Tonight is my third week of SF Insight's Buddhist Mindfulness Meditation which is basically their introductory class to meditation. It's five-weeks with one all day retreat on a Saturday and so far it's been revealing, enjoyable and ultimately helpful in the way that it's helped me to understand what meditation is about in a way that makes sense. I find myself bringing some of the techniques we've been going over to a variety of situations and places - bus, walking, at work and at home - and have found enough scattered moments without "monkey mind" to feel like the five weeks is only going to be a beginning but something worth any amount of time I invest in it.
One of the suggestions is to keep a meditation journal and that's what this blog is about. Since I've been meditating almost every day, I'm using this time for experimentation. What I mean by that is there are so many forms and so many teaching models that I figure I need to try them all out to find out what works for me and what doesn't. So far I've tried apps like Mindfulness I & II and tonal presentations like Equisync and HoloSync. I've done guided and silent meditations and walking and sitting meditations and the only thing I've learned to avoid is meditating in bed because all that does for me is help me fall asleep.
Today's journey was on the bus (I know, lame to not walk on such a beautiful day) using Mindfulness I and doing a 15 minute guided meditation. It definitely brightened my day and put me in a better frame of mind for a Thursday and since the code of conduct on MUNI these days tends to be pretty loose, I feel okay about keeping my eyes mostly closed for at least part of the journey (aka 15 minutes). I say mostly because there are moments when I do open them (eyes) but I haven't really felt like I left a meditative state. Staying focused on the breath, the voice in the headphones is getting easier and part of that is due to a better understanding of why staying anchored to your breathing is so critical.
I will take some time this afternoon to go down to the chapel of the church and do another session and since the space is so beautiful and peaceful, might try a silent meditation using only the bells that begin and end the sit. I will probably not blog that but think it might be helpful to get my head re-adjusted and put me in a good frame of mind for tonight's session!
That's all for now...
"At the end of the day, I can end up just totally wacky, because I've made mountains out of molehills. With meditation, I can keep them as molehills."
Ringo Starr
