How I got into mindfulness practice

This is an exercise I did for a teacher training course I am taking but it was a lot of writing and thinking so I feel like I should put it up: ● Why did you start practicing mindfulness? Were there problems you were hoping it would solve? I started practicing for a variety of reasons. I have always been inspired by Shaolin monks from old kung fu movies and the Jedi from star wars so my interest in meditation started very early in my life. I always knew it was something important even if I didn't fully understand it. It became something I naturally gravitated to as I got older and some of the "adult problems" set in. I wanted to lose weight but was having issues with controlling my behavior and emotions around food. I am a transgender woman and have persistent gender dysphoria. I needed something to help me be emotionally stable so I could progress with all the other things I had going on. I had issues focusing on prep work for grad school and the writing projects/interests I wanted to pursue. My attention felt split and I wanted the control, precision, and concentration that I had when I did my parkour practice. I wanted to experience spontaneous states of flow and calm arising without it being dependent on throwing my body around on concrete. I work as a caregiver and needed to have more compassion for the person I was taking care of in order to not give into frustration or boredom with simple tasks. My second job is as a parkour/gymnastics instructor mostly with children and I needed to have a lot of patience to overcome frustration there too. Looking back it seems that I have a sort of complicated life but all of these things have been massively improved and made manageable with mindfulness practice. ● How did you learn to practice mindfulness? A course? Working with a teacher one on one? So not counting my random misguided attempts as a teenager, I started actually practicing concentration meditation on the breath after reading B. Alan Wallace's books on shamatha and watching his videos on youtube a few years ago. I would do it before and during work to keep calm and patience. I was inspired by the idea of having strong directed attention abilities, a "mind like a laser" as he says. I have always been inspired by the idea of having above average mental/physical abilities, like a superhero or Jedi or a monk. Why merely settle for being an average human when you could be super? My pursuit of self actualization was mostly in the physical realm and intellectual sphere but I was just starting to get an inkling of the the contemplative life. I went to school for philosophy but found that the intellectual pursuit didn't help me solve my problems with gender dysphoria or food related issues. In fact, I just became more confused and helpless by the endless intellectualization and doubt. I wanted to live a philosopher's life, not just read about one. Still I kept consuming podcasts and watched videos on Buddhist meditation practice. Stuff from Buddhist Geeks and the Secular Buddhist Podcast. I found some of Daniel Ingram's work on Dharma Overground. I listened to dhamma talks by Gil Fronsdale, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Ajahn Brahm, and Ajahn Amaro explaining Buddhist doctrine. I somehow came across Shinzen's "5 Ways to Know Yourself", a precursor to UM. It made so much sense because it perfectly encompassed the various strands of Buddhist philosophy and practice I had spent so much time studying. He took all those strands and made them very clear. I listened to his "Science of Enlightenment" audiobook several times over and did the same with the "5 Ways". I alternated back and forth between Shinzen's work and the early sources of Buddhist wisdom in the Pali Canon. "In the Buddha's Words" by Bhikkhu Bodhi, the "Guide to the Bodhisattva's way of life by Shantideva, and "Old Path White Clouds" by Thich Nhat Hanh are just a few among countless books I keep sucking up like a sponge. Concentration practice was nice and made me feel good but didn't last very long or help with deeper issues. I knew I was supposed to do more insight practices eventually so I climbed up into a tree one day and decided to give vipassana meditation a try. I was immediately overwhelmed with sensations, like I was being rained on. I didn't really know what to do with that until I found Shinzen's work. My practice was sporadic for a year or two until finally a more consistent practice with mindfulness became a thing. I started practicing with one of my housemates just 10 minutes per night and I learned that I could use micro-hits during all the deadspaces in my day (waiting in line at the store, sitting at the doctor's office, etc.) I at some point realized that my progress is really just a numbers game and have sought to up my amount of daily practice by getting as much in when and wherever I can. I have actually been tracking my time and I average about 30 minutes a day currently but some days will be two hours of formal practice, other days not so much. The more I do, the better I feel. ● What were some of the challenges you faced and how did you overcome them? Boredom and impatience came pretty quickly in the beginning. A part of me could not see how practicing meditation was going to make me happier or better at anything. A part of me thought it was just a waste of time. I got over these issues by, as Gil Fronsdale would say "becoming really interested in them". So I recognized the resistance I had to meditation could immediately give me feedback on the nature of that resistance and just being uncomfortable in general. Seeing how my mind would resist helped to dissolve the resistance and help me continue without any problems. Now I rarely feel bored or impatient with the practice. Consistency was difficult for me because I felt like there was so much to "figure out" and I could be spending time on intellectual understanding instead of just groping around in the dark, gazing at my navel. But I was receiving better calm, focus, and understanding from sporadic bursts of meditation and when I realized how I was being affected in a positive way, that reward gave me the trust that I would receive even more benefits with more practice. Dullness and sleepiness are still problems I am contending with but I seem to be making a lot of progress with them by noticing earlier and earlier when dullness sets in. As soon as I notice, I straighten my spine. If that doesn't work, I open my eyes. I then switch to subvocalizing my labels for noting until the dullness subsides and I am back on track. If all else fails, walking meditation works 100% of the time. ● Before practicing mindfulness did you have ideas about it that later turned out to be inaccurate? Write down what these were and how the discoveries you made through practicing changed your ideas. The Stoic Repression of Emotion Spock, the Jedi, and the stoic greek/roman philosophers all gave me the impression that repressing my emotions was the goal. My choice was to be a cold, unfeeling robot ruled only by reason or a complete emotional wreck, a slave to my passions. Similarly the concept of No-Self in Buddhism had me equating it with "no personality". Any form of aesthetic affectation or personality quirks were to be looked down on and seen as a reflection of my untamed mind or attachment to selfhood. I got over this by seeing the expressiveness of the the Dalai Lama or Thich Naht Hanh or other monks from the various traditions. Clearly there was a middle ground where people were free to express their emotions and personalities but they were also FREE OF the negative aspects of these things. Also Shinzen's conception of radical acceptance of one's emotions giving a person the ability to choose what to express just blew my mind. In my practice, I found this idea to be completely true. I became more honest about my feelings with others, I let myself laugh fully, and I became less caught and therefore more in control of my emotional regulation. I could have my cake and eat it too, so to speak. Mindfulness is not deep enough. I felt that the sentimental sounding mindfulness practices espoused in articles and material coming from the "new age" section was just too shallow compared to the grander claims of Buddhism, of the enlightened sage. B. Alan Wallace and others had me thinking that the basic practices given out in your typical mindfulness program don't really lead into deep insights or massive meditative milestones like stream entry. These practices are just for stress, reduction, just being a little less anxious. I think this is true to some extent still but after investigating the various Buddhist paths and comparing it to the framework of UM, it's easy to see that the shallow end of the pool benefits along with the deep end are both there. UM has something to offer anybody, even those who want to go really deep with their practice. ● What have some of the rewards and benefits of mindfulness been for you? My gender dysphoria has decreased immensely. Being misgendered in public or by my friends and family no longer crushes me like it used to as I now have a strong buffer between others and my reactions to what they say. I have managed to finally have the resolve and control with food craving such that I have been able to lose weight at a steady pace after years of failing. I work with children on a daily basis and the depths of calm and patience I can bring to my instruction has only made me a better, more compassionate teacher. I used to get incredibly frustrated but I now feel privileged to work with children. I am also a caregiver for a quadriplegic man. The job requires a lot of patience, compassion, and somewhat tedious work. I have learned to enjoy every second of it mindfully. My relationships with my parents, friends and partner have all improved dramatically. I am not so caught up in my own problems and can be available for those in need. ● Can you remember 1 to 3 defining moments on your journey with mindfulness? Moments where you had a significant insight, or you made a shift in your relationship to it, or you had a particular experience that brought home the power of practice? It could be as simple as that moment you started practicing consistently or a time you really found yourself able to be in the present moment. Write these down and explore at least one in detail. I often would find that I had solved a problem for myself mentally with UM and it was easy to see how others would have the same problem and be completely lost. Usually it was an emotional regulation problem or an attention issue. This immediately made me feel total compassion for them because I know now intimately what it's like like to be completely caught up and what it's like to not be. As I spend less time in useless rumination or negative ideation, the more I see how others problems stem from there. I take the bus to work every day so this sudden compassion for others who are struggling has become a daily occurence as people on the lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder have endless emotional difficulties. Instead of being annoyed or aversive like I used to be, I have found myself coming to aid other people when I can with hardly a second thought. This is not something I expected at all. My relationship to pain has completely changed. The first time I sat for an hour and felt excruciating pain through my left leg, I stopped to stretch it out only to find that I was perfectly fine! Slowly I learned to be with the pain and experience it as a vibratory, flowing sensation. More importantly it became completely manageable. I would even welcome it since it is such a strong sensory object and it combats dullness. So my relationship to all pain has dramatically changed because I get more interested in it rather than just getting overwhelmed. I'd rather not experience pain, but I know how to deal with it if I have to.