Preside Open 4: The "Hang On A Minute" Drift Exercise

This is a "Drift Exercise", designed to help you stay in meditation for longer periods of time, when your nervous chattering mind (ie the Monkey Mind), confronts you with anxiety and distracting thoughts.

Please note: This audio is ripped from a video.

Transcript

So in this video, I'm going to teach you a simple drift exercise called hang on a minute, Which is a very simple way of diffusing monkey mind and getting it to just kind of step off a little and give you a little bit more breathing room. If you're only doing a five minute meditation, You probably won't need any kind of drift exercise. The first launch exercise you do will probably get you to five minutes just fine. The momentum of the launch exercise will get you that far. But if you're going beyond five to 10 or 15, 20 or 30 minutes and later on even 40 to 60 minutes and beyond that, You're definitely going to need a whole host of different drift exercises that you've been trained up on. You're familiar with how to use them. And by using those drift exercises in the middle of a longer meditation, You'll be able to extend your meditative range, Which will be a very powerful thing for later on. Now a couple of things to remember. First at a fundamental level, You cannot use brute force to push your monkey mind down. The more force you use, The more powerful monkey mind actually gets and the more it's able to keep its grip on you and draw you deeper into the drama of conflict. In this case, Against your monkey mind. It's kind of like when you're playing catch with your dog and the dog has got the stick in its mouth. And of course, What happens to the dog if you grab the end of the stick and pull on it really sort of strongly? Well, The dog will naturally just think you're playing with it. And as a result, It'll pull back on the stick even harder and it will clamp its jaws down on the stick even harder. So if you've played with a dog before, You know that to get the dog to give you the stick, You need to back off and wait for the dog to just get bored. It'll come up to you, Drop the stick at your feet and at that point, You can pick it up and throw it again. So this technique, The hang on a minute technique is going to be a little bit like that. The thing to note with monkey mind also is that because you're just starting out as a beginning meditator, It's also probably pretty worried. It's worried that something's wrong because you're doing something new and strange, You've never done this before. So it's naturally going to be whispering in your ear like, What are you doing? Why are you doing this strange stuff? And it can be worried about anything. It could be worried that you're going to lose who you are, You're going to lose your edge or maybe even go off into, I don't know, The abyss of enlightenment or something and never come back. So this is natural because the monkey mind is your bodyguard. So whenever you go off and do something strange, It's got its antenna up and it's worried about you. So the monkey mind has got a lot of understandable concerns. And basically the technique to diffuse this is simple. So when monkey mind presents something to you, Either it's a worry or some other concern to try to basically get you get under your skin, You very simply, You don't resist it, But you just reply back to it. And the first thing you do is acknowledge it and say, Yes, Yes, That's a good one. Thanks a lot. And then you say, That's a really good one, Just hang on a minute and just give me one minute I'll be right with you. But can you just hang on a minute? The way you might talk to a waitress or a waiter, Right? And the reason you do it is because number one, You want to acknowledge monkey mind. It's kind of polite and say, You know, Thank you because it is like your personal bodyguard and you want to be able to say, Hey, I know you're doing a good job. You're doing great. I'm not trying to, You know, Make a break for it or do anything risky. Oh, You're doing your job. Everything's fine. I just need a minute and I'll be right back. You just want to reassure monkey mind that everything's okay, That this exercise that you're doing this meditation thing is temporary, It's just five minutes, Right? And then you'll be right back. And another example of how this should feel is if you can imagine, You know, Let's say you're watching TV and it's a big game. It's like watching the World Cup Final or the Super Bowl or you're watching an episode of a show or series that you're really, Really into and it's the finale. And you're kind of addicted to watching TV. And then all of a sudden, You know, Your sister or your mom walks into the room and asks you a question and starts talking to you. And you know, You're not mad and you know, You're not impatient, But you're just like, Okay, Hang on a minute. Can I come get you in a couple minutes? Is that okay? And basically what you're saying here is, Look, I'm in the middle of watching this and if it's a total emergency and you need me, I'll turn off the TV and you know, Give you my full attention and that's no problem. But if it's not an emergency and you're okay with it, I'm just going to watch, Finish watching the show and come get you in a couple minutes. So that's it. So what I want you to do is in your session tonight, I want you to start with a launch exercise as you normally do. And then if you go beyond five minutes into 10 or 15, When monkey mind taps you on the shoulder and says, Come over here and look at this, Right? I've got a concern here. You need to really look at, It's about your job or your career. You know, It's about the promotion, It's about the payout, Your bonus, You know, When are you going to find out what your bonus is? Or you know, You're having issues with your spouse and you know, Can you believe he or she just said that to you? Or you've got money worries or you've got health issues, Right? I mean, Monkey mind is going to be the master of coming up with whatever it is that's going to get under your skin and distract you from your meditation. And when your monkey mind does this, I want you to go ahead and say, Yep, That's a good one. That's actually really good. Thank you so much for bringing that up. Let's get to that later. Let me come get you in a couple minutes. Now obviously, If there's a real emergency, Right, Say if the house was on fire, Or just whatever emergency might happen, You will obviously get up and you will deal with the emergency. Right? So basically, If it's anything that's not a real and genuine emergency, You can say to your monkey mind with full right and conscience, Hang on a minute. Wait over there. I'll be right there. Because even if you had any other non-emergency worry that monkey mind presented to you, As long as it's not urgent, It can wait for five minutes. Right? I mean, Unless there's a burglar in the house or the house is on fire, Whatever worry it is, It can wait for another five minutes. And the beauty of this drift technique is that you can also use this in the middle of a 20 minute or a 40 or 60 minute long meditation session. It's just one of the many techniques you're going to want to have at your disposal to allow you to continue your drifting state and to basically extend the range of your meditation. So that's it for the drift exercise. Hang on a minute. And in the next video, We're going to cover the next drift exercise, Which is actually also in my opinion, One of the most important rules and general principles of successful meditation. And it applies regardless of whatever technique or style of meditation you end up using. So I'm really excited about covering that one with you. And when you're ready to go, I will see you over there.