Meditation Tracking

[Joel3102]

This recent talk on the blog and forum has led me to realise my meditation has been too mechanical and not done consciously enough for serious results. I was thinking of doing a daily rating system where I assess the quality of my meditation to keep track and look for any trends as well.

Here are the criteria for good meditationI am thinking of, any others I should add?

-alternates/wakefulness 

-focus

-monkey mind (lack thereof)

-bodily calmness 

[MsNobody]

@Joel3102 I wouldnt add anything else, but I would eliminate "focus" when we are focusing on something our brain is in activity, busy..

Meditation is all about relaxing, if you start adding more things and taking it too serious is not gonna be pleasurable and relaxing, plus you will give the monkey mind more food

I was watching one of Leo's videos today "How to meditate deeper", he talks about not having any goal while practicing meditation, so if you think your practice has been too mechanical maybe is time to let go of this idea of being more focused and instead of putting more effort just relax and be.

[Leo Gura]

@Joel3102 Funny, isn't it, how you want to create a mechanical system for being more conscious?

Why not just meditate and be conscious? Isn't it obvious when you're conscious and when you're mechanical?

[Joel3102]

@Leo Gura Yeah good point... Didn't realise the irony there!. I'll have to work on getting rid of the need to mechanically conceptualise and compartmentalise these things.

[Martin123]

12 hours ago, Joel3102 said:

This recent talk on the blog and forum has led me to realise my meditation has been too mechanical and not done consciously enough for serious results. I was thinking of doing a daily rating system where I assess the quality of my meditation to keep track and look for any trends as well.

Here are the criteria for good meditationI am thinking of, any others I should add?

-alternates/wakefulness 

-focus

-monkey mind (lack thereof)

-bodily calmness 

Yo you're totally defeating the whole purpose of meditation. It is better not to meditate at all than stress yourself over "AM I DOING THIS RIGHT? OMG I JSUT DIDNT ACCEPT WHAT IS! IS THIS ACCEPTING? OHOHOH DID I ACCEPT ENOUGH??...." Just... just stop, stop =D. 

Let it go, do what you feel like doing. If you don't feel like meditating, it may be not the worst thing in the world to invest your time in different activities! Meditation is not a cure-it all, eventhough it often is made up to be. It is a tool for you to realize that you are the cure-it all. And if it doesn't feel good to you, aka the cure-it all, it is counter-productive. 

[Shin]

Meditation session are totally random, some day it will be messy as hell, some day you won't even have any thought, keeping track of that is like keeping track of how many times you think of bugs bunny in the day, it makes no sense

 

[Martin123]

@Shin Today I thought of bugs bunny exactly 3.62 times, I expect rapid increase of bugs-bunny thoughts during dinner-time,. and then a little add-up just before sleep.

[Mediator]

I measure the greatness of my meditation experience by how much I have produced drool during the meditation session, the more the merrier.

[Joel3102]

One thing I've noticed is the more deep and focused my meditation is, the more my jaw tenses up and gets quite sore. It often extends to my neck as well. Anyone else experience this?