Preside Open 5: The "Do Not Criticize" Drift Exercise

This is the second "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.

"Do Not Criticize" addresses the worry that comes up during meditation, that we are "not meditating well", which itself will become a distracting thought, and how to address this issue.

Please note: This audio is ripped from a video.

Transcript

So in this video I want to teach you a drift exercise called do not criticize.

Now this technique is very very important and I actually consider it to be one of the most important rules of successful meditation.

So let's get into it.

So in a separate video I talk about the different levels of escalation that Monkey Mind will go through in a session but also over time,

Over the months and years to try to get you to stop meditating.

And one of those levels of escalation is doubt,

Right?

Planting seeds of doubt in your mind about whether meditation is a good idea for you,

Whether you're doing the meditation properly,

Maybe you're making some mistakes in meditation,

Etc.

Etc.

And if you've had this kind of distraction come up,

It's actually a symptom of success,

Right?

It means that you are actually doing a pretty good job with meditation and you're forcing Monkey Mind to escalate the sophistication of the distractions that it's bringing in front of you to try to derail you.

So let's say you've been meditating for three or four weeks now,

I bet you anything that your face probably doesn't itch as much anymore during meditation or your legs don't ache as much or if they do you've figured out how to reposition your legs so that they don't bother you anymore,

Right?

And if you're wondering why your face stopped itching,

It's because your first time ever meditating,

That's probably all Monkey Mind needed to do to totally derail you was just to make your face itch and you would just get into this dramatic loop of,

Oh,

My face is itching,

Am I allowed to scratch it?

Am I not allowed to scratch it?

Oh my gosh,

I'm thinking now I'm not supposed to think and then boom,

You're done,

You're toast,

Right?

Well,

Now after a few weeks,

You're much more familiar with the drill.

You're much more comfortable as a pilot in the cockpit of your meditation vehicle,

Right?

And when your face itches now,

You probably just scratch it and you move on,

Right?

It's no big deal.

And as a result,

Monkey Mind has probably stopped drawing your attention to the itch on your face because it doesn't work at distracting you anymore.

So it needs to move on to bigger,

More sophisticated weaponry to try to get you to stop.

So as you get more and more into meditation,

Meditation itself becomes an object of your interest and caring and desire,

Right?

Because you like it,

Because you're doing it a lot.

And one of the key ways Monkey Mind will try to derail you in meditation now at this level of skill is it will criticize the quality of the meditation itself.

So it will say,

You know,

Oh,

You're not meditating properly,

Or maybe you should,

You know,

Your back should be more straight when you're sitting,

Or should I really be meditating at night?

Should I be meditating in the morning?

And of course,

You know,

You're going to be thinking all of these thoughts in the middle of your meditation.

They'll really distract you and there will just be this ongoing dialogue or monologue of criticism on all the different ways you're not meditating properly.

A really typical one is,

You know,

Well,

You know,

Artie Wu said that,

You know,

There would be this ocean of bliss experience,

Where it would be intoxicatingly pleasurable.

And you know,

Why haven't we had that yet?

You know,

And it's you're like in minute seven of your meditation,

Right?

And it's already chattering away saying,

Well,

Why haven't you hit this milestone?

Why haven't you hit that milestone?

Why aren't you progressing faster as a meditator,

The endless incessant chatter,

And the topic happens to be this time meditation,

Because that happens to be what you care about.

And critique of your own meditation is the one thing that typically slips under the radar screen of a beginning or even an advanced meditator.

Because you can tell monkey mind,

Hey,

You know,

I don't want to worry about money or finances or relationship or health right now,

I'm meditating.

So leave me alone.

Right?

And over time,

You can get pretty good at that.

Right?

But then to counter that and to escalate in the face of that monkey mind may say,

Oh,

Okay,

You really care about meditation,

Huh?

You really want to make sure you're meditating well.

Well,

I don't know if you're meditating well.

You know,

Maybe you should be doing this differently.

Maybe you should be doing that differently.

And you naturally get duped by that because actually you do want to meditate well.

Okay.

So with that as the problem,

The solution is simple.

You just need to establish in your mind an ironclad rule of meditation,

Which is that when you're meditating,

You do not ever,

Ever criticize the quality or the skill of your meditation while you are meditating.

Okay.

So what this means is,

If you're having a lousy meditation,

You feel like you know,

You stink,

And it's just going badly.

Let it stink.

Let it go badly.

And,

You know,

The worst case is you write off five,

Maybe seven minutes of your day in a quote unquote bad meditation.

Right.

And I can assure you,

There are far worse ways to waste five to seven minutes of your day.

Right.

And so when you start feeling the criticism coming of the quality of your meditation,

Ironically,

If you want to continue with your meditation,

You just shut it off as a hard and fast rule.

Do not critique or judge your meditation.

However it's going to go,

Just let it go.

Let go of the controls.

Let go of the steering wheel and just let the meditation go wherever it's going to go.

Because the minute you actually do start to critique it,

By definition,

You're re-engaging with monkey mind and you are messing it up.

Right.

So basically,

It's kind of like this.

If you don't judge the meditation at all,

Maybe you're actually doing well,

Maybe you're actually not doing well.

It doesn't matter.

You can figure it out later after the meditation.

But if you do judge the quality of meditation,

A hundred percent for certain,

You're definitely doing it badly.

Right.

So you don't want to do that.

Now two quick things here.

One is,

I'm not saying don't have a critical mind.

I'm not saying don't evaluate whether meditation is a good thing for you or not.

Right.

After your meditation is done,

You can totally analyze how the session went.

You can trash your skill.

You can say,

Oh,

Maybe I don't like this technique or that technique,

Or maybe I don't like meditation at all.

And you can pull out all your usual critical thinking and analytical mind.

And you know,

You can slice that salami as thin as you want to with analysis after the meditation is done.

During meditation,

Do not ever criticize the quality of your meditation.

Otherwise you're just wasting your time.

Okay,

So that's number one.

The second quick thing I want to say is that it's also not saying that you should,

You know,

Have a forced positive attitude about the quality of your meditation.

Right.

So I'm not saying when you criticize the meditation to say,

No,

No,

I'm actually doing quite well.

Right.

I'm not saying that.

I'm rather saying you should have no attitude at all.

No attitude either way,

Just no opinion.

Right.

So am I having a good meditation?

Blank.

No answer.

Right.

You don't think it's good.

You don't think it's bad.

You don't think at all.

So are you having a good meditation?

You know,

Blank,

Nothing.

That's what the essence of this technique is.

To not think,

Analyze,

Judge positively or judge negatively when you're in the state of meditation.

Okay,

I hope that was helpful.

And the next video then,

I want to get into the third drift exercise called Let It Run.

And in the Let It Run drift exercise,

We'll get into what to do when you're in the middle of a meditation where a monkey mind is just refusing to calm down,

No matter what you do.

And I think that,

You know,

Sooner or later,

You're going to get to the point where none of the drift exercises or launch exercises are working and the Let It Run technique can be very powerful in those instances.

So I hope you found this helpful.

And when you're ready to go,

I'll see you over in the next video.