Ten years of trying to meditate

> I cycled through these noticings. Just like on the beach a few years prior, for a moment I felt that there was no distinction between me, the train, the tunnel, and the space we were all moving through. Nothing to grip or hold on to.

I like to imagine what the Earth and everything on it looks like to a neutrino.

In the last few years or so I've been practicing letting go the compulsion to be doing Something Else in addition to the Main Thing I'm doing. For example: the urge to listen to a podcast while I'm doing the dishes. Among the worst is the urge to listen to music while I'm listening to music, or the desire to play a videogame while I'm reading a book to my child. Part of this change is because I don't want to break any more dishes for lack of attention, but also because attending to the Main Thing feels more valuable now in that if it doesn't require 100% focus my mind can wander, or just let the neutrinos stream through, and afterwards I appreciate the break.

My meditation is a very personal thing. I mention it to others but never in much detail. Being alone with myself is one of the aspects of meditation I value the most.

I don’t think you understand meditation if you think it’s “shutting it off”. If anything it’s the opposite, radically opening it

My biggest advice for anyone is to not ignore the traditional advice. Secular meditation practises based on Buddhist meditation take the practise out of its context in a quick and forceful way. Buddhism has had 2500 years to slowly develop and work out what works and what does not. It is quite dangerous to take it and call the parts that do not immediately appeal to the secular western mind, like devotion, worship, compassion, traditional forms & rituals, and cast them away. I personally know two people who went into severe psychosis and depression by trying to practise meditation in a secular context. Something about meditation attracts people that think they fully understand something before they’ve even tried it. This will get torn down by the practise, and if you do not have support in place, this quickly can result in extreme mental health problems. I always say that the effects of meditation can be like the head space of an lsd trip except you don’t come down. It’s hard to “unsee”, and a lot of this religious “backwards” Buddhist worldview and practise exists specifically to integrate these experiences