Meditation Lists (Pai, September, 2007)
This section looks at a number of ways in which you can use your habit patterns and routines as part of your meditation practice.
When we begin to practice meditation, we often fall into a predictable cycle of remembering and forgetting. When we sit down to meditate we for some time remember to practice, then we gradually get so caught up in our thoughts and our imagination that we completely forget about our practice. Then after some time we notice, ‘oh, I completely forgot to practice!’, again start to practice, and then after some time again forget. And no matter how much we may want to practice continuously, especially when we are having a particularly strong meditation, invariably after some time we again totally forget.
The cause of this cycle is that you keep getting caught up in the automatic habitual experiences that have become second-nature to you. Because of the way you have been living your life all these years, you have gotten so used to responding to a certain situation in a certain way that each time the situation happens you automatically respond the only way you know how: in the same way as always. And it comes to the point where you don’t even question whether you have to live this way or not, because by now these habits and routines are so familiar and expected that it never even occurs to you to change them. Months and years end up going by and you find yourself living with the same habit patterns and feeling like the same sort of person.
This constant flow of habitual experiences you have grown accustomed to living with is your greatest obstacle, for this is what makes you forget about your meditation practice. Yet these habit patterns are as well your greatest ally, once they are understood as constantly reminding you to make the effort to practice. Making lists that chart your behaviour is useful because these lists start to remind you of their contents during your daily life. In this way you begin to notice the initial moment a habit arises, and from that very initial moment use it to alter these habit patterns.
1.1 make a simple list of your habits
When you begin to observe the life you live more closely, you’ll notice that pretty much everything you do is done in the familiar, habitual predictable way you are used to doing it. In the morning you wake up and scratch your body a certain way. You go into the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror for awhile. You take a shower and clean your body in a certain pattern. You eat your meal in the same way that you eat every other meal. You come home from work at night and toss your clothes in a pile in the room somewhere. You watch television sitting in a certain posture. You remember something someone said and spend the next twenty minutes caught up in thinking about and imagining that scenario over and over.
Begin by getting a piece of paper and something to write with. Number the paper one to twenty. Reflect on whatever routines and rituals, daydreams and fantasies, you have at certain times and places during your day. Each time you reflect on something habitual in your life, write it down on this list.
As you go about your day and notice other habit patterns that you haven’t noted down yet, when you have the opportunity go ahead and add them to the list. No matter how trivial a habit pattern seems, or no matter how unpleasant it might be for you, make the most comprehensive list you can. You may need to number the list above twenty.
Carry your list around with you, so that whenever you feel inside your pocket you touch the list. Find out what happens when you notice one of the habits written on the list coming around. Does the fact that you wrote it down somehow change your relationship with it?
1.2 make a detailed list of your habits
From observing your daily routine, you will notice that certain habit patterns only happen in certain places. What you do when you are in the bathroom is different than when you are walking along the street. Furthermore, different situations happen in the same place, and a habit that happens in one situation may not happen in another. What you do when you are sitting in your room alone may be very different than when you are sitting in your room with somebody else. A more detailed list of your habits can now be made that includes the different places and situations you encounter during your day.
Begin with a couple pieces of paper. Start with making a list of the places you are frequently in, and the situations that happen in these places. Make the most comprehensive list you can. A brief example follows:
iii. I am getting dressed
ii. I am looking at my image in the mirror
iii. I am brushing my teeth
i. I am looking in the fridge
ii. I am making some food
iii. I am washing the dishes
iv. I am drying and putting away the dishes
i. I am using the computer
iii. I am talking on the phone
Making as complete a list as possible means you will need to add to and refine your list as you encounter different situations in the places you routinely experience. Once you have made this list, on another page begin to note down habitual experiences as they happen. Make as complete a description as possible, so that you note down the place and situation you are in as well as a detailed description of the habit. It is important to make your description as detailed as possible, for it sometimes happens that two habit patterns may be very similar except for some small detail. Note down whatever habit patterns stop or hinder your practice, no matter how trivial they might seem. A brief example follows:
Situation: I am going to bed
Habit: I daydream about the events of the day, the events of the following day
Situation: I am waking up in the morning
Habit: I scratch my back and my neck
Situation: I am drying the dishes
Habit: I pace back and forth from one side of the room to the other
Situation: I am talking on the phone
Habit: I chew my fingernails or the skin around my fingernails
1.3 use your habits to practice meditation exercises
The sooner you are able to notice a habit pattern starting, the sooner you can use it to practice meditation. If you allow the habit to continue on in an automatic manner for minutes on end then the habit will only further strengthen. When you realize that something habitual has started happening, as soon as possible realize that you have a choice: get caught up in the automatic way you have always lived, or use this habit as part of your meditation practice. If you choose to get involved in the habit, then for the next five minutes or five hours you will forget about living a life of meditation. If you choose to use these habits to live a life of meditation, then you are changing these very habit patterns so that they no longer make you forget your practice.
You can do this exercise using the detailed version of your habit patterns. On a fresh piece of paper copy out the habit patterns you have noticed, and underneath each habit add a new category entitled: Meditation Exercise. Then go through Section Two of the workbook and select one exercise for each habit, and write the name of this exercise underneath the habit.
When you next notice this habit pattern coming along, and if you are able to remember your list, then use this habit as a reminder to practice the particular meditation exercise. Regardless if the habit goes away quietly or not, give more importance to the meditation exercise than to the habit. An example follows:
Situation: I am using the computer
Habit: I get frustrated when the web pages don’t open quickly enough.
Meditation Exercise: natural respiration
2.1 make a daily “most wanted” list [take this from the original copy- but where???]
When we repeat some action, whether mental, emotional or physical, again and again, for months or years on end, then this habitual action becomes natural to us. We then become skilled at living habitually, we become an expert at it. We each have certain habits that we have are particularly skilled at. By making a list that involves only these habits, we are making a list of “the top ten most wanted habits” such as the list police have for the ten most wanted criminals.
On a piece of paper, put today’s date at the top followed by the numbers one to ten. Now whichever habit you are most skilled at, and can easily spend the most of your time with, put this on the top of your list. Reflect on your retinue of habits and place each habit in its order beginning with the one to most watch out for.
Carry your list around with you, so that whenever you feel inside your pocket you touch the list. Find out what happens when you notice one of the habits written on the list coming around. Do you get as caught up in it, for the same duration of time and with the same intensity?
2.2 make a list of the sensations you react to most often
We are so used to automatically scratching whatever itches we have that we miss using this habit as a tool for our meditation practice. There are actually certain itches that routinely recur over the course of a day. In the morning you may tend to scratch only a certain part of your body. Then when you are in front of the computer again there may be a certain itch that you are used to scratching.
The next time you are able to notice an itch happening, resist that initial urge to scratch it and instead write on a piece of paper where this itch is happening. When you write it down, pinpoint which area of the body it happens on (right shoulder, left knee, etc) as well as what kind of sensation it is (itchy, tingling, pressure, etc). An example follows:
1 right throat area; itchy
It will be helpful for you to refresh this list each day, and include on each list what sensations you experienced and reacted to the most over the course of the day. After a few days, a few weeks, you will start to notice the recurring itches that you have in the recurring situations you are in. Because sensations are such an important part of our meditation practice, they should find their way onto every list made.
2.3 make meditation responses to your top ten habits
You will begin to notice that certain habits are more persistent than others. When these persistent habits come around, they have so much power over you that you quickly forget about your meditation practice. With such habits you will find it useful to work on them from multiple angles. Rather than only applying a meditation exercise from section two, you can vary your response to the habit by applying alternate exercises as well.
On a fresh piece of paper, note down which habits are particularly persistent and consistently cause you to forget your meditation practice, leaving a space to write in below it. Now consider what meditation practice might be particularly suitable for contextualizing this habit through, and then write this down on the list. An example follows:
Habit: I scratch the scalp area of my head when I am around other people
Meditation Response: I will put my hands in my pockets and observe the itching sensation.
Habit: I chew my fingernails or the skin around the fingernails
Meditation Response: I will hold my hand out in front of me and look at it, and take a minute to realize that what I see is merely cells and molecules.
Habit: I look at my face in the mirror and contemplate whether the skin looks nice or not
Meditation Response: Instead of looking directly at my skin I will look at everything but my body which is reflected in the mirror
Habit: I get frustrated when the web pages don’t open quickly enough.
Meditation Response: in the time between my clicking on the mouse and the page opening, I will look at the computer and feel “love, love”.
Having made this list, find out what happens the next time this habit comes around and you apply this particular meditation response to it. If this response is effective, then this habit may not show up on the next list. If this meditation response isn’t effective, and so the habit shows up again on the next list, then try a different response and see how that goes. If this response doesn’t work then next time try another. Be creative with your responses so that when the time comes to apply it you have chosen something that appeals to you and makes you interested in trying it out.
2.4 make a list that includes your ten sensory fields
An alternate version of the top ten list will now be looked at. Begin with the first item on your list. Underneath this habit write down which sensory field areas are involved, in the order of most noticeable to least noticeable. Only include those sensory fields that are relevant to the experience. Then go through each item and find out which of the ten are most distinctly involved. As sensation is present in every experience you have, this sensory field always goes at the beginning of every list. An example follows:
Sensory fields: sensation, visualizing, thinking, emotion
Having made this list, you can also include a third category for the meditation response, and as well a fourth category for the sensory fields involved in this response. You can then vary the responses so that different sensory fields are involved, and find out whether having similar or different sensory fields in the response works best for the particular habit. An example follows:
Sensory fields: sensation, visualizing, thinking, emotion
Meditation Response: When this worry starts happening, I will let it happen on the movie screen of my imagination, sitting back and watching it with an amused look on my face.
Sensory fields: sensation, visualizing, thinking, emotion
When you make meditation responses for the sensations you react to the most over a day, break down the sensations and list each one separate from the others. An example follows:
Habit: I itch my left throat area
Sensory fields: sensation, emotion, movement
Meditation Response: Instead of itching the sensation I will observe the sensation and find out for how long it lasts
Sensory fields: sensation, emotion, thinking
We are so used to doing things in a certain way that we start to catch ourselves automatically falling into the same typical routines. Living in a habitual way brings some kind of a comfort to us, so even if we know this habitual pattern isn’t good for us we nevertheless get embroiled in it when it comes around. We may have a particularly strong passive meditation practice, but then we stand up and start doing something actively in the same old way as always. Our situation is like a polar bear that has lived its entire life in a small cage, and then when it is put in a larger cage it continues to pace about in the same space of the smaller cage.
To not get as caught up in these habit patterns that seem to just automatically come around, we need to be creative in applying new patterns. One new pattern is to notice what we do in a habitual way and then do the opposite of it. By noticing simple everyday things we do in the same way we can then use this as an opportunity to do something differently. Eating, showering, talking, watching television, driving, working, these are all things you have done a thousand times before and will do a thousand times more. But now you are learning to use these common everyday events to practice meditation.
On a fresh piece of paper, write down the mundane everyday things you notice happening. Then underneath this write down something opposite to this that will involve a new effort on your part. Keep this exercise as simple on yourself as possible. An example follows:
Habitual pattern: I always eat with my right hand
Opposite pattern: I will eat with my left hand
Habitual pattern: I rarely smile or feel happy unless the situation I am in calls for it
Opposite pattern: I will smile and feel happy for no reason at all
3.2 use opposite patterns to practice meditation responses
You can expand upon your opposites list to make it involve more areas of your meditation practice. This is done by adding another category to the list, so that when you are in a situation where the habitual pattern has begun, and you have switched over to the opposite pattern, you can then also include an area of your meditation practice. You notice you are eating with your right hand, and then you switch over to eating with your left hand, and then you can also begin one of the meditation exercises or formulate your own meditation response. Another example follows:
Habitual pattern: I always look at my image when I pass by a mirror
Opposite pattern: I will not look at my image when I pass by a mirror
Meditation response: I will use the feeling that comes from doing the opposite to what I am used to in order to reflect on how I am not and have never been this body.
Because we are not used to responding to our habits in this way, sometimes we will forget or even just ignore the response we had chosen to make. When we forget or ignore the meditation response, this means that we have not yet fully informed our body about what we have chosen. By giving our bodies a correction that we are serious about the responses we are putting on our lists, we get our nervous system helping instead of hindering our meditation practice.
These corrections are a simple incentive for the memory of the nervous system to not forget or so easily ignore the chosen response when these experiences next happen. What is this incentive? Intentional suffering. When you forget or ignore the responses written on your lists, then you agree to do something you’d rather not do because it is going to bring your nervous system discomfort and in this way help it to help you. A few examples follow:
Correction: to not have any tea, coffee, sugar, (something you usually have) for the rest of the day.
Correction: to jog on the spot for a minute, and then the next time you forget for two minutes, and next three minutes, and so on.
Correction: to sit still without moving for five minutes, and next time ten minutes, fifteen, and so forth.
Correction: to not go pee for until ten minutes after the urge first comes, then twenty minutes, thirty.
4.2 use corrections to practice meditation responses
You can apply a correction whenever you notice you have not been following the script you have set out for yourself on the list you have made and chosen to work with. When you notice the initial stirrings of a habit and don’t immediately “use it” for meditation, when you let it have its way with you, then you need to apply a correction. When the correction is in effect, then for a period of time you will experience some degree of discomfort. This discomfort can then be used as a reminder for practicing some meditation exercise. If your correction is to skip a meal, and you notice the hunger feeling acting up, then make use of this discomfort and practice the exercise you have selected.
Correction: to not have any coffee today
Discomfort: the craving for the coffee is there
Meditation: intentional relaxation
