Habit was breaking away
I have been pursuing meditation, though very irregularly, since a couple of years now. When I started taking it seriously some time back, I experienced cool things (I’ll explain that further) a couple of times. But I guess I got over confident, and spiralled out of the habit.
I have been talking about it to friends but my own habit had gone away. It’s so much easier to intellectualise these things than it is to experience them.
Ten minute meditations
Then I came across the practice of Anapana. It is a simple technique of focussing on your breath. I started doing these ten-minute Anapana sessions daily. I started with guided meditations by SN Goenka. Guided ones are easier to do than self-initiated ones for beginners. It was a good way to solidify the habit that had broken.
After a couple of months of these mini meditations, now I am comfortable doing it for 30-45 and even 60 minutes at times now.
Some insights
Since I have started doing prolonged meditations again, I have noticed these things:
- Instead of sudden and short-lived ‘highs’, I am experiencing milder but longer ‘highs’.
- These ‘highs’ are: periods of time when you feel a lot of peace (at times even bliss).
- Normally after an hour of meditation, I feel this ‘high’ for an hour or so.
- For the rest of the day, I would feel increased focus and a craving to indulge in high cognition tasks.
- One day I got carried away and ended up analysing a lot of Chess games late into the night after a day of operating at high mental intensity. Easy to get carried away for me.
- A couple of days back I had a profound meditation session spanning an hour, and since then, I have lost my drive to indulge in superficial content on the internet (which has been my addiction and my Achilles heel)
- It’s true that meditation quitens the mind and a quiet mind has so much more clarity and focus.
- Once I meditate regularly, I am fine sitting by myself, not engaging with my phone, and reading more books or pursuing ideas in my mind.
