You're Meditating Wrong, And Here's How To Fix It (Personal Development Wisdom Snippets) | #611

[Agi Keramidas]
Welcome to Personal Development Mastery Podcast, and this is another snippet of wisdom where I select my favorite, most insightful moments from previous episodes. Let's dive right in.

[Earle Birney]
There's a thousand tips, and I think understanding that map is, and having a technique to follow has been so helpful for me because I didn't have that for years, and like I said, just kind of got a bunch of bad habits, and kind of wasted my time. And again, like I'm being very goal-oriented about a thing that a lot of people don't want to be goal-oriented about, and that's fine, you know, tons of benefits, and people, God bless however people want to live their life, fully support that. If we want to meditate to train the mind and to make the mind more controllable, happier, productive, efficient, stronger, yeah, I think, you know, a couple really quick things.

I think I thought meditation was about putting our attention on an object, like the sensation of breath at the tip of the nose, and then excluding everything. And I think that's a really common mistake where we're just trying to grab something and focus on it, exclude everything else, hold that object, try harder, focus more, and if we try harder and focus more, the mind will be able to hold on to that object in a single-pointed way, and I just don't think it works. I think that it has to be more expansive, I think there's an idea we can put our attention on an object like a spotlight, and that's an important aspect of how we can hold on to an object.

And then there's another aspect of expansiveness that allows us to keep the mind energized, for one, by allowing more input and sensation and awareness of their environment as we're holding on to that object that keeps the mind bright and vivid. So that was the first thing that popped into my head when you asked. Second thing is, I think that we meditate and we lose, and it's like, oh my God, I just spaced out for five minutes, I suck at this.

I'm so bad at this, it's so hard. And we've just done the exact opposite. We're just throwing the ball for the dog, and the dog dutifully brought it back, and then we're just like, scolding the dog, you know?

We want the mind to wake up and realize we're mind-wandering. And that moment of waking up, like, if we could appreciate that moment and be like, oh my God, this is amazing. The qualities of being present in the present moment, and the qualities of being awake here and now, and to appreciate that capacity of the mind that just woke up, and positively reinforce that through some sort of, good job, you know, nice.

You did what I, mind, you did what I want you to do. And then with that joyfulness, come back to the object, reset the intention, and then start that process over. I think that meditation has to be, for us to sustain a long-term practice, it has to be joyful.

And I think that's partly why this idea of progress can feel frustrating, or people have aversion to it. But I think if we can be successful, and if we can get the mind to be, this is something I want to do. I feel successful.

I feel good. I feel good. I'm getting the benefits out of it.

It's a huge step in having a consistent meditation experience.

[Agi Keramidas]
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