30 Day Meditation Challenge

What to Expect

Many people mistake meditation for relaxation or stress management. For these you can go to the spa or do a hike in the mountains. The major goal of meditation is to raise self-awareness, which is rather ellusive to grasp directly. However, you'll likely notice secondary effects of improved attention and memory, better mood, higher energy, heightened ability to manage stress, pain and anger. These benefits are probably not alien to you, so I would like to draw your attention to the potential negative effects you may encounter. Since self-awareness is a is a neutral, indiscriminate quality, you'll become more sensitive to both good and bad things, if you are practicing right. Better connection with yourself also means that you become more conscious of your own dark thoughts, painful memories, deep discomfort within your body etc. The point is to stop running away from those, and to face them, let them be and watch them pass. Distracting yourself with “love n light” and “feel good” outlets only suppresses what’s truly inside. If your meditation practice has progressed to an extent that it allows deeper truths to surface, congratulations. Truth is truth, whether beautiful or ugly. While at this stage it is not your duty to put up with other people’s negative energy, it is always already your ineluctable duty to process your own.

The Technique

There are numerous meditation techniques out there suited for various purposes. Here I introduce to you Anapana, the rawest, simplest and most basic form of meditation that is the foundation of any higher levels of meditative states. Anapana requires you to literally DO NOTHING— no visualization, no chanting, no breath control — JUST observe your own natural breath. Don’t be fooled by how simple it sounds. Soon enough you will realize how compulsive and instinctual we are to do something, and that doing nothing is precisely is the hardest thing to "do". However, only when we are able to quiet down the monkey mind of doing can we experience being and truly see things as they are.

Anapana aims to train us for the right kind of concentration in the sense of self-awareness. A cat's attention is highly concentrated when preying on a mouse; a pickpocket's attention is highly concentrated when targeting the victim, but that is not kind of concentration we are after here. For the right kind of concentration, Anapana requires an object of focus that (1) belongs to us here and NOT out there, and (2) naturally arises and is NOT our willful production — our natural breath.

Lastly, what is required of you for a successful training is patience and consistency. Don't get frustrated if you can't master it within the first week. The more you take it easy, the sooner you get into the flow. Also don't expect to see progress if you only participate intermittently, and then try to sit 3 hours to make up for it. Similar to physical training, meditation requires that you practice everyday for at least a period of time consistently to build your mental muscles.

Program is over

30 Day Meditation Challenge

Apr 1, 2024 - Apr 30, 2024

Please make sure that you understand the above and that you are going to take this challenge seriously so that you are not wasting the free spot!

Disclaimer

I am not a certified meditation teacher. I am simply a fellow meditator who started meditating daily since 2019 and would do a 10-day Vipassana retreat/service at least once a year. At first, sitting for 15 minutes was a challenge for me. But through consistent practice, I now easily sit for an hour. You too can achieve this. Here I share what I believe is good enough for you to have a good start — what worked for me minus my mistakes and confusions. If you feel like needing more personalized guidance, you may want to consider taking classes with a certified meditation teacher.