I finally understood how difficult meditation is as a beginner, and how it would benefit me if I continued to practice... I think?
Hi,
Recently I’ve been looking into Buddhism and its philosophies as a way of changing my mindset and my outlook and helping ease my depressive symptoms, and I’ve been trying to put in more time to try meditating.
I think I might finally have a first glimpse at how meditation is supposed to help me, but I’m not sure if this is what I’m supposed to feel starting out, so this post is sort of like me confirming/sharing my own realizations, or find out if I might still be misunderstanding meditation after all, I guess.
Up until now, I was very doubtful of meditation and all it’s supposedly therapeutic effects. Id try sitting cross legged and sat in silence for ten minutes at a time, and I’d never feel any of the relaxation or mindfulness or heightened concentration that meditation promised.
Today, I tried again, but this time, I was sitting in a chair, and I decided to concentrate even more on the breath, and to put my full attention towards the breath, its cycle, the air going in and out, and nothing else.
Immediately something seemed different. The more I attempted to keep my attention on the breath, every little noise, nearby conversation, doors opening/closing, seemed to amplify itself in my head; small trivial thoughts that I would never have cared about seemed to tear my focus away from my breath and even the mental image I had of my breath drifted into totally unrelated thoughts or images without me realizing in my head, and every time I refocused my concentration onto my breath I felt this immense fatigue in my mind.
Unlike before, I only lasted a minute and a half before I could tell my mind was drifting too much and was too “tired” to continue. It’s strange that I’ve never thought of my brain as a muscle, but I feel like if I could train myself to focus on my breath like this without drifting to other thoughts or distractions as if training any other muscle in the body, it would help me a lot not only in concentrating on my studies and whatnot but also in identifying and understanding all the little thoughts and emotions that affect my mentality and mindset that I had never really noticed before.
Is this how it should feel/be? Or am I mistaken on my idea of meditation?
All this is simply what I realized by myself today, and I feel like I’ve had a little mini-eureka moment and I’m excited to make meditation a daily habit.
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