I get it we are all stressed and suffer from daily decision fatigue.

I understand that many people like being lead through a meditation. That it is so much easier to sit and meditate if somebody else is doing the mindfulness work of guiding the moment. I understand that people whether they admit it or not are terrified of this unruly mind and if they don’t look at it, maybe it won’t bother them.  I understand that for a week or a month even with a teacher leading a class it is so much easier than confronting yourself.  Eventually, no matter who you are, if you don’t learn to generate your own meditative experience, you give up, and unless you have been cultivating your meditative experience, you haven’t begun.

The reason I dislike meditation Apps is that you are not generating your own meditative experience. At some point, you need to do the work on your own. If you don’t, it will eventually become totally pointless.

There is no other path to walk.

If you want to know why you suffer. Why you have bad habits. Why you keep having negative thoughts. Why you feel the need to distract yourself. Why you move from one fleeting joy to another. Why things are always changing. Why you self-medicate. Why you get caught in depressive cycles. Why you choose poisonous relationships. Why you overeat. Why you reach for things that you know will hurt you. Among a million other human experiences.

It all starts with Meditation and an awareness of the mind. Just watching it and not grasping at all of the images passing by is the beginning of this understanding. You must be able to sit, by yourself, with a small task of mindfulness, and engage watching the body/mind at work. 

Mindfulness Apps are entertaining and can show you what you should be doing. However, unless you can generate the experience on your own, in a dark room, by yourself, you have not begun the task. Until you begin, you don’t even know why you are better for having built a meditative practice.

So do yourself a favor. Pick one meditative practice, (here’s one) and cultivate it all on your own. Teachers are very informative in establishing good practice habits and routines. However, you must do the work yourself; you must play and generate play on your own for it to flourish the rest of your years. It is a worthly and on going endevour which should continue the rest of your days.