A good friend who has known me for more than 60 years advised me today to enjoy myself. I like the idea of doing that and I feel that I already do to some extent. I want to think about what I do to enjoy myself and maybe ways I can do so better or more often or more deeply.
I define meditation as sitting still, upright but comfortable, for 10 minutes. During that time, I work at keeping my attention on a single point. Attention is built to search around and alight on new targets more or less continuously but noticing when my attention has moved from the single point trains me to be more aware of what is happening in my mind. That, in turn, increases my mindfulness. Increased awareness of what me and my mind are doing has enabled me to catch passions, fears, irritations as well as hungers, hopes and contradictions in myself more than I used to. It may be that being older makes my mind slower and a little easier to observe. Also, maybe I am a little braver and more forthright with myself so impulses that I refused to recognize before now seem more identifiable and manageable.
I got assistance from learning to think of what passes through my mind as about 50% associations. To me, a "thought" is more coherent, more like a sentence, or at least a phrase, like "low on milk" or "car needs gas". But much of what comes to my conscious mind consists of links: my cousin & her chicken farm, not having a car & the fun of getting one, Inspector Clouseau & funny, arrogant behavior. Being more conscious of what links to what often gives me a chuckle. Sometimes, I think just sitting and letting my mind do its thing is more fun and better entertainment than what is available on tv.
I believe that talking to myself is a complex process that I can use to both explore my thinking and my wants as well as directing myself more efficiently toward some goal. Writing notes to myself is a slower process than talking either silently or aloud to myself. That slowness gives me a better opportunity to try to find wording that really captures what I am thinking and feeling. Lynn pointed out that some notes are there to be looked at later.
