Everyday Mindfulness

Today I was doing a 45 minute body scan guided meditation. About 10 minutes before the end, a "friend" barged into my room to ask me a question. I had been meditating for about 35 minutes at this point, and I was completely serene and centered. To be brought out of meditation this way made me confused and very angry. Frankly I didn't know how to handle the situation. I could not finish the meditation because I was so pissed off, it completely took me off of base. Do you guys have experience with meditation sessions being interrupted? If so, how do you handle the situation?

It happens. Although one can obviously try to reduce the likelihood of such an interruption, it can still happen. Yes, its very easy to get angry and frustrated - but its also an opportunity to accept what has happened and use it to learn 'acceptance'. Would you have got angry if the disturbance was due to an enormous clap of thunder and the need to get up and shut the window to stop the rain pouring in? The interruption is just the same but how you choose to respond to it is under your control.

Even with meditations we cannot plan the future according to our wishes but instead learn to 'let go' of the desire to control events.

Steve

what steve says.
another way would be to use the sensations of the emotion - anger in your body as a focus for a few minutes meditation, a sort of working with difficulty meditation.
exploring those sensations as you would do in a body scan, observing them but letting them be, not trying to change or get rid of them..

With a dog and a cat in the house, my meditations are regularly interrupted. Yesterday the dog started chasing the cat around the living-room during a body scan. I simply carry on. It's what is happening in the moment.
Last week I was meditating and some bloke rang the doorbell wanting to know if I was interested in double glazing. I thanked him for disturbing me and returned to my sit.

Fantastic answers guys.

My children are pretty good at not disturbing me now. I tell them when I am going to meditate and try and leave me alone.
They sometimes disturb me unintentionally and that is quite easy to let go now. I regularly sit with them in the same room going about their usual activities too because that is such a big part of my life and I find paying attention when I am not directly interacting with them very illuminating too

Halfway through my meditation this afternoon a bloke started drilling the road outside.
I pretended it was a bumble bee and stayed fairly relaxed.
Could have happily murdered him though.

JonW wrote:Halfway through my meditation this afternoon a bloke started drilling the road outside.
I pretended it was a bumble bee and stayed fairly relaxed.
Could have happily murdered him though.

i pray for something like that to happen when i lead a sitting meditation, then i can change focus to exploring sounds for a while

Nothing like a pneumatic drill for sharpening a fellow's focus.

I try to approach whatever arises when I sit the same way. After all, what is the difference between a jackhammer and a bird singing? The mind differentiates, good/bad, right/wrong and away we go into fairyland. So is an interruption just a story I tell myself? Isn't it just what is, now? Now I am sitting alone. Now my children are climbing on me and so on and so forth.

Anytime I resist something, I need to check myself.

Great thread guys,

Oli