Lack of attention

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 5 years before Dec 11, 2017

MiBeloved 5 years ago

My experience is that lack of attention when doing practice is harmful to the rate of advancement. There is practice. There is mediocre practice. Then again there is intense focused practice. Which one do you do during your asana session or your pranayama session or your meditation (samyama) session?

Does it make a difference if there are noises while you are meditating?

Does it make a difference if you are thinking of other matters?

Does it make a difference if you are hearing a television or some other media?

Are you like great yogis, who can sit in the middle of traffic and not be disturbed?

This morning just as I was about to finish a pranayama/asana session, I had to stop to attend to something else. The result of that was that I lost track of what I was doing in the session, on what I focused on.

All I can remember now is that I was on to something big but then I lost contact with it. I was pried loose from that higher plane of existence. The memory of what I was absorbed in there, remained on that higher plane, which means that I have no recall of it.

I am sure someone will say that I should recall it and that if I was a yogi in fact, I would recall it or some such pipedream idea.

Plain fact for me is this.

No attention -- no progress.

Partial attention -- loss of progress.

Be in the world and not of it:  that is not for me.

For me it is more like:

Be in the world, then be condemned to be of it. Matter closed.