A newbie trying to piece it together!

[JonW]

Hi Paul,
I heard Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep on the radio earlier and it's been buzzing around my bonce all day. It's driving me bananas.
Jon

[aly4519]

Hi there.
The average person has something like 76,000 thoughts a day. That's one of my favourite statistics!
I think we'd all agree that only a small fraction of those thoughts are useful to us.
But some thoughts are useful to us and some stuff we need to remember.
Why not observe the "junk" thoughts coming and going, without allowing yourself to be caught up in the content of them?
As for the useful thoughts…maybe carry around a notebook and jot down stuff that you don't want to forget.
This works for me. I highly recommend those neat little moleskin notebooks that Hemingway and Cocteau were said to use. I think Barnes & Noble sell them.
I hope this helps in some small way.
All best,
Jon

Great idea! thank you! xoxo!

[paulpsych]

Hi Paul,
I heard Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep on the radio earlier and it's been buzzing around my bonce all day. It's driving me bananas.
Jon

I mustn't think of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, I mustn't think of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep....
Bugger!

[JonW]

That song burrows into one's unconscious like an infantile trauma.

[1Daveatatime]

Hi Aly,

As someone who is also new to all this stuff, I'll throw in a thought or two. I'm at 80-something days of daily meditations and the whole deal. And I can very much understand and relate to some of the things you're saying. Paying attention to myself and my own experiences, in a way that I never had before, can feel somewhat maddening. But I can already report that I have seen a marked improvement from when I was at, say, 20 days.

One thing I read from a long-term meditator said something along the lines that when you start noticing how much you're thinking constantly about everything all the time, that it will feel a bit maddening - but that it's actually a good sign. It's hard to focus awareness on things we can't see.

I've also read about how the concentration we nurture in formal meditation does, in fact, naturally extend into daily living - and I have seen this begin to happen for me.

So, I'm all in.

Best to you,
Dave

[paulpsych]

Well put Dave

[mintful]

It's just a question of time and practice. Imagine trying to walk for the first time - you wouldn't expect yourself to do marathons, 100m sprints and rhythmic gymnastics on a competitive level within a month or so, would you?

[JonW]

"It's just a question of time and practice."

That's so true. And that requires patience and self-compassion.
It's very easy to get caught up in the thought, "Am I getting anywhere with this?" Then mindfulness becomes another form of striving.
Try adopting "beginner's mind" where you approach every meditation as though it's your first time.
Jon

[Humph]

Sorry, In the words of Gil-Scott-Heron 'I'm new here' but I was reading this post and thinking about the whole 'focus' v 'awareness' thing. I'm only dipping my toe into them whole 'mindfulness' idea as a tool for dealing with life and the wonderous, ahem, challenges it can throw at us so my thoughts are as fresh and naive as a teenagers. So endulge me;) I'm looking for someone to validate my ramblings, or point me towards a different path.

My first thoughts around the difference between 'focus' and 'awareness' and the role each plays in what I'm doing are like this. At the start my thoughts dominate me. It is that inner dialog and narrative, 'you can't do that no one will allow you.' 'Your not good enough.' 'You know this is going to go wrong don't you' well you get the idea. Inorder to stop my self being defined and at the mercy of these thoughts I need a way of 'marshalling' (I'll not use the word control although I want to;)). To do that I need to be able to strengthen my ability to select the thoughts I want to examine and/or my resilience to avoid getting dominated by them. So I gather my first step is excersice my muscle of choice, my mind, to focus on something that is intrinsically me...my breath. Going onwards I want to focus on that breath without controlling that breath, harder than it seems. I want to simply observe it. That way I don't so much as learn how to manage the fluctuations in my mind but instead to realise that I am both an active participant in that inner conversation and an observer. Just as with assertive people who can speak quietly and get a point across with out force by understanding the force of where I place my concentration it becomes my choice to hear and which speaker (thought, twinge, mood, idea) to pay attention to. So after knowing that I can 'focus' and politely return to that 'focus' when all my thoughts are clambering for attention and knowing that if I don't have that specific thought at that specific time the world is not going to end I can start to use that focus in different ways (and with different intensities)

Awareness to me is focus with a wide angle lens. Paying attention to something physically intrinsically to me, the breath, or parts of my body, the way my feet feel as I walk, the sound that I hear is me focusing. It's almost like giving notice to all those thoughts that right play times over. Awareness is when I'm conscious of the whole thing, thoughts, twinges, physical experiences, moods are all there and I'm observing without judgement so I can hear what's really going on. I once had the notion that it was the difference between me not being able to hear my thoughts without words because all my thoughts with words were shouting it down. With awareness I hope to gain a greater appreciation of what the thoughts without words are by hearing the thoughts with words as a conversation rather than an argument. And just like keyhole surgery it's really delicate and takes time to develop.

As I say these are the ramblings of a blind man trying to explain what an elephant looks like when I've only felt the trunk.

[paulpsych]

Well rambled though Humph.
Well put