RE: The Felt Experience of This Moment
I think that most everyone that begins a meditation practice experiences the same thing on various levels. We've been well conditioned by society to not dare to sit silently and look within. There's a couple of things in particular that we could do to help break ourselves away from these limiting mental habits. We can approach such urges and thoughts by just committing ourselves to just watch them as they arise, neither clinging to, nor attempting to push them away. Thoughts and feelings always appear, and they always pass away, and we can simply position ourselves as just the observer of these movements. Another helpful practice would be to develop the habit to "just stop" periodically throughout your day for 5 seconds; just stop, take a deep breath and become intimately aware of what is appearing to you in any given moment. I hope this helps, and feel free to reach out anytime.
If I may be so bold to ask you this. What makes you keep practicing meditation through and during the challenges in life? In my experience only bad habits stay easily, the good ones slowly fade away and only partially becomes adopted into my life. That means if it's not turned into an failure experience that haunts the new beginnings.
Is it just discipline and faith?
My experience hasn't been so unlike your own through the years, and I still find it to be a challenge some days to get my butt on the cushion. I've found that these self-defeating patterns are for the most part, the result of the conditioning we've experienced at various stages in our lives. Our learned belief systems, habit patterns, etc. many times serve to limit us within our endeavors towards expanding ourselves in some way. The one thing that keeps me going with this practice it seems, is that when I'm meditating, it's a time when I feel truly sane and have the greatest clarity in my life. It's as well, I'm finding, to be more and more just something necessary for me to partake in as we move further into greater levels of uncertainty and chaos in the world.
I've been looking at the work of someone named Joe Dispenza in relation to dealing with such self-defeating patterns and learned behaviors. His instructions and insights into this topic are both fascinating and very effective towards allowing one to move beyond such barriers.
Thanks for sharing your experience and let me know how it goes for you.
James, thank you for introducing me to the work of Dr Joe Dispenza. I'm reading his books and it is exactly what I need. Fascinating and amazing just doesn't express enough how I think about it. This knowledge is known in religion but that it is becoming science fact is just revolutionary. I have a lot of research and work to do before I can come out and share article's on steemit and other people. I'm glad that you are doing it.
You have my gratitude.
I'm happy to hear this was helpful for you @freyrtruthseeker
I've not fully assimilated myself what he is teaching, but I can imagine that it will continue to be of some help for myself. Thanks so much for your feedback here.