FWIW, after 15 years of consistent practice, mediation to me is simply isolating yourself so that you have no escape from the dramas in your mind. You eventually simply become bored of them and that liberates all kinds of creative energy within.

What you describe is enticing and sounds not so greatly different from my once-every-four-years pattern of weight lifting. The benefits are so obvious and so incredible, but somehow it happens repeatedly that we fall out of practice. Fortunately, it is possible to rejoin. So now I have two goals - return to strength training, and include regular mind "training".

Beating yourself up over "failing" only causes more delay and more suffering. That goes for not meditating as much as you think you should and not trying hard enough when loosing awareness. It's just practice, if you're not failing now and then you're not learning.

I had to sort of force myself by going to live in an ashram full time for a while.

>> I had to sort of force myself by going to live in an ashram full time for a while.

That's amazing to me, really! I've considered doing 10-day sits before (vipassana most likely) but never got the courage to do it. Part of the reason being nicotine addiction (which would add a whole other dimension to the challenge). Once I sort out that bug out (and get a few levels higher in Hindi on duolingo) I want to look into it again.

What are the thoughts you have when you think of taking the plunge? I did one recently and I’d love to help people to try it.

You know, it's hard to come up with a good excuse for not doing it these days (if I could actually schedule something, I wouldn't second guess it, and things would probably fall into place, hah). I guess I always feel like I need to get some things in order first (past experiences warning my ego that I'm coming for it, and it preempts with whatever it can in a self-preservation effort?). One issue of course is enough vacation time; it's a tough sell over some other things on my "list".

Did a 10 day sitting while addicted to nicotine after 10 years of smoking. I don't think I thought about cigarettes once. I did suffer from the withdrawal but it was subsumed in the meditation somehow

Arguably, a nicotine addiction would be the perfect thing to work out with the help of meditation!

you do think about a cigarette but you get in the moment and can observe the craving and there aren't the things there that trigger stress. it's nice and quiet.

Nicotine withdrawal lasts about 72 hours - you'd be over it by the third day of a ten-day retreat.

But I recommend Champix/varenicline. It works.

Why is Hindi required?

It's not. I recommend Mindfulness in Plain English By Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. It very directly lays out the benefits of Vipassana meditation, and it doesn't really involve any religion.

Oh, it's not. A trip to India is on my long-term todo list though, and it's something I'd be interested in doing there. Definitely not mutually exclusive!

I did it in the Himalayas. There were literally monkeys fighting on the roof, musicians practicing every morning at 7am, and it was really cold. Regardless it was a peak experience in my life. Western centers are probably quieter and more comfortable.

While meditating, when did you choose to stop? I am guessing that having a timer is a big no-no, hehe.

Having a timer is excellent because it keeps you from having to constantly utilize your attention to consider how long you have been sitting and how much longer you should sit.

While I can see the logic there, I would strongly recommend against alarms. The deeper you go, the more sensitive you become. Being pulled out abruptly is very uncomfortable, to the point where knowing what's coming will stand in the way of even trying.

I would say sit as long as you feel like it, except that doesn't really help initially. Maybe put on a non-intrusive background track that fades out when time is up? And do take your time when coming back; start by listening, then opening the eyes slowly etc.

Same goes for waking up from regular sleep, but refusing alarms in this society is a pretty serious compromise.

I disagree. I highly recommend a timer, but rather than an alarm, use something like a quiet bell. I use the Insight Timer app, but just without all the social aspects that come with it.

Sitting as long as you feel like is not beneficial, because most of the actual work will happen when you start to notice your agitation and at that point is when you will just want to get off the cushion. Stick through it, and watch that agitation and your monkey mind go crazy, until the end of the timer.

I recommend starting with a short timer, 10 minutes, then slowly increase the time.

There is a great App on fdroid called Meditation Assistant

To sit as long as long as I feel like is not very informative as I don’t know what I am looking for when meditating.

On another note, I have spent a good deal self-reflecting more or less alone in the dark with me and my thoughts. From what I understand on some parts of the web, this pretty much equates to ”meditation”. While others describe it differently.

I guess I could download HeadSpace and be more explicit about it, but I do anyway think I have derived some mental benefits from the above behavior. Like, being more comfortable with myself. But I don’t think I am doing meditation since I don’t get all benefits as actual meditators.

Just as a reference to the OP of this thread, about being able to distinguish oneself from the voices in one’s head... I think there are more benefits in meditation.

What you're looking for is awareness, to be right here right now and observe what's going on inside. If you're like most people, you spend most of your time lost in thoughts that you didn't actively choose. The first step is to realize that is the case, which is very difficult in the middle of the storm; hence the sitting down with closed eyes.

Thank you - this comment was helpful.

>> On another note, I have spent a good deal self-reflecting more or less alone in the dark with me and my thoughts.

Two phrases that have been very relevant to my practice:

"Being lost in thought is the opposite of concentration."

"Lost in thought is not meditation."

The above is not meant to imply that there aren't benefits to spending time lost in thought.

I've read a lot of books on meditation. Without doubt, the clearest and easiest to understand for me was "The Yoga of Consciousness: 25 Direct Practices to Enlightenment" [1]. Well worth it to understand how to do awareness-based meditation and how it can fit into a broader set of practices.

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yoga-Consciousness-Practices-Enligh...

IIRC, the canonical book is "The [10] sravaka levels" but it hasn't been translated to English. However the most important parts from that book were incorporated by tsong-kha-pa into lam-rim - another canonical book which has been mostly translated into English.

You do have an internal clock, should you choose to "turn it on". Source: have not owned or used an alarm clock in ~20 years.

When I was done :) this took a while to figure out too. You can always go "deeper" but what I've experienced are "thresholds" or "steps". Once I felt I "graduated" to a point, it felt like a nice place to marinate for a while (knowing fully well that it was one plateau of many), and would take a whole lot more effort (lack of effort?) to get further. By that time I'd have cleared out enough junk to get me through the day. I really don't know that I'm using the right terms here (and they definitely vary by tradition), but in my reading (again, nothing serious, lots of wikipedia and a few books on different modalities) these thresholds are described as different "states of absorption". I don't know if it is actually what I was experiencing, but descriptions the first/second jhana states seemed very apt at the time (when I was researching/testing this out for myself). (In traditional Jnana yoga there are 7 or 8 states, the highest ones are brushing on the nirvana state). (I can't stress how much I'm butchering this, I am but a student!)

Not a no-no at all as far as I know. It was explicitly recommended in The Mind Illuminated. It just needs to be an alarm that you'll hear when it's done so you don't have to devote any attention to it, you just focus on meditating until it goes off.

Having a timer is a really common practice. Try a search for "meditation timer" on the Apple or Google app stores.

I use a timer set for 30 minutes. Almost every time I know exactly when the gong will ring. It's very strange.

Why did you fallen out of practice?

Life happens. To be honest I have a good amount of time these days. It's more about scheduling it (and sticking to it), at least at first. I don't think it would take me 4 months to get back to the level I was at (I've accumulated a few tools in my proverbial bag of tricks along the way)

This mirrors my experience exactly, especially the last sentence!