Meditation Consistency

Yeah I struggle with the same thing. My solution was to just start meditating at work. I'll eat on my 15 minute breaks, but then meditate in the employee bathroom on my lunch, lol. It's just a one person bathroom so I can lock the door. I have the will to meditate at work all the time, because my choices are limited, I can either meditate or chill in the break room and watch tv and talk to the other people there, so it's an easy choice to make. Not that I don't like the people I work with, but I talk to them all day, so I'd much rather spend my free time meditating.

Another thing too is to force myself to meditate even when I don't want to. Those meditations are usually pretty bad, but I find it to be very important to establish the habit of daily meditation, because when I do get the inspiration, if I haven't been practicing daily, that inspiration is wasted because I can't get as deep as I would have if I kept up my daily practice. So the less inspired meditations help to make the inspired ones much better.

Good luck.
Namaste

 

I hear you. I don't think there's anyway to do that though other than to just keep on meditating every day. That way you will eventually push through to another level, and hopefully that level is one that naturally keeps propelling you further. I've contemplated this over the years and have never come to any other solution.

 

It's simply the lower desires trying to stop you. As far as they are concerned, your Reason is throwing a revolution and they are doing anything they can to stop it by making you feel lazy and all other sorts of animal behaviors.

Once you meditate on a consistent basis for 9 months you can safely assume that it has become a habit and you won't feel right if you do not do it, it would be like not brushing your teeth or some similar example where not doing it will make you feel weird the rest of the day. The reason the period is 9 months is because it acts as a sort of gestation period for the spiritual self to bloom into a being that can survive independently, though it will still need your help in staying alive much like a new born baby.

When I first got into my system, before finding my Hierophants, there was a period of 10 months where I would meditate and then end up giving up, but I was also struggling with a drug addiction at the time so whenever I would relapse my meditations would become worthless as I had no focus and would be nodding off in the middle of meditation, and that 10 month period was spent in and out of rehabs and detoxes, and my meditation would resume when I was clean. Then I finally just "got it" and began doing my exercises on a daily basis. This perseverance went on from 5 months until I found my Masters, and when you have someone who knows how much or how little you've been meditating, it becomes much easier because you are no longer just answering to yourself and God, but have someone to scold you when you are slacking, and at early stages someone to try to "impress" with how much you are meditating and so missing even 1 session without the best of reasons is utterly unacceptable.

Also, meditation is one of the best ways to develop the will. At first the body wants to get up and move, to do anything else, after just a few minutes of sitting down to meditate. As you refuse to let your bodies urges control you, the body and lower nature slowly becomes subservient to the Reason and so doing other acts of will becomes easier as well.

To Will, To Know, To Dare, To Be Silent, To Liberate.

edit: It's a good idea to reserve an area where you meditate that you only go into for meditation, the most preferable is a separate room, but a corner that people don't walk through is good to. Set times of day where you meditate, and keep things as consistent as possible. Burn the same incense, light some candles, sit in the same asana, etc., so that even if you don't really feel like meditating, as soon as you sit down into that atmosphere your mind is triggered into it's meditation mode. There are many times that I don't necessarily feel like doing my askesis at night but once I sit down everything is just fine and I can stay in meditation with ease.

Also, as time progresses you will enter deeper and more blissful states and so you will be rewarded for your meditation instead of it being just a chore at first.

 

How long have you gone currently since the last break from meditation?

 

The only days I have missed in the last year since attaining a Master were due to astral-exertion, and at that I still attempted to meditate each day but when you over-stress the astral body it causes severe lethargy and weakness, so I was barely able to hold myself up in asana let alone remain focused, or barely even stay awake at that lol. Whenever you've over-exerted the astral body it is a bad idea to do certain meditations since they accumulate the energy that stressed it in the first place, I just attempted basic meditations that require focus such as thought control/observation and Japa.

So.... in the last year, there's only been maybe 2 days where I didn't at least try to meditate in some form.

The last time this happened was actually last week when at night I was blessed with a visit/vision of a certain Master and was given some teachings which I cannot consciously remember, only what the subject was. I was sort of "blasted" with energy, to the point that as I laid in bed I was thrashing around from how much energy was surging through my body. However, since I recovered my ability has increased at least 100% so the terrible feeling I had for about 5 days was well worth it.

 

Yea, I used to meditate about an hours worth a day for about a month. This last month though, I've meditated maybe 3 days? I feel like it was a nice seedling into my spirituality, but now I only use it to control my anxiety. I think it's your minds way of saying you enjoy reality more? But maybe if you still want to meditate often, it's your mind saying you enjoy reality too much?

 

Buy a meditation cushion, they are so much more comfortable to meditate on than the ground that it'll draw you back each time! (Zafu cushions are good if you google them)

 

I personally use a seiza bench that I built myself. I can't sit cross legged for long periods of time because my knees will start to hurt, but I can sit in seiza almost indefinitely and my butt or back will start hurting before anything else. If I had a cushion the butt wouldn't be a problem either lol.

 

personal experience


somtimes meditating is like by my self going inward.
and things like cigs, caffiene stress
jerking off

all these things can throw me off....


but like expanding and contracting.

somtimes getting out there and doing empathy mediation
being in groups of people and transmitting love

or even in situations where somone is being a dick.... holding space in your heart and having empathy.



i have been having trouble staying on track, but alot of people dedicate there life to meditation,

if you have different dharma you may not have the means....


no money, have to use energy working.
no money and little acsess to good food.
lot of energy spent working.



but
bottom line

its not bad if you dont meditate all the time
its not good if you do.


it just is.

dont lable it.

just attachment
it just is

 

I went through the same thing. I tried to get back into it with regimens, and schedules, meditate this many times a day for this long.


It turned out to be incredibly counter-productive. Meditation turned into a task looming over my head, and not only that but because I was chasing my idea of certain states, or chasing feelings I used to get, I wasn't focused on the meditation itself. The more you want to get a certain feeling out of meditation, the less you will get that feeling.


When meditation is a task to be done for a certain amount of time a day, it becomes naturally associated with feelings of stress. When you have a thought that says "I should be doing x" (try it, think of something you should be doing but you aren't doing) it naturally causes stress and anxiety. It may not at first, but eventually you reach a point where sometimes, even for a whole day, even for a few days, you just don't feel like meditating, and meditating is a sacred thing, never to be forced, or treated as a task to be completed every day. Meditating when you don't want to will not be very productive.

What worked for me (I got back to having all the feelings I was looking for in meditation, and in my daily life) was just meditating when I wanted to. Some days it's an hour every day. Some times I don't meditate all day. I find though that almost every day I get a natural desire to meditate. I don't time it, I just go until I feel it is time to stop, maybe 10 minutes, maybe an hour.

Basically what I do is, when the thought "meditating" arises in my head, if I get feelings of stress or any negative sensation I don't do it. If it arises of my head and i get positive feelings, I do it. I get more out of a 15 minute meditation that I feel good about than a forced hour long meditation.


In all honesty, the meditations I've done this way are the most productive meditations, because they are done in such a natural, joyful, spontaneous way. Not an "I have to do this today to reach this state" sort of way.


That's just me, I don't like restraints. I found that living by a schedule was a direct result of fear. I was afraid that if I didn't meditate all the time I wouldn't reach certain states, I would slip out of mindfulness. Then when I took a leap and stopped meditating on a schedule I found out that none of that was true.

Maybe a schedule would work for you, though, everyone is different. If you really want to go by a schedule then try it, and you will find out how it works for you soon enough. I would never have learned how bad schedules are for me if I didn't go by a schedule for a while.


It also depends on what you want. If you are looking for mindfulness, ability to live in the present and be happy and aware, and to gain understanding about the nature of reality, I promise you don't need a schedule.

If you are looking for spiritual evolution, well, that's more of a willpower thing, so maybe a schedule is best.


Oh and + 1 on the seiza bench. They are wonderful and Tris posted a good guide to building your own a while back... they are very easy to build, and very comfortable to meditate on, esepecially in a longer session.

I leave you with a zen story.

One day while on Nan-yueh Mountain Ma-tsu was practicing seated meditation. Upon seeing Ma-tsu in zazen the Abbot of Prajna Temple, Huai-jang, asked Ma-tsu, “In doing zazen what do you hope to accomplish?” Ma-tsu quickly replied, “To attain Buddhahood.” Huai-jang then bent down and took up a piece of tile and began to polish it. When asked by Ma-tsu what he was doing, Huai-jang responded by saying, “I am trying to polish this tile into a mirror.” Amused by all of this, Ma-tsu asked, “How can you hope to polish a tile and make it into a mirror?” Huai-jang promptly shot back with, “Since a tile cannot be polished into a mirror how can you sit yourself into a Buddha?” “So what must I do?” asked Ma-tsu. “Well, take the example of an oxcart. If it doesn’t move what to you whip, the cart or the ox?” Ma-tsu was silent. Then Huai-jang said something quite remarkable.

In learning seated meditation do you aspire to learn zazen or do you aspire to imitate the sitting Buddha. If the former, Zen does not consist in sitting or in lying down. If the latter, the Buddha has no fixed postures. The Dharma goes on forever, and never abides in anything. You must not therefore be attached to nor abandon any particular phase of it. To sit yourself into Buddha this is to kill the Buddha. To be attached to the sitting posture is to fail to comprehend the essential principle.

 

Np, I just hope you can find what it is you are looking for, regardless of how you go about it.


I find it helps a lot to ask yourself "Exactly what do I want to get out of meditation", or "Why do I meditate" in general. Get to the root of your desire to practice more. Use your conclusions to determine what you think is best for you. You know yourself better than any of us do.

 

Also another bit if wisdom, do not think that you can be a proper judge of your progress in meditation. Most of the time the really rough meditations where everything is very hard are the sign of progress. If you are always having the same results and never any issues than something is wrong (aside from an Adept maybe). You will get to a point here and there when your mind goes very silent for some days, and then it seems like you're back to the level of day one. This is because you never actually stilled the mind, but just went another level deeper into the mind to thoughts you never knew even existed that are constantly going through your head all day.

 

Something must be troubling you then.

That sounds like somethings very deeply on your mind at that moment but you dont wish to think of it so it take up all your mental energy subconsiously.


You should be able to meditate at any time and in whichever place once you come to a certain level in your own mind, in which you can easily pass into a meditative state by blocking out the outside world with a few breaths.

Resolve your problems and clear your mind.

 

Formal meditation has its uses, especially when you first start practicing it, or if you live in a monastery and have little else to do.

For me, meditation becomes part of life. There should be no division between internal and external - all is meditation. Making breakfast, walking to work, listening to someone speak, (add your own activity here) should be experienced with mindfulness and presence.

 

I think meditation is like medicine.

If you're ill, then you need a lot of it. But if you're well, then you don't need it as much.

I think you might be healthy at the moment, and thus don't feel the need to meditate so much.

--

For me, meditation comes as a means to... heal myself from mental disease. When I feel like my mental health is suffering, then I meditate.

Then I find meditation useful and healing.

But when I'm doing OK, and I have no stress, or mental burdens, I don't even attempt to meditate...

 

Like a boxer at the end of a round, my mind gets beaten up and gets exhausted...

And like a boxer, sitting on a stool with his arms hanging on the ropes, I sit down and meditate, but on the floor, with my hands held together and placed on my lap.

At the end of the one minute break, the boxer regains his strength and gets up, and as the bell rings, I open my eyes, and I am ready for another round of fighting with my opponent called, 'life'.

Life is one tough motherfucker...