Meditation Project: Quarterly Assessment

Beautiful World by Rene Magritte

Yes, I have accomplished three full months of practice, with six days a week of practice every single week. So I thought I'd take a moment and reflect on my experience so far.

First of all, I definitely have established a habit. Meditating has become part of my basic routine, and I feel comfortable sitting down every day. Sometimes I still have a little bit of that panicky feeling of "am I going to be able make it to the end?" but I remind myself that I have never not made it to the end, and I try to laugh at myself a little for feeling that way—still .

On the other hand, I was trying to evaluate whether this practice had changed my life in any way, and I have to say that I really haven't noticed anything dramatic. The thing is, over the years I've learned to use my asana practice to help me stay calm and grounded. And I haven't observed that meditating does a better job of this. What I have noticed recently is that meditating after an asana practice is more effective for me than doing it before or instead of asana. So in a perfect world, I'd do both most days, with asana first and meditation afterward. But I've actually been doing less asana lately, most probably because I've been taking more walks due to having a dog around and there is only so much time in the day. So meditating hasn't replaced asana per se—I think it's just due to life circumstances, and it looks like those will be changing again soon anyway.

Regardless, I'm going to stay with my experiment of keeping up this practice for a year. It seems to me at least that much time is needed to see what effects the practice has on my life. I will do this evaluation again in July, when I reach the half way mark.

Here's my meditation diary for the week. This week I focused on practicing my new mantra, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. After the timer went off, I always ended with a bonus short meditation based on the "May all beings" part of the Loving-Kindness meditation. It just feels good to take a moment to think of "all beings."

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Practiced Legs Up the Wall with Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. Meditating in this position is not as quieting for me as using it for relaxation while, for example, listening to relaxing music. 

How many thoughts fit into the cracks before, between, and after the mantra!

Monday, March 25, 2019

Practiced meditation after my asana practice at the end of the afternoon. This is the most effective way for me to time my practice, although I don't always get a chance to practice asana every day especially when I'm taking the dog on long walks! 

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Practiced for 15 minutes at the end of the day, after I had walked quite a bit but didn't practice asana. It's definitely easier to sit when I've had some exercise. One day I will try meditating first thing in the morning, but I still have a lot of resistance to that. It's the last thing I want to do when I wake up—I want to get on with my day and start taking care of business!

Also, I'm continuing to notice that when I'm meditating my thoughts almost always stray to a short-term To Do list: what I'm going to do immediately after my meditation is over, what I'm going to write about the day's meditation, etc. Can I ever let go of that for even 15 minutes? 

Haha, just saw the connection between those two observations about time and day and To Do list.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Practiced after walking but no asana yet. My mind is more bubbly when I do this, which I've begun to notice makes the time pass more quickly but the end result is, of course, a less quiet mind.

Thursday, March 28, 2019

While I as meditating, I worried about what I was going to write about this week. Is that ironic? Then I decided I could do a quarterly assessment. 

It just occurs to me now that maybe I could try a week with no diary to see how that effects my thoughts. Maybe just write one conclusion at the end of the week?

Also, I noticed on this day, that even though I don't omit mentally reciting mantra, I do fall into a kind of auto-pilot with it where it gets said but I'm only half paying attention to it. Can I do anything about this?

Friday, March 30, 2019

Again, even though my mind didn't wander from actually saying the mantra, I noticed that feeling of being  on autopilot with it. It gets said but am I really focused on it? So near the end of this practice I figured out how to FOCUS more on the mantra by "staring" at it. That's the only way I can express the sensation, even though it's a mental sound not a mental image that I'm staring at. Will have to try this again.

by Nina Zolotow


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