Are You Meditating Correctly?

Meditation is an internal practice. What looks like contemplation, could instead simply be 'thinking with your eyes closed'. You can find guidance through talks, teachers, and traditions, but ultimately, how do you know if you are meditating correctly? In this talk we offer some clarity and a way through to deepen your practice!

Transcript

How to know if you are meditating correctly. It sort of depends on the style of meditation you're doing, But the main style or suggestions that I would look into would be mindfulness. And the simple answer is, Is you can only have the meditation you're having. What that means is that if your mind is unfocused, If your mind is bouncy or if your mind is still, If you feel at peace or in pain or whatever is coming, It's right. You can only have the meditation that you are having. Looking at. Sort of a subjective feeling after the session or even during the session to know it's like, Oh, Am I doing this correctly? What does this feel like? That felt like a great session. All that felt like a bad session. That's not really a valid judgment of if you were doing it correctly. Because some sessions will feel better than others. The best session you can have. To know if you're doing it correctly is ostensibly just to turn up and keep trying. And I know that's a very broad stroke. End. Basic answer. But it's sort of true. Because the problem with meditation unlike almost everything else is that You know, Anything else you do, You could have a coach or a teacher or a parent or a friend look at you and say, Okay, You're performing that activity correctly. This is how you lift the weight. This is how you do the movement. This is how you hold the pen, So on and so forth. You can see the external. But with meditation it's not like that, It's internal. There's no way that I can see if you are, Quote unquote, Doing it right. Other than perhaps if you're sitting for the duration of the session. Did you stay for the duration that you said you would? But as an internal sort of thing. So we go, Okay, If we can't get an external validation, If we can't trust the feelings about it, Like that was a good session or bad session, They're both worth the same. How do we know if we're doing it correctly? We. Take guided sessions, We read, We get instructions on what to do, And we apply ourselves with the right effort, With the intention of doing it correctly, We try our best. We commit to continue learning. Continue to turning up. When we face blocks or struggles or troubleshooting questions, We ask them. And we. Get curious about our inner space and our inner state, Recognizing that the advice we're given is sort of a finger pointing to the moon. It's a suggestion. We have to apply that to ourself and we have to bridge the gap between language. And we keep trying. If we get stuck. If we get distracted, There will be techniques to return our focus. You might try labelling. This is a thought. This is a memory, This is a whatever. Return your focus back to the breath or whatever the practice is you're doing. We might try counting, There is a number of different troubleshooting ideas. And you keep sort of getting closer and closer, And then you'll start to notice something. You'll notice that your inner experience is relating to the external description of meditation and mindfulness and other people's experiences of meditation. When the books, The masters, The instructors, Whatever, Say this is sort of what it should feel like. Or this is the experience of, And you start to feel that, There'll be a bit of a resonance there. Beyond that though. This is sort of my pragmatic approach to what we're doing here. You'll start to notice shifts in your life. You will be less reactive. Things will happen in your daily life and the results of the meditation will show themselves. You'll be less reactive. What that means is that there'll be opportunities to be angry, To be jealous, To be. . . Overwhelmed by emotion. The emotions will still happen. But rather than falling into them. Same thing with rumination or anxiety or whatever. Mental phenomena. Rather than falling in. Will start to be able to see them arising before they take over. And respond. More appropriately, How you want. Long-term value-aligned actions. Does that sort of make sense? You'll be able to. Habit Build Better. You'll be able to focus more. You'll be softer and calmer and more loving. You may notice health improvements. You may notice that you're making better choices around your diet. There will be, Simply put, Improvements in functionality. The only caveat to that. Way of sort of discovering if it's working for you is that there is a lag between your actions, In this case meditation, And those rewards or those responses. So it's not like you can go, Okay, I did one meditation and that's resulted in X amount of improvement in my relationships. There is a time delay. You'll meditate for a while and then you'll start to see the results. Or perhaps people will say, Hey, You seem calmer. What's going on? So it's a combination best thing you can do. Is just keep turning up. Keep trying and keep approaching your inner space with compassionate curiosity and calm confidence. This track was taken from the course. R-a-i-n meditation It's available through my profile now. On InsideTimer. I'll see you there.