One Week Down

Wow, did it.

Sitting sure got easier as the week went on. I had challenges and some relaxation during the past week, sort of went through the extremes, but everything worked out fine.

I started this with minimal experience, 4 sessions under my belt and those were using mantra and visualization methods. During my own personal sits, I have been mostly using breath and thought awareness. At this point for me, it's better anyway.

My mind tends to be quite busy, and visualization is a bit difficult right now. I was listening to a couple of talks on Meditation this weekend (Jack Kornfield and Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche at Spirit Rock 04 02 2007 /available on Dharmaseed.org) and in these talks a busy mind was described as a "Monkey Mind". Well, my mind is 2 Monkeys gibbering away to each other.

By far, my biggest problem, not just in meditation, not really in meditation at all, but in daily life, is concentration. I have so much trouble concentrating, not because of outside distractions, I can ignore the outside world pretty well, but it's inside distractions that make me be scattered. I have so may thoughts that following one to fruition is almost impossible.

That is one thing that I think meditation is helping with now, even after only a couple of handfuls of sessions. They are not really long sits, 20-30 minutes tops, but they make me so much more attentive to my mind, and able to let things pass without focusing attention on the new, arising thoughts. Yesterday's (Day 7) sit was good. In fact it lasted almost 25 minutes (normally) 20, because I just plain didn't realize it had been that long. I haven't been timing my sits because I generally get up early and then go back to finish up, so it surprised me when I saw it had been almost 25 minutes.

Looking forward to the next 83 days!!