🧘✍️🧵I'm going to share some recent things from my meditation journal, because it seems something unusual is happening... So either that's of interest, or ppl can tell me "nope, this isn't unusual, carry on!" In any case, maybe some of the imagery here will be helpful.
Meditation journal: losing the breath count and thought addiction
27 tweets · August 2019 · 61 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
For context, I've been following the arobuddhism.org meditation course, and I've been doing a consistent 20-30min sit in the morning for the last 3 weeks. They suggest starting smaller but I'm with other people who are meditating that long, so!
Until this week my practice has been ~"count outbreaths up to 21 & back down to 1, repeat." This seemed to work quite well when I was at MAPLE in June, but the last few weeks... within 5mins into the meditation I'm barely remembering to count.
Getting lost in thought is a common, expected part of meditation, but when I do remember to count, I would typically count about 1 or 2 breaths before being gone again for multiple minutes.
Even moments of some awareness often lack a sense of "instructions: count breaths". Feels like walking into the kitchen & forgetting why. If someone asked "what are you doing?" I could tell them "well I'm supposedly counting breaths" but I can't seem to ask myself the Q.
To be clear: at the start of the meditation, I can often make it all the way up to 21, and sometimes all the way back down and part of the way back up again before I get disrupted. So this isn't just the "can't count to 3", it's specifically that it gets WAY harder as I keep on.
Anyway, yesterday the instructions said to drop the count and just become your breath. And it said "if you're lost in thought, return to counting". And I was like "Umm guys I can't even stay focused on counting."
So, yesterday I tried that for the first time. Here are edited notes on that first experience: Tried week-6 instruction, and it worked about as well as I anticipated, which is to say that I spent multiple minutes totally unaware of any intention to follow that instruction.
Had been reading Roaring Silence before meditation this morning, and it talks about shi-nè as painfully boring and as being the cognitive equivalent of quitting heroin cold turkey. Addiction to thoughts.
And now I'm thinking about the first night of the BioEmotive retreat, when I tried to ask @DougTataryn about my experience, and I said something like "I end up just thinking about interesting stuff during the meditation" and he said "you know that's not meditating, right?"
...I'm not actually sure which of these 2 things he might mean: - joke: of course you're thinking during meditation; if you were you wouldn't need to meditate - serious: if you're serious about meditation, you need to be committed to following the instruction/intention (Or both!)
And the intro to Roaring Silence talks about the importance of commitment. So all of this raises the question of whether on some level I'm not committed to kicking my addiction to compulsive thinking. Which might generate a kind of undermining, a forgetting of the instructions.
(And all of this is particularly rich in the context of having reading the section of Sane Asylum yesterday that talks about the backstories of various drug addicts that go to the Delancey Street Foundation.)
But it's really hard to talk clearly about competing commitments in the context of overcoming an addictive pattern, since the nature of addiction is that it's made of competing commitments.
It would be interesting to analyze the thought addiction (in me in particular) in terms of its goodself and badself dynamics.
Oh, I think the confusing thing maybe, for me, unlike someone with anxiety, is that my thoughts tend to be/feel rewarding. So there's actually a way in which the badself feels like the nonthinker. This might be the weird thing that feels turned around backwards in my case.
I'm noting that this seems weirdly in opposition to my remark to Benjamin in 2013. I asked "why meditate?" He said "helps me let go of thoughts" I said "what I need is help *holding onto thoughts* rather than help letting go." (ADHD...? 🤔) Oh, but not on a different level!
If we look at not the behavior but the sense of priority, then a self who expressed wanting to hold onto thoughts is expressing a stance of thoughts as valuable, as opposed to the antagonistic relationship someone with depression, anxiety, or an otherwise toxic DMN might have.
And if there is a pressure to think more/valuable thoughts, that would undermine the commitment to doing something other than thinking. (Inasmuch as this thread has an insight, I think this is it)
It feels somewhat structurally similar to the difference between being really present & receptive in a group conversation versus spending the whole time thinking of something witty to say when it's your turn to speak. Although I'm maybe better at listening than counting breaths.
Anyway, today I figured I'd just go back to counting—I don't think I'm ready to become my breath. Result: Wow. Even more distracted than yesterday. I set out to count but lost it by maybe 5mins in.
At one point, about 10mins in, I found an analogy. I've heard others describe the experience of becoming more calm, grounded, present as the meditation progresses, but this is definitely the opposite of my experience. (I've had this happen to me 2-3 times maybe)
Meditation analogy: I was wading out into the water and it was getting deeper and eventually I would lose my footing altogether and just be flailing. And then it occurred to me: "I float, so in principle I can stop flailing and it'll be fine"
...I think I managed this somewhat, which was pretty cool while it happened. Reminded me a bit of True Meditation or the first Aro course meditation 👇 ...and then I lost track of that instruction just like I'd lost track of the breathing/counting instructions.
...This thread got super long. I'm very curious to hear others thoughts on it! Do you resonate with anything here? Does any of it surprise you? Even just hearing yesses or nos to those two questions would help me orient, I think. 🙏
Tagging some peeps I know who have thoughts on meditation 👁️ @meditationstuff @Timber_22 @QiaochuYuan @jondubin @utotranslucence @_awbery_ Click here to go to the top of the thread 👇
@meditationstuff @Timber_22 @QiaochuYuan @jondubin @utotranslucence @_awbery_ Meditationthread #2 over here: (Tagging ppl again tho I'm less-so asking for advice this time; lmk if you want off my meditation taglist 🙂) @meditationstuff @Timber_22 @QiaochuYuan @jondubin @utotranslucence @_awbery_ @PeterBorah @garybasin @danielharan