meditation

I was brushing my teeth, and I had a thought about meditation. I decided I should meditate "my own way", as opposed to trying to follow the advice of other people about how to meditate.

So I sat down in a chair by the fire, and thought. I looked inwardly. I looked at my thoughts. I tried to bring my mind to a halt, so I could see what was going on. I tried to identify thoughts. I had insights of various sorts, and then they would fade. I could put them into words if I tried, but it was hard, and I decided it may not be worth it.

I had one thought where I thought about how I care about what other people think, and that thought, that caring, was represented as a box sortof behind my eyes, as if it was "watching me", and I mentally moved it to the side, arranging things differently. And it made sense somehow, and seemed better. And then I was afraid that my mind would move the box back where it was, as if moving the box in my mind would undo what had been done, and I zoomed in on this fear and thought about it.. and I decided that the real insight was the understanding itself, not the mental moving of boxes, and that there was no need to fear having the image of moving the box back, and then those images faded.

I had another thought that I wanted to remember various insights, but I decided that I really only needed to remember one insight, and that was "meditate every day". And the other insights would come again. Sort of like trying to become good at a sport — it's not super important to remember each bit of advice about how to play, but rather it's most important to just play, and relearn those bits of advice over and over from experience until they settle in.. the things I'm writing in this blog post I didn't try to remember, these are just the things I happen to remember.

I also had another thought, which was "meditation is about introspection". It's about spending time looking at the inner world of the mind, as opposed to the external world. That is to say, meditation is about looking at how the mind thinks, rather than working through a problem. Meditation is "meta thought" — thought about thought. And the way to do it is just to think about thinking. All of these things like "clear your mind" and such seem like red herrings, as if some magic will happen from clearing your mind — and what are you meant to do after you clear your mind? I think a better approach is just to think about thinking, and do whatever is helpful for doing that.