How To Meditate Longer?

[kyle barnett]

I have been meditating for four years now. But I feel like I am not improving as much as I want to be. I usually meditate 30 or 20 minutes. It has been so long and still I even find 30 minutes challenging. What is going on? Am I just not committing hard enough? At some points I increase my meditation up higher to like 50 minutes, but then I have lazy days, with very foggy mind, and it just becomes way too difficult and I get too restless. I understand that as part of my practise I have to learn to accept even those states, but I don't feel I am growing at all. Other distractions come into my life and pull me back down. So I end up not improving but barely just maintaining my practise. I see people wh have very sharp minds like my maths teacher. He used to take part in zazen. He mediates 2 hours a day. I jusr dream of getting to the point where I can sit for long periods of time and be happy. Not attached to distractions. I mean I don't have to be some kind of monk. Bu t at least I want to be on the path of mastery with my non dual practise. It is what I value the most as a self help apprentice. I just can't seem to get more conscious or more content or lose more of my ego or whatever. I can't improve. Does anybody have any advice, or is anyone else struggling? Do I just need to surrender all my other distraction attachments? Work harder?

 

I know time is not as important as quality of mediation, but at the same time. I feel being able to be okay sitting and not doing anything is very important. Because I am losing the need to have entertainment and all that shit. I want to be fulfilled and happy without it. But I just keep getting sucked back down

[Nahm]

It's great that your putting efforts in the right direction. Don't give up and you'll always get where you're going.  Spend some why time. Write the word meditation on a piece of paper and then write every why you can think of around it. Hopefully this leads to you wanting it more. An alternative might be  not to meditate, spend countless consecutive hours on your 'entertainment distractions' until you're sick of them. If you just can't focus on more of what you want, a sure fire solution is to focus more on what you don't want.  If all else fails, put on some Sex Panther, it works 60% of the time, every time. 

[Garuda]

 Everyone has bad days. Just have to keep trying and eventually it will get easier and easier. 

My bad days are when I have had a shitty diet the day before. 

[Alex K]

- Do 2, 3,... 10 periods of 20 minutes a day. Hell, just do 3-4 periods of 15 minutes! 

- Check out that you actually mediate correctly. For example 20 minutes of SDS filled with deliberate thinking about sex or work obviously would not get a 20 YO healthy man anywhere, but 20 minutes of do nothing would.

- Describe to yourself and for help to us, how exactly it is hard for you to meditate. Describe what results/changes do you feel in the last year of meditation.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Alex K