Your questions aren’t addressed to me but they might as well have been because I went through the same process as wunan.
I started out using vague online instructions and then the app Headspace. There was no real sense of progress with either approach. Headspace makes no real effort to teach you the theory of what it’s trying to accomplish, and the session lengths are probably not long enough to make progress anyway.
In retrospect, Headspace is in some sense the exact wrong approach if your goal is meaningful progress in training your attention and coming to better understand your mind. It’s analogous to a music teacher instructing you to just sit down and play some notes, any notes, for twenty minutes. It would be amazing if you made progress that way.
Like wunan, I read TMI and started actually making progress. Changes could be observed in and out of meditation. I backed away from meditating for a period of time because I became uncomfortable with some of the changes to my cognition. Eventually I re-read The Mind Illuminated and understood that I had been doing some things wrong, fixed that problem and resumed meditating, and the practice has been nothing but positive since then.
I also took the step of consciously choosing, from the outset, not to advance beyond Stage 8 of the progression outlined in the book, unless I reach that stage and then it seems really compelling that I ought to proceed. Everything up to Stage 8 seems desirable, while the stages after 8 seem to include some self-modifications that I wouldn’t willingly choose, at least from where I’m sitting now.
It’s analogous to a music teacher instructing you to just sit down and play some notes, any notes, for twenty minutes. It would be amazing if you made progress that way.
This is exactly how it felt for me—I even remember thinking this exact same metaphor after practicing TMI and reflecting on the difference between it and my previous attempts.
Not identifying and properly responding to dullness. So, just meditating in persistent dullness. Also, not sleeping enough, thus the dullness. Fixed the sleep and then started addressing dullness properly when it came up.
Your questions aren’t addressed to me but they might as well have been because I went through the same process as wunan.
I started out using vague online instructions and then the app Headspace. There was no real sense of progress with either approach. Headspace makes no real effort to teach you the theory of what it’s trying to accomplish, and the session lengths are probably not long enough to make progress anyway.
In retrospect, Headspace is in some sense the exact wrong approach if your goal is meaningful progress in training your attention and coming to better understand your mind. It’s analogous to a music teacher instructing you to just sit down and play some notes, any notes, for twenty minutes. It would be amazing if you made progress that way.
Like wunan, I read TMI and started actually making progress. Changes could be observed in and out of meditation. I backed away from meditating for a period of time because I became uncomfortable with some of the changes to my cognition. Eventually I re-read The Mind Illuminated and understood that I had been doing some things wrong, fixed that problem and resumed meditating, and the practice has been nothing but positive since then.
I also took the step of consciously choosing, from the outset, not to advance beyond Stage 8 of the progression outlined in the book, unless I reach that stage and then it seems really compelling that I ought to proceed. Everything up to Stage 8 seems desirable, while the stages after 8 seem to include some self-modifications that I wouldn’t willingly choose, at least from where I’m sitting now.
This is exactly how it felt for me—I even remember thinking this exact same metaphor after practicing TMI and reflecting on the difference between it and my previous attempts.
What were you doing wrong?
Not identifying and properly responding to dullness. So, just meditating in persistent dullness. Also, not sleeping enough, thus the dullness. Fixed the sleep and then started addressing dullness properly when it came up.