Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Trips and traps

Wednesday: 20 minutes sitting

As I mentioned, the book I’m reading presents meditation as a journey that’s actually leading somewhere, versus just a thing to do for a few minutes a day to be better at life or whatever. Maybe that is not a surprise to you, but apparently everything I’ve read on the subject until recently has been rather Americanized.

Anyway, I’m on Stage One, where literally all I have to do is establish a regular meditation practice. I’m also working at the same time on Stage Two, where I aim to lengthen my periods of focus and shorten my periods of distraction. Doing both at once is fine (and book-approved), and I suspect—since I’m really taking my time to get Stage One right—that when I’ve mastered it I will have pretty much finished Stage Two as well.

All this stage stuff is tricky, though. You want to stay motivated and aware of where you are on your journey, but you also don’t want to get fixated on goals or achieving the next milestone. I feel like I could be vulnerable to that latter trap, so I haven’t even read the chapters about Stage Three and beyond.

Another trap, by the way, is categorizing any one meditation session as good or bad. That leaves very little to talk about in a blog post, but I will just say that today’s session was quite pleasant in general and that for the first time in a while no body parts fell asleep. :)

No comments:

Post a Comment