Meditation
One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to start meditating regularly again. To keep me on track, I'm going to start keeping a Meditation log here. I'm trying to set sometime aside for meditation at least three times a week. Like any physical exercise, this seems like a decent amount. I may end up meditating more. We'll see.

This morning: 15 minutes, breathing meditation, laying down on back. Not a lot of success. Mind wandered a lot.

So y'all know: There are several kinds of meditations and reasons to meditate. For Buddhists, the goal is usually to get your mind to be less distracted. The human mind is easily distracted and before you can contemplate things like god and enlightenment, you need to make your mind a tool that can work for you rather than against you.

When I was meditating regularly at the Jeweled Heart Buddhist center, I would meditate for 1-2 hours, usually guided by another student. The first hour was usually just breath contemplation. Sometimes we would meditate on sutras or mantras. At that point I noticed a pretty big difference in my life. I was just doing that once a week but was able to focus more on my tasks that I was doing (whether at work or at home) and when I talked to people I found that I was really listening to people.

One of the downfalls that can happen and what seemed to happen to me at that time was I started feeling a lot of pride over how far I had come. I know from all my reading on spirituality, that I hadn't really come that far, but pride is always a tricky thing.

So, maybe keeping a public log is not the wisest thing. I worry that my mind is saying, look I want to tell the world, but I don't think that is true.

I want to post my log here because 1) I look at this almost every day 2) my friends may note when I haven't been meditating and, being friends, gently point this out to me like a zen teacher tapping his student to let him know that his posture had slipped or his attention is wandering 3) at least one of my friends out there is interested in getting into meditation and maybe this will help her as well.

Lisamarie- If you are still interested in starting meditation, I can't think off the top of my head of any books for you to read on the topic. I was taught to meditate in classes or at a temple. My suggestion is to start with the same meditation I did this morning. It is a great basic meditation. It works like this: 1- Get comfortable, either sitting or laying down. A warning about laying down is that it is easy to fall asleep. If you sit, it is best to make sure that your back is straight. I find it easiest to sit with my legs lightly crossed against a wall to keep my spine straight. In this position, I rest my hands on my legs or in my lap. Sitting, it is most comfortable to let your head look slightly down. 2- Breath in. Breath out. focus on the feeling of your lungs expanding and the air moving in and out of you. 3- On your first breath out, count "one." On your next breath out count "two." After counting "five" start over with "one." The goal isn't counting. It's concentration. You'll generally know when you lost your concentration becuase you'll also lose your place. 4- Whenever you think about anything besides your breath (what you'll be doing later, etc.) notice that your mind has wandered and make a quick note of it, and go back to concentrating on breathing. Eventually your mind will wander less.