I try to meditate for 10 minutes every morning but I often forget to. I have this app called insight timer that plays a bell to start and end your meditations and offers guided meditations and keeps track of how many days in a row you’ve timed yourself. I’m very inconsistent but right now I’m on a four day streak, which I feel good about.
When I first started to meditate I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do so I would just sit and think for 10 minutes, instead of moving around or scrolling on my phone. Then I started to take recreational mushrooms and I realized that my brain is never silent. Now I understand the challenge of meditation.
Getting my mind to quiet for even just one full minute is incredibly challenging. The best I can do is focus on my breath. I listen to myself inhale and exhale and I think the words “inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.” The challenge lies in extinguishing the words. I can’t listen to my breath without thinking about the fact that I’m breathing. Or if I shift focus to listen to my surroundings, I can’t help but label what I’m hearing: birds chirping, airplane ripping through atmosphere, cicadas buzzing. It is so amazing to me that great meditators not only silence their minds, but sustain that silence.
Thankfully, like anything else, meditation is about the journey, not the destination. Practicing regularly is great way to take your own mental temperature. Some days, I’ve noticed, it’s a lot easier for me to let the peace and beauty of the morning fill my mind. Some days my mind is racing from the moment I wake up. On these days, instead of letting my thoughts push me outside of my own body and drag me through the street, meditation helps me notice them like clouds in the sky, light and impermanent.