One of my observations about the mainstream meditation world is that many people have an implicit assumption that they must learn to meditate by something like sheer willpower. While that may work in a small number of cases, by and large it will fail. The level of conditioning in the direction of thought, applied over decades, is just too hard to overcome by willpower alone. So I recommend various techniques to beat the mind at its own game, chiefly noting practice.
In Upping Your Game, I made the case for techniques and even gadgets to help one remain continuously aware. Buried in that post was a reference to a device I used to prompt me at 60 second intervals during meditation. I used that device during most of the time I was "getting it done". Here is some feedback I received:
"I reset my meditation app so I hear a subtle wood block every minute while I’m sitting. This helps quite a bit, so thanks for that!"Excellent. This person is using the popular Insight Timer app on their smartphone. There are many apps like this and I wish I was more familiar with them. But yeah, road test some of these more structured approaches, do whatever it takes.
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