How the hell am I supposed to Meditate?

My discovery of how to start to train my thoughts

Last night I completed 108 sun salutations consecutively, a “yoga mala,” with a group of fellow yogis. Three hours of counting 108 beans for each sun salutation. As one sun salutation ended and we hung in forward fold, we took one bean from the full bowl of beans and placed the bean in the empty bowl.

I set my “intention” for this exercise “to just get through it,” because, after awhile, repetition of even simple movements can be quite strenuous. You know what I mean if you ever tried to hold you arms out wide and straight for a continuous hour.

Meditation and sitting still has always been hard for me. My mind seems to want to wander off and think about the past or something in the future. Maybe a deadline or upcoming activities, like what to make for dinner. That’s why this yoga mala, a form meditation involving repetitive movement was suitable for a beginner like myself. I have enough trouble sitting still let alone letting my mind be still.

What I learned

It’s ok that the mind wanders. When I have to direct my mind back to my mat, that alone is the process of meditation. Some days it is easy to redirect the mind. Sometimes it’s hard. I’ve found that the best thing to do when my mind is roaming around is to drown it in compassion. That action of bringing mind back to center is the essence of meditation. It is so basic, but doing it over and over again (practice) is key.

Even concert pianists play their scales. To paraphrase what one famous meditation guru once said to a concert hall full of eager fans, ‘when you’re just a beginner, for the first 30 or 40 years- just do the basics’. The audience laughed, but when the seasoned expert didn’t blink an eye and stood there seriously, they realized he was not joking. For decades and decades, you are really just a beginner.

Meditation: I choose a focus, and when mind wanders, I bring it back to focus with compassion.

I wrote this to encourage anyone who has thought about meditation- and thought it wasn’t for them- to give it a shot. Setting aside a few moments a day probably won’t spur any monumental changes. The only way to effectively meditate is achieved by much practice.