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Perfectionism
ClayTheScribe
Veteran
I know I've posted on this before, but I need to again. It doesn't seem to matter what mood I'm in, high or low, I either get anxious at the thought of meditation or I get anxious when I sit. I can't seem to let go of my perfectionism. I know meditation is simply following the breath and labeling my thoughts as "thinking," that it's OK if my mind wanders, just to bring it back. THAT's it. 20 minutes a day of just that. But when I catch my mind wandering there's a sense of distress and disappointment that I "failed" and that my session is not "perfect." My perfectionism, I've found, is causing many problems in my life and in my spiritual practice, but I can't seem to let it go or incorporate it. I think I'm also afraid of dealing with my neurotic mind because I find it a deterrent in my spiritual practice. I just want to make friends with these parts of my mind, but I don't know how. Being an "intellectual," I'm finding, can really be a hindrance in meditation. Any suggestions?
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Comments
If you don't want to meditate - then don't.
it's that simple.
when you prepare to sit, you are opening yourself up to fear.
you are self-sabotaging, because you EXPECT a negative result.
so if you expect a negative result, you already set yourself up for failure.
so?
don't meditate.
Sorted.
Or maybe, meditate until you feel that you have failed - accept that you failed and stop meditating and move on with your life - then try again... if meditation doesnt fit with you then stop... try other ways of examining why it is that you seek a 'state of something' (perfect or otherwise) - then try again.
Or maybe seek that perfection more and see where that leads you... keep telling yourself that you failed and see that in that state eventually you fail at everything - then so what? what is failure if it is the state of everything!!
You'll have to reprogram your mind - there is no easy solution and ultimately the answer is with you already - perhaps you just cant face it yet - but thats ok too - everyone is in the same boat with you! If it helps, your post and your thoughts will have much more of a positive effect on others than the negative effect on you... maybe thats just where you need to be right now.
Maybe this might help:
Remember that this is simply the state your mind is in. It's so because of the way you have been living your life. Now you are learning about yourself, about the state of mind you are in, the stress you have, the cause of this stress etc. This is what you try to do in meditation: learning about reality. Not trying to change it. But this is what happens when we start to meditate: we want to change things, we think we can control it all. Seeing this, and seeing the stress this brings (and really, all it brings is stress) is part of the learning...
when you recognize it and label it inside (the feeling itself, not the thought), spend a few seconds with it.
Let this feeling go. This means stop trying to control that feeling.
Let it take over your whole body if it want to.
I even talk to my feelings sometimes like: "hey dude, nice to see you. Here, make yourself at home. You are free to do whatever you want! you can take over the whole body or stay right where you are, doesn't matter. Welcome!"
Monkey mind .... so what? Everyone has it and apparently it takes a lot of patient practice to get past that. Who's judging?
RELAX -- and allow yourself to have BAD meditations, whatever that may be. It's OK. You do what you do - depending on where you are, and that is NATURALLY all you can hope for. You cannot LEARN to be good at meditation, it comes to you, eventually.
You are trying to engage your brain in assessing your progress. THAT won't work. Your brain doesn't know squat :-) -- in this case.
It's not a contest and it will take however long it will take. So, give up your goal DRIVEN practice and things will fall into place. No-Stress-Meditation. Just go with the flow.
===================================
MEDITATION
Pema Chodron: What is True Mindfulness?
"Meditation isn't really about getting rid of thoughts, it's about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.
The thoughts are fine if they are seen as transparent, but we get so caught up judging thoughts as right or wrong, for and against, yes and no, needing it to be this way and not that way. And even that might be okay except that is accompanied by strong, strong emotions. So we just start ballooning out more and more. With this grasping onto thoughts we just get more caught, more and more hooked. All of us. Every single one of us."
more at http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/meditation1.php
and
http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/shenpa3b.php# :
"Say, for instance, you meditated and you felt a sort of settling and a sort of calmness, a sense of well-being. And maybe thoughts came and went, but they didn't hook you, and you were able to come back, and there wasn't a sense of struggle. Afterwards, to that actually very pleasant experience: shenpa. "I did it right, I got it right, that's how it should always be, that's the model." It either builds arrogance or conversely it builds poverty mind because next session is nothing like that.
Next session, the bad one, which is even worse now that you had the good one —and you had the shenpa to the "good" one. Do you see what I'm saying about the shenpa? In other words, is there something wrong with that meditation experience? Nothing wrong with it, but the shenpa. This is what, as practitioners, we have to get at.
Then you have the "bad" one, which is not bad. It's just that you sat there and you were very discursive and you were obsessing about someone at home, at work, something you have to do— you worried and you fretted, or you got into a fear or anger. Anyway, you were wildly discursive, and you were trying to rope in this wild horse who refused to be tamed, and you just felt like it was a horrible meditation session. At the end of it you feel discouraged, and it was bad and you're bad for the bad meditation. And you could feel hopeless.
That's why I told the story about my meditation last night, because really, someone like me, I'd say, would have taken my own life long ago based on if I had been trained in good and bad —that it's supposed to be like this and not this. But from the beginning, even though it took ten years to even start to penetrate, I was always told not to judge yourself. Don't get caught in good or bad, it's just what it is."
It's the mind's nature to wander, so why would you beat yourself up about the mind just doing its thing? Forgive the mind. Be sure to do the slow breathing, what I call "yoga breathing" in the beginning. See if that helps.
Your lute strings are too tight....
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an06/an06.055.than.html
Too much strain. Too much effort - is not Right Effort.
You need to relax, and not be so hard on yourself....
Right awareness, Right Concentration, is Attentive Relaxation, and Relaxed Attention....
I hope this helps.
But I don't think the problem is having a perfectionistic thought as then holding onto it dearly and the making perfection part of you and your fixed personality, which, by the way, is not fixed or separate. So the thought of being perfectionistic is the one that 'sticks', letting it go is okay. There is something about the thoughts that 'stick' and we feel bad about letting them go.
So see the perfectionistic thought and let it go, then feel the feeling of not wanting to let it go and then let that go,
It may help
Imagine practicing riding a unicycle--you would allow yourself many weeks or even months of wobbling off, getting going again, wobbling off. You might not consider falling off to be unnatural; you might expect to fall off many, many times.
Every step is necessary; if you fall off and correct yourself to get back on, that is one more necessary step you needed to get to the point of being a "unicycle rider." It's not a failure at all, it's just practice.
Meditation isn't simply the skill of being in meditation; it's the skill of falling off and returning to meditation. That's a muscle that needs to be strong. So every time you feel like you're falling off, tell yourself "now's my chance to strengthen my returning-to-meditation" muscle. It really will get stronger and stronger, and you'll eventually find it's no longer a worry!
I finally just said "to hell with it" and started trying to still my mind "whenever." At a stoplight, in the elevator, random times and places, because I couldn't stand the pressure of having to make everything "perfect" in order to meditate. That kind of overcorrection really helped--and it's also nice to find that there really are times throughout our busy days where instead of letting our minds go 90 mph, we can instead just rest in stillness. It's not a replacement for longer sitting meditation, but I found it a nice exercise to do a way with my obsessive need for a "perfect time."
your awareness rather than through a description. All
one can say about it is things like: “don’t attach to
anything,” and “let go of everything.” But then people
attach and say, “we shouldn’t be attached to anything”
— and so they attach to the idea of non-attachment!
We are so committed to thinking and trying to figure
everything out in terms of ideas, theory, technique,
party line, the Theravàda approach … and so it goes
on and on like this, and we bind ourselves to the
conditions, even though the teaching is about letting
go or non-attachment. This why I really encourage you
to observe attachment.
Trust yourself in this awareness. And, rather than
holding to the views that one shouldn’t be attached,
recognize that attachment is like this….
Ajahn Sumedho
But she's right.
I would like to add that perfectionism sucks cuz it can prevent us from doing stuff that end up being fun or interesting, and learning from mistakes. I catch myself acting like that sometimes. I try my best to shake it off and not let it prevent me from doing stuff.
Maybe you don't HAVE to meditate for now. Maybe some self-reflection would be helpful. Like reflect on why you're being a perfectionist when it comes to meditation. Just a suggestion.
You ego is you......
separating your 'ego' from 'you' kind of gives you an excuse.... a cop-out....
almost as if there is a part of your psyche that has a mind of its own and therefore independent and out of your control....
I would trust and assume that's not your intention....
Non-self seems to annihilate the right and proper existence you experience, whereas NOT self is more... 'the other side of the coin'.....
you are your Self, but broken down to a gadgillion ever-changing parts, you are not-self.
but a bit like yin and yang, there is still an element of self, within not-self, and not-self within the self.
non-self is a negation..... not-self is an alternative......