How to Start Meditating
I
get this question so much from friends and family, I thought I would address
it. I read a pretty cool article from Huffington Post that
I really agreed with. The biggest problem people have with meditation is how to
start.
It
doesn’t matter what practice you go with, or if you just do your own thing, the
main point is to start.
That’s where so many people I have talked to get hung
up. They feel like its impossible for them to get over their racing thoughts
and that their distracting thoughts are somehow a reflection of how “good” or
“bad” they are at meditation.
Let me set the record straight right now, meditation is not a sport—there is no winning or losing.
I
have been actively meditating for 6 years now, and I sometimes still
have the same racing thoughts as I had when I started. I don’t write that to
discourage anybody; the difference between my thoughts then and my thoughts now
in meditation is day and night. Now I recognize those thoughts as worries, or
what in Buddhism they call “attachments.” I know that these, for the most part,
are ephemeral, and I know to quiet my mind through the static.
Oftentimes,
these racing or annoying thoughts in meditation are a good gauge to how I am
living my life. It takes a lot of time and a lot of discipline to meditate for
say a half hour or an hour. My advice to somebody just starting is to not be so
concerned with how long you meditate for. Meditating for a long or short amount
of time isn’t necessarily a reflection of how much benefit you are going to get
from it.
For
my friends and family that always say: “Ben, I wish I could meditate like you—I
need meditation,” I say well then, go and do it. I have found in life that most
times the only person stopping you from doing something is you. Don’t let your
mind distract you. Start with 5 minutes, start with 1 minute. Start with whatever
you can, the point is to just start.
originally written for here.:
good stuff man! I love meditation!
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