining DMT and meditation and I can now reach very deep, blissful states even without psychedelics. If you are not interested in psychedelics, Im not sure what a solution would be. I would not have figured it out without DMT. Im sure other psychedelics could work but DMT was highly effective for me.

People that know me all agree I am a radically different person now.

[blazed]

9 hours ago, TruthSeeker47 said:

@Leo Gura That sucks! So I was better off doing nothing lol, and I will thanks

That's not completely true,  letting your mind wander and contemplation is actually good however you need to do it with wisdom of a spiritual mind.

A normal mind contemplating:

recalls old memories,  gets angry,  frustrated, thinks about how they could have done things differently, how they were treated wrongly or got a bad deal, how life is unfair and owes you something, unforgiving, regretful,  resentful, etc - this is weak ass thinking that will drive you into lower consciousness.

Spiritual contemplation is more like: making peace with the past, letting go,  coming to terms,  accepting reality, seeing through the illusions,  seeing big picture,  seeing things in alternative ways,  filtering out the shit in your system so you're mind is more relaxed and chilled etc.

[Matt8800]

Another tip: watch all of Leo's videos on mindfulness and meditation so you can experiment with different techniques. 

One thing I figured out is that I carefully observe thoughts that arise and focus my observation on them very intensely when they do. They disappear like a mirage and leave my mind empty. An analogy would be a hunter waiting in the bushes for a prey to step in his trap so he can pounce. I can reach very deep meditative states this way. Sometimes I feel intense bliss that I cannot describe.

Edited March 29, 2018 by Matt8800

[TruthSeeker47]

@Rilles Thanks!

@thehero I tried that one before actually but it was very challenging so I think i'm going to do breathing meditation

@PsiloPutty Thanks I will start doing that today, do you think I should change the duration? or keep it at 40 mins

@Matt8800 I used to smoke a lot of weed lol but then I started feeling strange and I think it's contributed to a kind of de-realisation that i'm feeling now so I probably wont do DMT

@blazed How to I switch my mind to a spiritual one rather than how it is now?

@Matt8800 Thanks and okay I will try that today also

 

[Leo Gura]

12 hours ago, TruthSeeker47 said:

@Leo Gura That sucks! So I was better off doing nothing lol, and I will thanks

I've fallen into the same trap. It's all part of the journey. There will be many traps along the way. Just keep improving gradually and in a few years your life will be going in cool new places.

[blazed]

@TruthSeeker47

Be mindful,  catch yourself in negative thought patterns, switch to more conscious patterns question why you feel a certain way,  and if you can let go,  and if all this matters upon Death etc.

You should also do strict meditation though different benefits, like focus on breath or mindfulness labeling.

The do nothing meditation is like a meditation that allows the mind to wander in any direction but again you got to be spiritually mindful a regular person can  come out of contemplation feeling more angry or upset due to mental thinking.

Edited March 29, 2018 by blazed

[TruthSeeker47]

@Leo Gura Thank you Leo, and will do.

@blazed Okay I will try to do that next time I feel upset, I just tried a 30 min breathing meditation and I felt lighter after doing it, I hope that is a good sign because focusing on my breath is alot harder than just sitting there

[Kisame]

Two main forms of meditation are usually taught in the West, and both are beneficial for different reasons. I personally switch between these two most of the time. They are:

1. Concentration meditation. This develops concentration, i.e. your ability to focus on one specific thing for long periods of time. A common technique is focusing on the breath. You can focus on the feeling of your belly moving as you breathe, the feeling of the air passing in and out of your nostrils with each inhale and exhale, or any other aspect of the breath, but pick something about our breath and just focus on that. Let your breath be as natural as possible. When your mind inevitably wanders, and you suddenly remember that you're supposed to be focusing on the breath, just bring your focus  back. If you wish, you may count ten breaths, and each time you lose count because of mind wandering, start from the beginning again. This will give you a general sense of how good your concentration is. 
2. Mindfulness meditation. This is "meta-cognition," being aware of thoughts as thoughts, and sensations as sensations. For example, usually what happens when you think of something that made you angry (e.g. someone cut you off in traffic, or your boss was acting like a dick), you just get lost in the memory and become angry. When you properly apply mindfulness, you are aware that you are becoming angry, rather than just becoming angry. You see the angry thought arising, rather than getting lost in the thought. Then, when you see the thought as just a thought, you deliberately observe it with detachment, and (insofar as you are able) just let it go. Don't pursue trains of thought. Some thoughts will be "stickier," like anxious or angry thoughts, and will want to hang around. This is fine, simply remember to observe them with detachment and let them come and go. 

When you get better at concentration meditation, you can enter really peaceful, relaxed, and stereotypically "blissed out" states of awareness. This is nice, but note that it's hard to bring this state of altered consciousness to everyday life, because rarely in real life do you get the opportunity to focus on one thing exclusively for long periods of time. This sort of meditation and super-concentrated absorption existed before the Buddha's time, but wasn't a particularly reliable path to radical alterations in consciousness (i.e. enlightenment), since as I mentioned, it's difficult to replicate in everyday life.

The Buddha  is usually credited with formalizing the second type of meditation, mindfulness, which is also called vipassana or insight meditation. That is, insight into the nature of reality. Theoretically, mindfulness meditation is a far more reliable path to awakening than concentration meditation. When you get really good at this type of meta-cognition, and detachedly recognizing all your thoughts and perceptions as nothing more than fleeting subjective phenomena, you begin to grasp the insight that your "true self" is not the things of which you are aware, but rather the consciousness that is aware of them. 

16 hours ago, TruthSeeker47 said:

Also do any of you experience pain in your back or legs after 20 - 30 mins of meditation? and if so what helps you cope with it?

Yes, this happens to everyone, and it's actually a great opportunity to apply mindfulness meditation specifically. Many awakened individuals have apparently superhuman levels of pain tolerance. There are the marathon monks of Mount Hiei, Thich Quang Duc who burned himself alive in gasoline and didn't so much as flinch, or guys like Peter Ralston who can undergo a root canal with no anesthesia as though it's nothing. The reason they're capable of such things is that they have enormous sensory clarity, in that they can distinguish between physical sensations and negative thoughts, and the constant experiential awareness that they are not the sensations and they are not the thoughts. They can disidentify from both, and watch them detachedly as nothing more than sensory phenomena. Rupert Spira always uses the metaphor of a television screen. The screen is consciousness itself, and all things that the screen shows are thoughts and sensations. But no matter how negative or painful the images that appear, they can never fundamentally change or damage the screen. When you have true insight that you are the screen, and not the screen's images, the images lose their power. Hence the pain tolerance.

So what I'm saying is, when you begin getting uncomfortable or bored, meditate on the discomfort. Try to tease out the differences between the physical pain and the negative thoughts that the pain provokes, and with mindful awareness explore how they interact, congeal together, and occasionally separate. 

Of course, don't push it to the point of actual injury or anything, but generally speaking, if you can get into your meditative position and hold it with no issues for the first couple of minutes, it's not going to permanently damage you if you hold it for another hour. 

[TruthSeeker47]

@Kisame Okay firstly thank you for giving really clear definitions of the two types, I mentioned earlier I had a really hard time practicing 'no mind' meditation which I guess would fall under the mindfulness category i'm assuming. But although it would be easier to keep with breathing meditation I will experiment with a form of mindfulness later today. And wow thats really inspiring that those guys are capable of that, But why would they choose to do those things? I get creating discipline and separation from sensations/ thoughts but even so they still have to feel the pain. And lastly do you recommend I change from sitting cross legged to something more difficult like a half lotus? or just wait until I can go a full hour cross legged.