It helps to be relaxed. Do this when you don’t worry about anything. Set a timer to ten minutes or as much as you are willing to spend trying, so you also turn off worrying about whether you are not already spending too much time.
For me one obstacle was getting some good ideas while meditating; and then I was like: okay, this is a very good idea, it’s more worth to remember it than to continue with this meditation exercise I am most likely doing wrong anyway. But then I realized it’s short-term thinking: if I predictably get good ideas while trying to meditate (as if my brain is bribing me to stop), then I lose nothing by ignoring them and continuing to meditate; I can do the same thing to recall them (or other, equivalently good ideas) later. -- The idea is to realize that whatever temptation there is to stop meditating and do something else right now, it’s not rational and you can safely ignore it without further analysis.
At first, you will verbally narrate. Just notice it and do a mental gesture equivalent of “thanks, but not interested now”. No anger, no feelings of failure. Notice that the verbal thought is there, and stop paying it attention. If you want some benchmark, if you can notice and ignore each line of thought in an interval shorter than your breath cycle (which feels like a long enough time), you are doing it right—if you keep doing this, the narration will stop after a few exercises. If you don’t develop the thoughts, your brain will stop generating them. Don’t worry; when you end meditation, everything goes back to normal. You don’t stop a pattern with a lifetime of reinforcement by doing a short exercise. You just learn the skill of stopping the narration consciously for a moment.
So the first level of this exercise is to learn not continuing the thoughts that spontaneously start. Instead always decide to turn your attention to your breath (or whatever you use).
It’s like: breath in… breath out… breath in… “I wonder whether I am doing this correctly, because I don’t have any feedback and maybe I misinterpreted the instructions; perhaps I should read a book about meditation and—oh, now I am thinking, but I’m not suposed to, hell how can I stop these thoughts, they come automatically, it’s impossible, maybe I am doing it all wrong and—yeah, I’m supposed to focus on breathing”… breath out… breath in… “oh, I am doing it correctly now, I must totally write a comment on LessWrong that I succeeded to stop my narration while meditating, it will be like: dear fellow LessWrongians, you won’t believe me but today I tried meditating and it finally—oh, I am doing it wrong again, am I not? back to breathing”… breath out… breath in… “did I set a timer? yes, I did. back to breathing”… breath out… breath in… “I wonder what’s for dinner—not now, back to breathing”… breath out… breath in… “also I could—no, not now”… breath out… breath in… breath out… breath in… “oh, I seem to get it—oh no, I actually failed again, that’s just abusurdly difficult, I should probably stop now—okay, I will continue until the timer”… breath out… breat in… “I’d like to see a movie—not now”… breath out… breath in… breath out… “how about a book? no, not now”… breath in… breath out… breath in… “a computer game? -- eh, not now”… breath out… breath in… breath out… breath in… breath out… breath in… TIMER!
The important thing is to notice that there is a small improvement here; the focused breathing to thoughts ratio is improving. For me the most difficult thoughts to turn off are the meta-thoughts of “am I meditating correctly?”. You have to discontinue those, too. After a long exercise it clicked to me. My first success was when travelling in a bus, where I spent about 30 minutes trying this, because I had nothing else to do anyway. I got it right only during the last 5 minutes. But then I could replicate the success much faster. (I am still not sure I am doing it completely correctly, but I don’ worry about that too much. It’s already nice to do something that seemed impossible previously.)
It helps to be relaxed. Do this when you don’t worry about anything. Set a timer to ten minutes or as much as you are willing to spend trying, so you also turn off worrying about whether you are not already spending too much time.
For me one obstacle was getting some good ideas while meditating; and then I was like: okay, this is a very good idea, it’s more worth to remember it than to continue with this meditation exercise I am most likely doing wrong anyway. But then I realized it’s short-term thinking: if I predictably get good ideas while trying to meditate (as if my brain is bribing me to stop), then I lose nothing by ignoring them and continuing to meditate; I can do the same thing to recall them (or other, equivalently good ideas) later. -- The idea is to realize that whatever temptation there is to stop meditating and do something else right now, it’s not rational and you can safely ignore it without further analysis.
At first, you will verbally narrate. Just notice it and do a mental gesture equivalent of “thanks, but not interested now”. No anger, no feelings of failure. Notice that the verbal thought is there, and stop paying it attention. If you want some benchmark, if you can notice and ignore each line of thought in an interval shorter than your breath cycle (which feels like a long enough time), you are doing it right—if you keep doing this, the narration will stop after a few exercises. If you don’t develop the thoughts, your brain will stop generating them. Don’t worry; when you end meditation, everything goes back to normal. You don’t stop a pattern with a lifetime of reinforcement by doing a short exercise. You just learn the skill of stopping the narration consciously for a moment.
So the first level of this exercise is to learn not continuing the thoughts that spontaneously start. Instead always decide to turn your attention to your breath (or whatever you use).
It’s like: breath in… breath out… breath in… “I wonder whether I am doing this correctly, because I don’t have any feedback and maybe I misinterpreted the instructions; perhaps I should read a book about meditation and—oh, now I am thinking, but I’m not suposed to, hell how can I stop these thoughts, they come automatically, it’s impossible, maybe I am doing it all wrong and—yeah, I’m supposed to focus on breathing”… breath out… breath in… “oh, I am doing it correctly now, I must totally write a comment on LessWrong that I succeeded to stop my narration while meditating, it will be like: dear fellow LessWrongians, you won’t believe me but today I tried meditating and it finally—oh, I am doing it wrong again, am I not? back to breathing”… breath out… breath in… “did I set a timer? yes, I did. back to breathing”… breath out… breath in… “I wonder what’s for dinner—not now, back to breathing”… breath out… breath in… “also I could—no, not now”… breath out… breath in… breath out… breath in… “oh, I seem to get it—oh no, I actually failed again, that’s just abusurdly difficult, I should probably stop now—okay, I will continue until the timer”… breath out… breat in… “I’d like to see a movie—not now”… breath out… breath in… breath out… “how about a book? no, not now”… breath in… breath out… breath in… “a computer game? -- eh, not now”… breath out… breath in… breath out… breath in… breath out… breath in… TIMER!
The important thing is to notice that there is a small improvement here; the focused breathing to thoughts ratio is improving. For me the most difficult thoughts to turn off are the meta-thoughts of “am I meditating correctly?”. You have to discontinue those, too. After a long exercise it clicked to me. My first success was when travelling in a bus, where I spent about 30 minutes trying this, because I had nothing else to do anyway. I got it right only during the last 5 minutes. But then I could replicate the success much faster. (I am still not sure I am doing it completely correctly, but I don’ worry about that too much. It’s already nice to do something that seemed impossible previously.)