Zen meditation to increase focus and concentration

Many people hear about meditation, and there are various kind of meditation techniques for various things, but i wanted to share some experience about how zen meditation can be usefull in order to gain more willpower and more achievment capacity.

First i want to emphasis how important willpower is for any human achievment. I really think if one base unit would need to be set to account for human energy, creativity and achievment, it really is willpower, capacity to set goals and realize them.

The main problem with concentration is difficulty to stick to an idea, and keep this idea in mind for relatively long amount of time.

I see many people struggling with this, saying they have adhd, scattered though, can't stay focused etc, but never really address the root issue behind what actually prevent them to stay focused and concentrated.

The main issue with this really is subconscious activity, and random though or compulsion that will randomly pop up and disrupt the though flow.

As a programmer i can't help but to compare this to the interupt mechanism in multi core system, as when a controller like a mouse or an hard drive have a message for the main cpu, it will rise an interupt, which like the name indicate, will interrupt the main program execution, to execute an interupt handler to process the message, before to resume the main program flow and eventually process the message and apply the input into the program flow.

I tend to think the brain work in same maner, there are constantly different 'cores' or 'centers' in the brain that will process different messages from the body, that will be 'processed' through the unconscious, or subconscious, and trigger some mental activity, or mind shatter, and will interrupt the thought flow, in order to request a particular activity to be fullfilled, or to signal a certain 'input' to the mind.

The main mistake i think most people do is to consider this mind chatter as just some kind of disturbance, and just repress it, or feel somehow guilty to have them because they prevent them to stay focused, and in any case will not consider these subconscious activity as something actually valuable that they should listen to.

It term of system programming, that would be equivalent to masking interupt in order to keep all the cpu power for the main program.

Whereas actually, the practice of zen meditation is all about 'relaxing' the conscious mind, as repressing those thought will actually require some amount of mental effort, even if this mental effort is often so routinely done that it doesn't look like it's even there, but it actually drain some mental power to shutdown this noise.

The practice of true zen meditation is all about relaxing the mind to cancel any conscious effort.

It's not about 'emptying the mind', or 'silencing the mind', but really about not consciously focusing on anything in particular, and watch the flow of idea, emotions, and all the subconscious activity that take place without doing any active conscious effort.

Jung address this topic under the name of active and passive imagination.

Active imagination is when the mind is focused consciously toward a task, in order to try to solve a problem.

Passive imagination is when the mind is left wandering without any precise goal, and random thought popup on their own.

The goal of zen meditation is really to let free ride to passive imagination, and actually listen to mind shatter, emotion, without trying to see how it fit with a particular goal or objective, or how it fit with a particular moral code, or whatever rules or code one follow to allow or not a certain subconscious activity to enter consciousness.

For me it's a very important practice, because what will actually give more energy and focus to a particular task is a solid grounding fundation in the unconscious and subconscious, to really feel that the task at hand is also something that will be aligned with all the necessicity and 'input' from the different center of the mind, including relaying also messages from the body, if muscle are too tense because being in a bad posture, because some blood is not circulating well, or hunger, or anything that the subconscious will consider potentially relevant in term of task in order to fullfill also bodily or emotional functions.

One will often find difficult concentrating when he is doing something that is not aligned with all the mental centers, either they are conscious or subconscious, and all the mental effort put into repressing them is both detrimental to concentration power because it require some effort that cannot be put in the task, and both because on the long run, ignoring those messages will be eventually be detrimental to one's health, and will undermine his vital energy slowly but surely over the time.

All biological process are important, and maintaining healthy body, healthy emotional balance, is really the fundation of healthy mental, and will always give more mental power than ignoring it, both because it free the mental from the effort of repressing them, and because it will align one's motivation with what the subconscious or unconscious really push for, which is generally signals aligning with health.

The unconscious really is concerned with the phsycis of the body and health, and health is what is the root of vitality which include sustaining the development for higher mental capacity, and often will be very good guide in order to guide a person toward a goal that is really fullfilling.