Hello to all, Hello to myself,

I meditated for 15 minutes today, yeah for me!  I am trying to start a daily practice and this is my third session in the last 5 days.  I am impressed by how long 15 minutes seems. I am equally impressed by how hard it is to find time in modern life for 15 minutes of time with myself in silence.

By silence I mean the lack of external distractions, interruptions, and noise.  I am able to achieve multiple spans of 5-10 seconds of silence internally while meditating, the rest of my 15 minutes is filled with thoughts and sensations.  I am pretty happy with my seconds.

As for my perception of time, I kept thinking that the timer app on my iphone was not working or maybe something was wrong with the lock-mode of the phone that would not allow the chime to go off.  It is funny to be observing this doubting and manipulative mind of mine.  The mind keeps saying, “maybe you should check your phone, what if it has been 18 minutes, your back is hurting… there is no way that it has not been 15 minutes, you cannot just sit here all day…”  Just so you know on the other two days, I never heard the chime go off. I was too impatient and got up before my time was up… My mind just couldn’t trust me to sit there… But today, while breathing in… I heard the sweet calm sound coming from my phone and I was happy.

My practice is pretty simple… I sit cross-legged on the floor, I gong a beautiful singing bowl that rests in front of me.  I ring it three times (I don’t know why I do it three times, it just feels natural to me).  Then I rest my hands in my lap, palms up with my right hand resting in my left and my thumbs touching gently.  I close my eyes and breathe.  I try to keep my awareness on my breathing.

I don’t know where I am going with this new meditation practice, the more I try to gain clarity and understanding of anything… the more questions I have and the more lost I seem to be.  Like right now, I just wrote a few paragraphs about an exercise that I participated in earlier today.  Why did I decide to share that experience, what point was I going to make, what insight did I gain…  I don’t know.  I guess, meditation is on my mind… so you and I have to listen/read this rambling.  Sidenote:  “meditation is on my mind” sounds like an oxymoron… or possibly the title of a really good book.

Thank you for being, Michael.