I am trying to decide whether to feel guilty or proud of myself that I turned off my 5am alarm YET AGAIN, but I did choose to meditate at 8am when I first got to work to start my day off right, and I even did it for a new increased total of 20 minutes. I am also trying to decide whether I should feel guilty or proud that about halfway through my meditation session I chose not to sit but rather decided to lie down instead. I am so not used to meditating to the point where the back pain becomes distracting and takes over my mind.
I noticed that the first several minutes in my brain are all about the physical sensations- I'm cold, my butt hurts, this floor's too hard, where's my pillow, my pants are too tight for meditation and I should be wearing loose comfortable (elastic waistband!) pants, my back hurts, and so on. Then my mind started to drift towards all those other busy thoughts about my day, but this time, perhaps knowing that I had a full 20 minutes and could get to the point of calming my mind, I sort of stepped outside of myself and just observed the thoughts. I tried not to get mad or frustrated that the thoughts were there. After all, we can't really control our thoughts; they just appear. I tried to be that mountain observing the thoughts as clouds floating by, but instead, it was more like I was the cloud, and I was floating by my physical self, observing myself, and observing the thoughts in my head. Then, I'm almost embarrassed to admit that this is how I spend my meditation session, but I went into an almost dreamlike state that played like a movie in my head as I imagined where I would hang the hooks on my living room ceiling if I decided to install chair hammocks. I know, crazy! When my mind shifted to another thought, it was almost like waking up too early from a good dream, and I struggled to remember what I had been so excited to think about, and then I went back to trying to figure out where the beams in my ceiling would be, and whether I still have that stud finder...
Should I feel guilty about my stud-finding thoughts?
