Time

weighted

When I first started daily meditation about two and a half months ago, I found sitting for just five minutes was difficult. My mind raced, I kept wondering how much longer until my meditation timer went off, and when it did it felt like a relief.

Now, though, having extended my meditation practice to 30 minutes daily (and sometimes 15-20 minutes on top of this here and there if time allows), I find that the time passes very quickly. I use a meditation timer app with interval bells. I initially set these to go off every five minutes during the 30 minute session; I liked the sound of them. I've since turned them off because I find my thoughts are running when they do, something along the lines of: "Five minutes passed already?" Time seems to fly by.

I think that I see this extending into my daily life, too, hence my posting this and wanting to get others' feedback.

I feel as though moments during the day that are painful I can almost control them and make the duration of the pain shorter, the time I suffer less - partially through mindfulness and also through not clinging to things, dropping the storyline, etc. And on the other hand, I find that when I feel at peace or happy, those moments seem to last much longer than they did before; I am more in those moments than I ever was, so perhaps this is why?

Peace2012ca

Mindfulness is very helpful...scientific studies have shown this. By being in the present moment, you don't think about past or future events - therefore your pain is less. The lower the gap between past and future, the less suffering. The higher the gap, the more anxiety. The key is to close the gap as much as possible. Meditation helps. Mindfulness helps.

Lady_Alison

Glad to see you have peaked the suffering and are on the other side.

I actually have the same app and have had to only do the bells in the beggining and end. If I an too submerged in meditation they jolt me out with a violence.

Here is a link to free dharma audio
http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org

Lady_Alison

Sone people build small stone paths on the way to spiritual liberation, while others, like you build state highways.

Lol.

It's good. . . I add a little more time during the day, if I had a bad siting I try again in an hour or later. . .

weighted

@Lady_Alison I would hardly say I've peaked the suffering, but I was able to control it a bit more than I ordinarily would have been. It comes and goes, ebbs and flows.

Lady_Alison

I meant for today...I think of it as a curved statistical wave like in a graph.

It has a momentum and peaks then subsides...but ebbs and flows work too.

weighted

I meant for today...I think of it as a curved statistical wave like in a graph.

It has a momentum and peaks then subsides...but ebbs and flows work too.

Definitely.

Zero

time is relative to your experience.

Try meditating without any timer whatsoever - just go with the natural flow - like waking without an alarm.

You may find this allows more of the experiences you describe outside the dojo.