Meditation

If you were to draw an image of your breath, it would look like a figure eight, not a straight line, because there is continuity as your breath flows in and out.

Meditation is not about getting rid of all thoughts. It's learning not to get so lost in them that you forget the goal.

When trying to visualize during meditation, focus less on the clarity of the image, and more on the feeling it brings to the meditation.

• Imagine your happy place. Not just the image, but also the sounds, smells, and general overall feeling that goes with it (ex. Huatulco house view). There shouldn't be any great effort that comes with it. This minimal effort should be similar to when we do visualization exercises in mediation.

Often in life, our body is doing one thing and our mind is doing something else. The point of meditation is to bring the mind and the body to the same place. That is, the point is to bring the sensations, thoughts, feelings, sounds (and everything else) to the same realm: consciousness. There, we can realize that all of these objects arising in consciousness do so in a way that has deep commonalities with all other objects that may arise. In the end, we come to realize that all objects arising in consciousness can be objects of meditation.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a state of clear non-judgmental and un-distracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. mindfulness is about making insightful discoveries about the nature of our own mind. mindfulness is not a passive practice if you were being mindful, you were being passionate about objectively discerning out what is real in this present moment.

It's not a matter of thinking more clearly about an experience, it's the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. mindfulness is about recognizing the arising of thoughts and feelings, without being critical of them.

When thoughts arise, the purpose is not to eschew them, but is to be almost a third party observer of these thoughts having occurred. When we enter into a discourse with ourselves, we are absorbed with that. Being mindful is about being able to observe those thoughts as they are occurring.

Mindfulness is about being no longer perpetually identified with the contents of your thoughts.

Consider a sound that appears for only a moment— be it the creaking of a door, or a beeper going off. This sound exists for only an imperceptibly small moment. It doesn't stay past the point where it's sounding anymore. We simply observe them as they come, and then they are promptly gone. While meditating, we should strive to treat invading thoughts in much the same way— we observe them as they arise, but don't dwell on them.

Any sensory object is an object of mindful meditation. We only use the breath because it is something that is with us at all times. In actuality, any object arising in consciousness can be used as an object of meditation, be it sound, smell, sensation etc.

Once you learn to mediate you come to learn that boredom is simply a failure to pay attention.

• If something as simple as breathing can be a source of blissful contemplation, there's no way to be bored.
• In fact, boredom itself can be used as a object of intense interest.

Techniques

Music Harmony technique

This is done with a guitar preferably but a piano or keyboard will work. First you play an open A string and listen to it for about ten seconds. You play it again for ten seconds this time hum the note as it sounds. Then you play the E note a fifth higher and listen. Then drone the A string while humming the E note. You go down to the B play and listen then hum a B note while playing the open A string. You go around the circle of fifths playing every note and humming along to the A string. What will happen is you will feel the harmony of your voice and the string. As you go along that circle of fifths the harmony will become harder and harder to feel but that is the goal. You want to feel the experience of harmony. This is done once a day. Very interesting because your body can feel the sync with a string.

Pulsing technique

Lie on your back in a comfortable place with your hands open at your sides. Start with your left pinky and quietly feel the blood pulse in it. Do a count of five pulses and move on to the next finger. Do all the fingers and do the other hand. Then feel the pulses in your forearm and upper arms. Your shoulder. Move down to your toes and them up your legs. By the time you have done your entire body you will feel so relaxed

Timer technique

Do an intermediate length meditation session (in my case, this was around 30 minutes). Guided or unguided, but enter the space of mindfulness and awareness that is as deep as you can achieve so far in your practice.

After your session is done, set a timer on your phone for either 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes. Then forget about it. Go completely about your day as you normally would. My first time, I set it for 5 to be as close to the end of the session as possible.

When the timer goes off, pause and reflect on your experience between the end of your session and the timers ring.

What just happened? Where were "you"?