Hi Guys,

I'm writing this post in the search for a little help and insight. I appear to have hit a bit of a wall in my meditation practice. I've been meditating everyday (at least twice for 20 minutes) for the past year, but the last several months haven't seen much progress. Generally when things are good I can keep a clear mind for maybe 1-5 minutes. This is usually done sitting down, but I do try it lying down sometimes. I also occasionally repeat my mantra while walking or doing menial tasks.

But lately... In some ways I feel like I've regressed. Some meditation sessions are absolutely terrible. Sometimes I can barely clear my mind at all - it is just buzzing with the events of the day. Sometimes I think it is diet/timing related. I've become a little frustrated with it, and I now feel a little anxiety after a session. Mainly its a feeling of tension in my chest.

I used to meditate and feel absolutely wonderful afterward, but not anymore. The tension is becoming more and more of a problem. On a good day, I'll start the meditation session off fairly well. But each time my mind de-rails my focus, I get more agitated and find it harder to focus on the mantra. By the end of the session it feels like it's just fallen apart. My head feels somewhat clear, but my body (mostly around the heart) is incredibly tense.

I took a meditation class many months ago and the teacher said slumps are normal and common. He recommended staying the course and not taking a break - he said a break would cause further regression. So I've just been trying to meditate regularly with discipline - but the motivation is taking a beating.

In general, I've felt a little more detached (i.e. less grounded) in the physical lately. I don't get caught up in materialism, gossip, and entertainment nearly as much as I used to. The downside is that I just find it harder and harder to relate to the people around me and I feel like that might be related to the meditation problem. I know love is the answer (on the intellectual level), but I also get frustrated seeing how my gut reaction to events in my everyday life is far from low entropy. Although, I do think I'm getting better.

Thanks for reading.

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Mike

Mike,

The key is to never give up but have no specific expectations. You cannot expect to have continuing improvement. Try asking for insight during your meditation, a clue to what you might do to get past this temporary problem.

Ted

Hey Mike,

Sometimes it takes me twenty minutes just to clear the gloop from my head. You could try extending you meditation session times (I do an hour first thing in the morning - with more time spent on the weekends). Also, it may be worth incorporating some qi gong or yogic breath/body awareness exercises into your meditation. There's a fair bit on the web about this, the link below looks like it could be useful:

http://www.anmolmehta.com/blog/2007/11/ ... ma-e-book/

Nick

I have been trying to practice a light meditation in every day waking life and I think it has really helped my meditation. When I catch myself doing something and being so out of the moment that I am doing it by rote because my mind is so busy, I stop and clear my mind and think of a healing project I am working on. That helps me focus on one thing. There are a lot of times that I will be thinking and planning when it is totally unnecessary. Things will unfold and take care of themselves.

Try starting on your waking data stream. Simplify and don't over think situations. If I have a problem coming up or something I am worried about I tell myself, "Best possible outcome." and let it go. It is amazing how well things work out without all the worrying behind it. If you can have periods where your mind is relatively blank and calm during your waking hours it is a lot easier to do when meditating.

Are you using any kind of binaural beats?

during my Buddhist phase when I was younger, spent a lot of time on the cushion, but never actually enjoyed it....trying to work my way back to this

like the above suggestion, maybe try meditating for an hour or a couple of hours once, to see if there is some particular bit of stuff you need to digest, get over a hump, or find some maniac Buddhists to hang with and do a weekend retreat as shock treatment. Maybe your light meditation has loosened some stuff up that needs to shoveled out.

I think any conversation can be classified as being on a continuum from nasty gossip all the way up to peacemaking or tantric/zen level instructional playfulness, and one role to try (to overcome the boredom of most conversations) is to attempt to step any high entropy conversation up a notch from where it is, within the range of decision space that the crowd can handle, without them getting weirded out. Also, getting people to talk about themselves and seeing if you can help them improve their perspective on their problems. You also need to find your crowd, which might take some effort.

here is a link to gnaural to build a binaural beat file

http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/

this from Tom

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

What wonderful advice, thank you!

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Ted,

Wow, I didn't realize I had that expectation of improvement. But it is true, I am probably expecting too much.

Nick,

Yeah, I forgot to mention that 20 minutes is really the minimum time I spend. Average would probably be about 30 minutes, with close to an hour on weekends. I usually do see better results on the weekend - thanks for pointing that out.

I've heard of pranayama before and it probably helps. It seems a little at odds with Tom's "you can meditate anywhere anytime" philosophy, but in isolation it probably helps.

Sainbury,

Yeah, being present is something I've been working with lately too. It's funny though because historically I've been the COMPLETE opposite of this. Constantly planning or worrying. It makes me shake my head with how "wrong" of a path I was on before. I have a large hill to climb with that.

I've made my own binaural beats with gnaural and I've listened to a bunch of hemi-sync. I used to listen to them regularly when I first started (I've even been to the Gateway Voyage at TMI) but after a while I found my mantra and the binaural beats would seem to be at odds with eachother. It felt like they would be pulling me in different directions. On a rare occasion they would seem to work together and I would get deeper than I ever have before - but that would be rare. So I just decided to let them go and work on it without the training wheels. Has anyone else experienced the beats as a negative influence? Maybe it's just in my head.

Kroeran,

Thanks, that's great advice. I'd compare it to retreating in a monastery versus living in the trenches of this western world.

I'm still looking for my crowd. I've tried a couple different meditation groups but they used so many metaphors it made my head spin. I'm seriously reconsidering going back though.

Thanks everyone for the comments so far.

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Mike

I have changed my "mantra" from something simple ("dow ringgggg") to now "producing" my own frequency in my head and playing it uppp and down, sometimes like a binaural beat, sometimes a steady frequency . Perhaps your own individual "mantra", be it visual, aural, or whatever else , might not be enough to hold your intellect's attention anymore? I found that I was getting bored of the dow ringgg and slowly drifting off.

Good Luck! I'll be doing it with ya!

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Are you sure it was Ahash31 really typing this? If it helps you out, does that even matter?

hashjazz.com

I'm thinking :

Coffee

Also, different coffees are different. You might be used to functioning on a pot of Folgers okay, (it still does get in the way though. Tom's & others' cautions about diet and physical awareness should be taken very seriously.) , and then switch to a different brand and have pretty intense effects set on, including extreme irritability and a mind that keeps racing almost uncontrollably for 12 - 18 hours. And that's if you don't drink more coffee for that long.

Sugars and other chemicals also can get in the way. There is a long thread about diet issues elsewhere on the site.

-Montana

I agree with you there, Mike. I try to practice life as a meditation too. Commuting, often at work when there's no one around, at home, playing music - these all get you focused and present to the moment. Makes you really aware of the things that pull you out of waking consciousness and into an unconscious content-led state of being - TV, food/drink chemicals, certain attitudes and energies towards you, past or future focused thought forms etc. A man named Stephen Russel AKA The Barefoot Doctor labels this as 'flipping in and flipping out' - tis a good term. When you notice you're flipping out, you can then just flip right back in to the conscious state again.

With you on the coffee Montana, or any caffeine. Instant fuzz head.

Nick

Adam,

Thanks, I found switching to a different auditory mantra has helped. Whenever I would follow a thought accidentally I found myself automatically switching to the old mantra in the background - which tells me that it is probably not as effective anymore. Something that requires a bit of focus is required, to drive me away from the other thoughts. I can't blank out my mind yet without a mantra - at least not for very long. :)

Montana,

Yes I've definitely noticed an affect on my consciousness when I have drunk coffee. I've never been a huge coffee drinker to begin with, so I only drink it on rare social occasions. Same goes with alcohol.

Sugar is definitely my vice though... I eat way too much sugar.

Nick,

I like the term "flipping in" and "flipping out" - it's a good descriptor. :)

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Mike