This week I’ve continued to work on my meditation practice by slowly going through the talks by Gil Fronsdal that I downloaded from Audio Dharma: Guided Meditations.

Did you know that there are many types of meditation? I didn’t. I recently discovered that saying, “I meditate” is like saying, “I play sport.” So I guess I should clarify, I’m learning to practice mindful meditation just like I’m learning to box.

Listening to Fronsdal is wonderful and I’ve learnt a lot. I could listen to him for hours even with his tendency to smack. At first, hearing the sound “muah” every three sentences tested my patience and made me want to talk smack to Fronsdal. “Yo, Fronsdal, your mother is so fat she needs her own temple to be mindful in. Now I’m going to punch your dry-smacking-mouth wet!” Like singing, talking smack is clearly not one of my unique talents. Eventually, I moved away from these thoughts and placed my attention elsewhere…

This week I practiced being mindful of my body and doing so without listening to my internal “commentator”. According to Fronsdal, each of us has our own internal commentator whose job description is similar to that of a sports commentator. Like calling plays and adding excitement to the game, our internal commentator adds judgements, establishes relationships and tells us whether we are for or against the experience we are having.

To be mindful, I need to see the difference between the experience and the commentary. Like most, I believe that the commentary is actually a part of the experience; it isn’t. I need to mute the commentary and see the experience for what it really is. I need to let my attention stay with the experience. Again, this makes sense to me; it’s just the implementation that’s proving to be difficult.

You see, my internal commentator is one persistent bitch. Over the last two guided meditations, I’ve tried to “let go” of the commentary as I paid attention to my breathing or to my body. And it would work for a while, but only for a while. Now while the blog has been a great source of comfort to me, it is also totally cock-blocking my mindfulness. I estimate that “blog-think” is 85% of my internal commentary. When I’m trying to pay attention to my breathing or to my body, I end up thinking about how I will write about how I couldn’t pay attention to my breathing or body. Really?! Are you shitting me?! I need to shh the “blog-think”!

“SHH!”