I tried a couple of new things today. I added some quiet background music (Enya, of course). I tried something new in how I brought myself back to focus. But first the challenges for today’s meditation.
Today was a rather stressful day all day long. At work, I found out that the connection to the computer I use to do my work (some 180 miles from my desk) was down due to a router problem. I sat at my desk from 8:00 until 1:45 with pretty much nothing to do. Shortly before this, I learned from Valerie that the drip in the kitchen sink I noticed last night was a “tad” more serious than a drip. The carpeting in the basement was soaking wet. This evolved into a trip to Home Depot to purchase an entire new sink. (Strictly speaking, this wasn’t necessary. But I had been wanting to do this for a while and if I was going to have to replace the faucet, might as well do the entire job now.) This turned into a multi-hour project requiring a second trip to Home Depot to update the plumbing to match the new drain location. As a result, this is the first day I sat down for meditation not just tired, but also just settling down from a day I’d rather had gone differently.
I’m not sure that having music in the background was necessarily a good thing. It gave me a mechanism for measuring time. I found that I was actually thinking about time as a result of this. In addition to the music, there were a number of other distractions today, both internal and external—including a rather annoying itch on the end of my nose. (Nala crossing over my lap is now routine and is not so much a distraction anymore.)
Until today, I’ve avoided what I considered the cliche meditation practice of focusing on a word or sound (e.g. “ooohhhmmm”). But while I’ve noticed that I have become better at knocking down fully dialogued thought, I haven’t been successful in eliminating it. The response has been for me to chastise myself with, “no, stop that”—a.k.a. more dialog. Today I decided to move away from the “negative” word “no” and change to the “positive” word “return.” By focusing on this word in addition to my breathing, I was able to block any other dialogue. (Go ahead, try to say two things at once to yourself in your head—betcha can’t do it.) I am not saying that there wasn’t one or two short spans where I failed to focus on the word “return.” But while I was focused on it, I was able to keep the other dialogue at bay.
20 minutes tomorrow? I’ll see how I feel.
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