The Mind Illuminated: Six Steps Before You Meditate

Before you meditate, take a few minutes to prepare the mind you are bringing to the cushion. This talk explains the six-point preparation from The Mind Illuminated by John Yates, Matthew Immergut and Jeremy Graves: motivation, goals, expectations, diligence, distractions and posture. Use the sequence before a sit to set a clear intention, lower unnecessary pressure and begin with fewer loose ends competing for your attention. It is an explanation, not a guided meditation.

Transcript

Today I want to share with you a technique that's been very helpful for me in my meditation practice but I've also been applying it to other areas of my life and I really find it useful. In the meditation book The Mind Illuminated by Dr. John Yates, Also known as Kuladasa, He talks about the six-step preparation to do every time before you meditate. That book, By the way, Is fantastic. It's got loads of really good tips and it breaks down a meditation in a very systematic way. So if you like the sort of systematic, Structured approach to doing things, The Mind Illuminated is a fantastic meditation manual for you. It breaks down the act of becoming enlightened into ten stages and each stage has a specific goal and accompanying practices that you can do to take your meditation to the next stage. But let's go back to the six-step preparation. So usually when I used to meditate, I would just sit down, Throw on my guided meditation track and get into it. Sometimes it would be fine, But if my mind was particularly busy that day, It would take a while for me to get going. It was almost as if I was going through the motions and only realized I was properly meditating five minutes before the ending of the session. So I'd be sitting for 20-30 minutes and have five or ten minutes of actual focused meditation. Meditation is self-guided to a lot of degree. Even if you're following a guided track, The guidance is still quite passive. Let's take the example of showing up to a one-on-one boxing session, Right? Your trainer is there holding mitts. They are saying left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Kick, Kick. You can't really go wrong there. You have to physically follow along with the instruction. But if you showed up to a boxing session and you kind of just sat and walked around and tapped a bag, You could say that it's so good that you showed up, But you weren't really doing the thing. The same applies to meditation. It is possible to sit down on a meditation cushion and just think for an hour and not even try to meditate. So the framing of there is no good or bad meditation is true, Providing you actually try to meditate properly. So Kuladasa in his book The Mind Illuminated recommends a six-step process. Before you even go into your meditation, You review six things. Number one, What is your motivation for practicing? This is usually a broad motivation. It could be awakening, Enlightenment, Peace of mind, Just something that inspires you to practice in a general sense. Next, We have the goal. For this particular session today, Now, What are you trying to achieve? What are you hoping to get done? How has this week's meditations been? Now, If you've noticed that you've been sleepy during the recent meditations you've been doing, Then your goal can be in this session, I want to remain awake. If you've noticed that you've been very distracted and entertaining yourself in your mind when you're meditating, Then this goal could be I want to remain focused. If you're brand new to meditation, Your goal can be really simple. I want to complete the session. Then we move on to expectations. In your heart, What are you expecting? Do you think it's gonna be good or bad? Just tap into that and step four is, Are you disciplined? Are you going to show diligence? Drop the expectations. Are you here to actually practice? Make that commitment. Yes, I am. I'm gonna drop everything. I'm gonna put my phone on a play mode. I'm gonna make sure that I'm ready for this. I'm going to be diligent regardless how I feel, What I think. I'm here to practice. So it's a commitment to yourself to actually practice meditation. Number five, Review distractions. What are some internal distractions that could pop up? Do you have any anxieties or worries, Things that are bugging you at the moment? And external distractions. Are you expecting mail, A phone call? For the internal distractions, Just make the note that these may come up. And if they do, You're going to let them go and practice anyway. For external distractions, Try to manage them. You know, Like I said, Put your phone on a play mode, But also you can just make the commitment that if they come up, You're going to handle them smoothly, Mindfully, And then return to your meditation session. The sixth step is posture. Now, Getting too hung up on posture is not that important, But it's still good to check in with yourself. Are you feeling alert? Are you feeling this sense of nobility and alertness? Right. You don't want to kind of lie down on your side in a fetal position to do a meditation on concentration. Right. That's obvious. But there's a continuum between there and being really upright and alert. And you want to find what's comfortable for you to check in with yourself. Maybe take a few deep breaths and then you can begin meditation. You can do this in 20 minutes. You can also do it in about 60 seconds or less. Yeah. You can do it as quickly as you like or take as long as you like to do it. Usually when you first start doing it, It will take a little bit longer. And then over time, You'll be better at just tapping into it more quickly. But the reason I was really excited to share this with you today, Beyond it being a fantastic meditation tool, Is that it can be applied to pretty much anything. You're about to do a work session. What is your motivation for working? What is your goal? What is your expectations? Are you going to be committed? What are some distractions? How are you physically going to show up? It can be applied to a training session. You're about to go lift weights. What is your motivation for lifting? What is your goal for this session? What are your expectations? How do you think it's going to go? Dropping those expectations. How hard are you going to try? Are there any distractions internally or externally? How can you shift your environment or posture? If you want to extend that to your advantage, Music, Pre-workout, Clothing, Etc. So I find that running through these six steps as a preparation for many things in life can be useful. It can be done with a notebook, A journal, Or it can be done mentally. It really helps you get clarity on what you're doing and is going to not only make you more successful in the things that you're doing, But it's also going to help you focus on what's actually important. A lot of us are kind of running around from thing to thing and we don't really know why we're doing it. What is our vision? What is our goal? How can we maximize the time that we spend doing it? What are those unconscious thought processes around it? So have fun with it. Play around with the six step preparation with both meditation and other things you do and see how it goes. Just to finally recap, You have motivation, Goal, Expectations, Diligence, Distraction, And posture. And I'll see you in the next episode of the Stoic Handbook podcast.

Reviews

This information is so valuable to me. It will help me to prepare and be mindful when I meditate. Thank you 🙏

Great advice on how to maximize your meditation practice. Thank you!