Jordan

June 2, 2019 I did 45 min in the morning then forgot to do the last 15 min At least I have still averaged over an hour per day after doing 1.5 hours the day before.

June 1, 2019 I set my alarm for 2 hours and i sat for 1 hr 30 min. I stopped because I heard my house creak and my eyes flickered open. I was just doing mindfulness with labeling focusing on my body, my emotions, hearing cars, my fridge, my thoughts. 90 min was a bit difficult for me. I don't think I have sat much longer than that before.

May 31, 2019 I did 40 min and then I got interrupted by my girlfriend texting me. I did the last 20 min later on. I played too many video games today.

May 30, 2019 I sat for an hour from 9:30pm to 10:30pm. I labeled more than yesterday but still forgot to label for a lot of the time. I had a good amount of energy and didn't nod off. I felt into my emotions a lot of the time. I didn't have any strong emotional impulses to move like I sometimes get. It was pretty relaxed. I noticed today I was a lot more aware of the present moment when going about my day. Spending time in bed with my girlfriend was better than usual. I have found having a better time intimately with my girlfriend typically happens when I am meditating regularly and it seems to get worse if I stop meditating. I have started and stopped meditating many times and this is the most obvious change every time. Completed 2 days in a row meditating. I hope last longer than last time. I did around 100 days in a row 1 hour per day before missing a day. I'll do by best just to not miss a day ever. I'll see how it goes.

April 19, 2019 I meditated for 1 hour starting at around 12pm. I did the mindfulness with labeling technique. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to do the technique instead of actually doing the technique. I'll do my best to focus a bit better tomorrow.

This year I plan to meditate every day for 1 hour. I have been meditating off and on for around 5 years but have never done it consistently for more than about a month. I will update the journal at least once a week and probably more when starting out. I want to write this journal to help me stay on track. Today is January 2, 2019. Yesterday and today I sat for 1 hour in the morning from around 7am-8am. The method I used was: 1. I sit on a meditation cushion that is on top of a pillow that is on my bed, I sit cross legged in a way that I try to keep my legs from falling asleep. I put covers and a pillow on my lap so i can rest my arms. 2. For the first 5-10 min I take a deep breaths focusing on relaxing my jaw as a breath out, then I add in relaxing my shoulders, arms hands stomach legs and feet. I do my best to sit up straight without bending to one side. 3. When I am ready to move on I feel into my heart and stomach to see if I am feeling any emotions there and just watch what sensations come up. When i notice I am distracted by thinking I think to myself "thoughts are imagination, this is real" referring to the sensations that I am feeling in that moment and go back to feeling slowly through my body and focusing on any sensations that stand out. Sometimes I will switch to focusing on sounds or temperatures, pressures, pains , my heartbeat, my breath, my current body position or everything at once. Usually after 30-45 min I feel very uncomfortable and sometimes have to stand up or lie down in bed but I quickly sit back up and begin again. As I continue meditating consistently for a month or so I expect to be able to sit through the full hour the majority of the time even if it is unpleasant at the 45 min mark. I am looking forward to having this become a habit for me. The benefits I have found in the past doing meditation include: -becoming less stressed -feeling more positive emotions -enjoying everything I do more such as going for a walk, driving my car, working and spending time with my girlfriend. I hope to continue this list as I continue meditating consistently. -Jordan-

April 13-15 These days I still meditated right before bed and the sessions were not good since I was so tired April 16-17 I didn't meditated these 2 days. There were the first 2 days I haven't meditated at all since starting on January 1st. I didn't want to meditate at night and decided I would meditate in the morning the next day. On the 17th I got busy and focused on my website again and I didn't get around to meditating. April 18 Today I got back on track meditating for an hour doing the strong determination sitting technique from 1-2pm. It was really easy not to move this time compared to doing it before bed. I did have lots of thoughts come up but I didn't try to stop them. I started thinking about the answer to the question "what am I?" and trying to experience the answer to that. I was thinking about how you think you are making thoughts come up but in reality they show up out of nowhere, triggered by previous thoughts and sensations and are observed by you but not created by you at all. I will hopefully not miss any more days. I'll try waking up early and doing my meditation in the morning from now on.

April 6 - 11 2019 I have been slacking off in my meditation. I have been doing meditation late at night before bed because I have been working hard on a website I am making. The website is tendonitissolution.com. I have been working on it for the last 3 weeks and haven't wanted to stop to meditate during the day. I am pretty close to finishing it so I will get back on track with meditating mid day which usually goes much better. I haven't been able to sit without moving these days I was too tired and couldn't manage it. I often would lie down after a while or the whole time. I plan on sitting from now on and not starting my meditation at 12 or 1am April 12, 2019 I meditated at around 6pm for an hour. I sat the whole time but I was interrupted by 2 phone calls. I kind of wanted to take those calls and don't regret it. After the calls I couldn't sit still for very long and would open my eyes and scratch itches without being able to help it. Tomorrow I will try to find a good time to meditate with my phone on airplane mode and maybe I will try strong determination sitting instead of the mindfulness with labeling I have been doing. @Zigzag Idiot I think your paraphrasing is altering the meaning but I like hearing your understanding of this topic. I was saying that there are no physical things. It is like when Leo made the episode about brains not existing. If you consider that the present moment is all that there is, there only exists 2 things which are 1: appearances 2: the understanding of those appearances. The understanding doesn't come from a physical brain because a brain isn't on the list of 2 things that exists. For example if there exists an understanding that you can look down and see "your body." The truth is that you are not seeing a real body, that is just an appearance and your mind is wrongfully labeling that appearance as a body that was born and requires food to live etc. This is not true. It is just an appearance similar to other appearances you have in your memory that you call a body. It would be more accurate to say you can have the experience of looking down and seeing shapes and colors that resemble a body. I am not sure how useful it is looking at reality this way though. I think it is mostly important to focus on being more present to these appearances and removing the believe that your labels and concepts are real. That way you can more easily distinguish what is real and what is concept. I hope that kind of makes sense

March 31 - April 5 Today is April 5, I have been meditating these days an hour per day right before bed usually starting at 11pm or 12am. I have not been able to concentrate or sit still the whole time. Sometimes I had to take short breaks. 2 times I lied down for the last 30 min. I did the mindfulness with labeling technique and sometimes started with body scanning and relaxing muscles. Today I had a different experience. I meditated starting at 8:30pm and was able to concentrate a bit better than in recent days. I still moved, itched myself, opened my eyes and checked the time with 20 min left. Shortly after I had thought come up: "All that exists are appearances and that there is no reason to assume that physical reality exists behind these appearances." I have thought the same thing before while watching Leo's videos but I understood it differently this time. I'll try to explain my understanding of it. Why would I assume that my boxy exists just because there are feeling appearances of my body and seeing / hearing / feeling appearances of a memory of my life? Emotion appearances may exist making you feel that the thought "my body is real" is true but that thought / emotion is an appearance and appearances are the only "things" that exist. Physical objects are not real. What I am is not a physical body, I am the intelligence that understands appearances as they come into existence. I feel like I said appearances like 1000 times haha. I hope what I said kind of makes sense. These thoughts make sense to me but I don't fully grasp it. I think I need to meditate more.

March 30, 2019 I sat for an hour. I moved and checked the time a few times. Today I tried the same method as yesterday. I noted "feel" then "emotion" then "hear" for a longer time than yesterday (maybe 30-35 min in total) and it went great. When I got to the inner see I started thinking about my old jobs I had and after labeling "image" a couple times I kept getting strong emotions and getting lost in stories every time. I tried it over and over and kept getting lost. After I focused on inner talk and it seemed to go fine. At first I purposely said stuff to label then after I didn't try to say anything and just listened to see if any internal talk would come up. I only spent the last 10 min focusing on whatever came up which was really hard after all the emotions came up about thinking about work. After getting lost in thought I moved a few times and checked the time. Thinking about work really made me feel stressed and afraid. I quit many jobs after I started feeling bad emotions when thinking about them. Usually when I start a job I really enjoy it and am excited about it. After 6 months of so I dread doing it and don't like even thinking about it. This might happen because during situations that stress me out and scare me, I will ignore and avoid the emotions. They never seem to go away when I think back about them. Enough of these situations build up and I start associating going to work as being stressful and scary. I might need to look into shadow work and work though these emotions and do my best to let them go and detach them from the memories if I want to stick with a job for a long time without it being torture.

March 28, 2019 I meditated for an hour mid day. I moved and checked the time 3-4 times at the end. I kind of did it unconsciously. I am not sure why I was so eager for it to end. March 29, 2019 I opened my eyes a few times but didn't move. I sat for an hour 12pm-1pm Today I did something a bit different in my meditation. I did the savoring part for 4 breaths instead of 2. Starting out I slowly scanned my body labeling feel for 4 breaths on each spot from top to bottom of my body. If I felt muscle tension and could relax it easily while still sitting up straight I did. If I couldn't relax the tension easily I just felt it and didn't try to relax it anymore. I then switched to feeling my emotions from top to bottom. I focused on the other labels hear, image and talk each separately for a while. After I was done that I just went back to noting and labeling whatever sensation draws my attention for 4 breaths. I liked the longer savoring time and focusing on 1 label at a time for the beginning so I will try this method out for the next while. Last night I had a dream where I was bit by a snake on the leg and it paralyzed my leg and hurt. I woke up at around 4am and couldn't sleep for a while and couldn't stop thinking about the dream and what might happen if I got bit and had to call for an ambulance and if i should try to pull it off or let it let go by itself.

March 27, 2019 I meditated for an hour without moving starting at 10am. I was trying to savor the sensations I was focusing on as much as possible and it seemed to help increase the clarity of the sensations and stay on task. My back felt better today and was only a little sore. A thought came up that I could make a YouTube video explaining how to do the technique. Then I went into a thought story where I filmed the whole video and explained everything I wanted to explain in the video. I realize I didn't really label and savor during that time but I wanted to finish the thought so it would be out of my head and I could continue meditating without it nagging me. I went back to meditating and was fine afterwards.

March 26, 2019 I meditated for an hour without moving starting at 9:30pm. My back was pretty sore today which is uncommon. The session went fine. My legs and feet felt hot. I want to try to put more effort into picking a sensation to focus on and really savoring it as the top priority. Sometimes I just note something and know it is there and not really feel or hear into it that much and am still partly paying attention to other things.

March 23 2019 i was interrupted about 40 min in with a call from my grandma and finished the last 20 min later in the day. I remember the first 40 min in the morning went pretty well. The 20 min later on was difficult for me to sit still. March 24, 2019 I did 8 min in the morning then got busy with something after getting a text then finished the hour up in the afternoon. I got a text from my dad about having free tickets to a hockey game that night which made my mind really active. I kept wondering if I have enough time to finish meditating before going and wondering who else was going. It was hard to watch my thoughts without getting lost and becoming unaware of the feel and hear senses. March 25, 2019 I just meditating for an hour starting at 11:30am after a big breakfast and some coffee. It went really well today. At the beginning I had strong emotions coming up as I was thinking about frustrating things that happened in the past. I opened my eyes once for a second but went back to meditating. After about 15 min I was able to focus really well. I quickly noticed when image and internal talking was coming up and making a story. I was able to understand the stories contents and still label, feel my emotions , muscle tension and body position and hear my refrigerator and cars driving by every once in a while outside. The hour went by very quickly and I could have happily kept going. It was a better experience than normal. Usually I am really glad when I am done.

March 22, 2019 I started meditating at 12PM today. I got several texts that interrupted me. I decided to respond to them. I don't really have to respond to anyone quick unless it is my girlfriend so I guess I could have went back to meditating instead of responding. Texting then going back to meditating a few times was an interesting change trying to focus in quickly after being distracted. It made me think of ways I could try meditating with alternating between normal seated meditation and walking meditation. That might help me be more mindful going about my day. I could even try alternating working on my computer and meditating in 10 or 15 min intervals and see how that goes.

March 20, 2019 I started meditating at 5pm. I was very tired and was nodding off many times and not spending much of my time labeling because I was getting lost in thought so much. I decided to stop after half an hour and try again later. I finished the hr off at 11:30pm and I was a lot less sleepy and could pay attention more March 21, 2019 I started meditating at 1pm. It was going well then my girlfriend texted me after 15 min to play a game on my phone with her. I finished the last 45 min at around 4pm. My back was sore but the pain didn't increase much after the first few min. I think i tweaked it lifting some boxes yesterday. I did open my eyes 3 times and cracked my neck once during the 45 min. I was feeling restless and didn't want to sit still. I went back to meditating quickly and didn't check the time at least.

Hey @Zigzag Idiot Thanks for the comment. I am glad what I have written has helped you a bit. Writing out a journal defiantly helps me keep on track with meditating every day and remember insights I had. I have read some of your journal and others I saw on meditation for some motivation and ideas too. I do know every time 100% for sure the timer is going. I did have trouble a couple years ago I sometimes didn't know if the timer was on or not. One time it really wasn't on which was kind of annoying. Now I start the timer with 1 hr 1 min so I have a minute to get settled and watch the timer count down a few seconds before placing it down and placing my hands on my lap. The last 3 months I have been checking the time sometimes because I move and then use that as an excuse to check the time. A lot of times I move unconsciously. I will crack my neck or bend forward and tense up and stretch my back muscles without consciously doing it when my attention is elsewhere. Occasionally I move because my knee or back is in pain so I want to take a break. I will have to remind myself before meditating that failing to keep still is not an valid excuse to check the timer. I'll try to just accept I might move sometimes and go back to meditating asap.

March 18, 2019 I put off meditation until 10:30pm right before I went to bed. I checked the time with 17 min left. My focus was ok considering I was tired and it was right before bed. March 19, 2019 I meditated for an hour 12-1pm without moving. I got lost in thought a few times which is typical but didn't beat myself up about it or anything I just kept going on with the technique. My emotions were changing a lot sometimes feeling very happy or bored or disappointed. It was pretty enjoyable today. I think at around 12pm seems like a good time for me to meditate as long as I am not too busy then.

March 14-17, 2019 I meditated these 4 days doing mindfulness meditation with labels for an hour per day. I have been having trouble sitting still compared to before. Today I got a phone call 40 min in. I was doing well before that but I had trouble sitting still afterwords. My motivation to meditate has taken a little hit since it has been a bit uncomfortable but I plan to continue with the same practice for 1 hr per day.

March 13, 2019 I meditated for an hour this morning starting at around 9:30am. I did mindfulness meditation with labels where I paid special attention to inner talk and images trying to be aware of them as they appear. It seems a lot of times I realize I had some inner talk a few seconds after it already happened and I am looking at the memory of what happened. It is really hard to be aware of it as it is happening. It is like the thought is outside of my awareness but it is still picked up in my memory. It seemed like I was sitting for much longer than an hour. My focus was better and I stayed on task without getting lost in stories better than usual even though I got drowsy at times and my head nodded forward a few times due to sleepiness. I felt a lot off worry come up. I can feel into my emotions a lot more easily and feel them more clearly since I started mindfulness meditation on March 5th. I can also more aware of the thoughts and beliefs that caused the emotion to come up although it is just a small improvement.

March 12, 2019 I meditated for 38 min at around 5pm then took a nap and did the last 22 min after. I stopped because I was getting a headache and cracked my neck so it would feel better and used that as an excuse to stop. The 22 min meditation session went really well. I tried focusing just on inner talk and images when a thought came up I would say talk or image. If no thought or image came up I would just say what I was focusing on usually feel or hear while still listening intently for a thought to come up. When I noticed anything close to a word or image I said the label as quickly as possible and savored the memory of it. It made me focus in a lot more than usual and I think I can make some insights on how my thoughts work and improve my ability to be more aware of them if I continue doing this.

March 11, 2019 I meditated for 30 min in the morning soon after waking up without eating breakfast first. It was really hard to focus and did not go very well so I stopped. I did an hour of meditation from 5-6pm which went really well. I was able to focus really well. I didn't get lost in thought much and my body was really comfortable sitting for the hour. I did feel some uncomfortable emotions but I didn't consider stopping and only wondered how much time is left a few times which is usually a common thought. I had forgotten my dream in the morning but after thinking about what it was for a while it all came back to me like a flood. I has hiding from a group of 2 or 3 people and they found me hiding behind something in the dark and took me as a hostage at gun point. I had to walk along with them until I woke up.

March 10, 2019 I meditated for around 45 min in the morning and finished the last 15 min in the evening. I stopped because I felt like I needed to stop for some reason. I did end up having to go drive and pick something up which I had forgotten. I got lost in thoughts and forgot to keep labeling several times. I kept having a train of thought about what beliefs are and how they are often not true but they effect your perception so much. I had a sex dream last night which has been the first that I can remember having in years. The vivid taste, emotions and images come up when I try to remember the dream similar quality but not the same amount of information/sensations as if I remember last time I was in bed with my girlfriend.

March 9, 2019 I meditated for an hour this morning. I remembered to set my intention of being more disciplined and it seemed to help. I cracked my neck once and opened my eyes briefly during the last min. I think I forgot to mention I have been doing mindfulness meditation eyes closed. I was more focused today than yesterday. I seem to be aware of more things going on and have a sense that my experience is constantly changing and a single moment is much more complicated than words or memories can communicate very accurately. It makes me want to meditate more so I can tune into the present experience more fully. I had a dream last night where I saw my boss from a year ago at a place similar to subway and he asked me if I wanted to come back to work and I think I avoided answering or said I was somewhat interested. He had a new tattoo on his face with 3 words but i didn't read the words. One was on his forehead one between his nose and mouth and one below his mouth. I think there was more to the dream but I forget it now.

March 8, 2019 I did an hour of mindfulness meditation with labeling today. I got lost in thought a bit more than the previous days, I itched a few itches probably after 45 min mark. I looked at the time with around 7 min left. I also stopped labeling a few times to try to feel into some sensations but I think I should stick to labeling every breath to help me stay on task. I did not feel as strong emotions as the first time but I still ended up moving a few times and checking the clock for some reason. I'll set an intention to be more disciplined in my practice tomorrow right before I start meditating. I had a dream last night that I almost forgot in the morning but then I thought about it when I was in the shower so I remember it now. In the dream I was working in a grocery store in part stocking the shelves and organizing stuff. I also went for a run by the elementary school I went to and saw kids swinging on swings that went about 3 times as high as normal. I was also almost run over by a vehicle that was similar to a golf cart before seeing swings. The dream wasn't as vivid as the night before.