So maybe you sat down earlier today, possibly for your first ever meditation. You were full of good intentions, ready to get going on this amazing journey. You sat, and listened, and things were going well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2026and then you remembered that email that you sent earlier, or that news article you read, or maybe a conversation with your spouse or kids. Or a dog barked and you started being cross with your neighbour because goddamit, it\u2019s early for that hairy beast to be out\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2026and before you knew it, you were gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then: 1 or 5 or, who knows, 20 minutes later \u2013 you remember what you\u2019re supposed to be doing, and you nudge yourself, and you\u2019re back in the room<\/em>, meditating again, woo look at me, I\u2019m good at this! And you\u2019re there for a couple of breaths and then something tickles in your mind again, and it\u2019s the booking for that holiday you\u2019re due to take, and did you post that bill payment or is it still on the side in the hallway, and was that creaking noise a burglar, or your wife, or\u2026.?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so it goes, on and on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The mind, it turns out, is not at all good at being here, at being now, at not casting backwards to the past or forwards to the things that you\u2019re planning. This is your monkey mind<\/em>, always jittering about, always somewhere other than now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Frustrating, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well yes. And it\u2019s also incredibly hard to change. But here\u2019s the good news: firstly, it gets better. Secondly, our mission as meditators is to learn how to deal with it when it doesn\u2019t get better<\/em>. We\u2019ll come back to this time and time again both here on our blog and in our courses<\/a>. All you have is your mind, and all you have is your thoughts, responses and attitudes to the things that happen to you, including<\/em> those moments when you lose yourself in thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The learning here is not to do what we often do, and that\u2019s to beat ourselves up, tell ourselves we\u2019re rubbish at meditation and will never calm our monkey mind. Instead, when you notice your focus has slipped, just begin again<\/strong>. The great (check her out, she\u2019s wonderful) Sharon Salzburg<\/a> says this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We get to begin again. Every single time. That has been one of the consistent messages I have gotten in every experience I have had with meditation. Wow. What a concept. If you mess up, just start over.<\/em><\/p>\nSharon Salzburg, Begin Again<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n She goes further in some of her other practices, and describes that moment at which you realise your mind has wandered as actually being the practice.<\/em> This was immensely useful to me as a meditator \u2013 it turned a \u201cdamn it, I\u2019m failing\u201d moment into a \u201cthis<\/em> moment when I notice is me winning at meditation\u201d \u2013 a game-changer in helping me think differently about how to deal with the wandering mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The takeaway here is that we all suffer the monkey mind. We\u2019re all monkeys, after all. When you notice the moment, just begin again, re-focus, don\u2019t beat yourself up, and just sit. Always \u2013 just sit. You\u2019ll find as you practice that your mind settles a bit (some of the time\u2026) and does it for longer periods of time \u2013 but possibly more important, you\u2019ll get better at being kind to yourself when your mind inevitably wanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s a really rather lovely description that resonated for me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUncalled for, unwanted, the thoughts flew across my mental space, back and forth, hither and thither, like birds in the evening sky, chasing and losing and finding each other, racing, wheeling, dispersing, gathering, gliding a while then flapping in hard flight, always moving, through each other and across each other, at different altitudes, different speeds, as the light fails and the breeze comes up and the rain spatters on rustling leaves.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Then one by one, at last, they begin to settle, they drop from view. With a last flutter, a thought settles on its perch and is quiet. On a rooftop perhaps, or in your wrist, in your throat. Another joins the first, and another. Thoughts fluffing their feathers before falling still. Perhaps one last squawk \u2013 Rushdie was right! I should have hurled a chair! \u2013 then silence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Until, huddled together on their wire, between your ears, they lose definition, merge into each other, become a single pool of feathery shadow, deep shadow in the darkness, one layer beneath another, beneath others, as eyes close behind closed eyelids, watched by still deeper eyes, and the mind at last discovers itself transparent; the mind is finally still and clear as clear water, and from top to toe the body brims with transparent wordless mind the way a glass held between steady hands in the porticoed chiaroscuro of a sizzling afternoon in Seville might brim with transparent water around the dark secret of the black fig.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nTim Parks, Teach us to sit still<\/em><\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Good luck out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So maybe you sat down earlier today, possibly for your first ever meditation. You were full of good intentions, ready to get going on this amazing journey. You sat, and listened, and things were going well. \u2026and then you remembered that email that you sent earlier, or that news article you read, or maybe a … <\/p>\n\n
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