My Experience as a Beginner
I was introduced to meditation as a teen, when I went through a productivity phase. Just starting university, was going through some stuff, and I wanted to find a "better" version of myself, whatever that means. Anyway, long story short, I got the capitalist, consumer oriented version of meditation, except I was the product here, since on itself meditation is not very marketable. I was being sold this idea, that if I took step xyz I would be happy and successful and whatever.
In this pursuit of an unattainable, superficial and hollow self, I found myself unable to keep up with it. And in indsight, obviously I did. Practice was not cause of joy, but an excuse to find things wrong with me. Meditation was like this medicine that I needed to take for x time to be better, except x time was undefined, and of course what it meant for me to be "better" was being someone else entirely, someone I was told I should be.
I ditched it, and unrelatedly went to therapy, where I got reintroduced to "proper" meditation through body scan and guided breath sessions. It helped me on building some awareness, but it felt like something I was trying out, not something that belonged to me. I carried the practice on my own for a while, and found some benefits. Still, since it didn't feel like it came from me at the time, I did not stick with it.
Fast forward at the beginning of this year, where I stumbled on some youtube talks on Buddhism, and some stuff really resonated with me. I am not very spiritual, but I got a new, interesting perspective on the practice.
Navigating this sub I found this book recommended, the Mind Illuminated, and read up to the first stage. It was really nice to find how practice oriented it was, and it made me feel like there was something I could do right now, to connect with myself and feel overall, like I had more control over my life and choices.
I am still on that same stage, through ups and downs: this first stage is both easy and hard. What is easy, in a way, is the practice itself. Once my mind is set, and I have found that goal, and make the promise to myself that I will try my best to stay with my breath for a little while, I actually enjoy the practice. I think a great part of that is that I am never harsh with myself. I taught middle schoolers for a bit, and talking to myself as I did the kids helped me immensely in exercising patience and kindness. It was nice both to give and to receive that kindness, and helped greatly with not getting discouraged. During the practice I feel these moments of profound gratefulness and pride for myself, for showing up, for keeping it up.
Now the hard: I still live a cluttered life, and my mind clutters just as easy. Digging deeper, sometimes all I want to do is escape my life through distractions and cheap satisfactions (unskilled is maybe the word?), and once I go through that rabbit hole it's easy to forget what it all is for. Why it's important to stay in the moment in the first place. At those times, I still remember what my goal is. Except there is now a disconnect between the reality of my life and that escapist fantasy I have been hiding in. The hard part is to get out of those fantasies, those distractions, those delusions.
This is where I am at. With this wordy post I wanted to share my journey until now, and the trajectory it has taken. Most of all, I wanted to participate in the community a bit, to feel part of it, rather than simply observe, to motivate myself to stay in the practice now that I feel like I can get out of this phase of disconnect I have been going though. On this topic, it would make me real happy if people would engage with me on this, with tips, resources, insights and whatever, though of course the nature of the internet makes it so that sometimes you just scream into the endless void and that's it. That's fine! Though if this post finds someone alive, please scream back