A Guru in my iPhone

For the last week, I've used just one meditation iPhone App:  "Simply Being" by Meditation Oasis.  It's like having a guru in my iPhone.  The woman who guides this meditation, whoever she is, totally gets the concept of "mindfulness"--of observing calmly whatever thoughts, feelings, and sensations pop into your mind.  It's so hard to do--a skill that meditators cultivate for decades--but she (whoever she is) makes it sound so easy and natural.

In other blog posts, I've described different iPhone apps that I'm fond of using for meditation ("relax--there's an app for that" and "hypnotized meditation").  But if I had to pick just one app, this would be the one.

The "Simply Being" app first asks me to set aside all goals for the time of the meditation, to let go of all projects, deadlines, obligations, and responsibilities.  This is the ONLY way that the planning, worrying, goal oriented left brain can temporarily release it's grip on my thoughts and my attention so that I can tune into "useless" things such as sensations in my stomach, chest, back, throat, and nose when I inhale and exhale.

The narrator intuitively repeats this suggestion often enough to keep me focused but not so often as to annoy me.

Further, she guides me to accept, without a fight, the thoughts that pop into my head.  Notice them.  But don't let them turn into prolonged "conversations".  I find, when I do this, that the thoughts that pop up often reveal the most important issues that I need to resolve later, when the meditation is over.  As long as I don't dwell on the thoughts, I just learn something about what is REALLY bugging me without getting so caught up in the thoughts that I lose touch with the rest of the meditation experience.

The narrator also guides me to get comfortable and relaxed, but then to observe whatever physical sensations I feel--pleasant or unpleasant.  I think the unpleasant sensations are often the most important sensations to observe.  When I notice an itch, tension in my legs, shallowness in my breathing, soreness in my right shoulder, or any other unpleasant feeling, and I don't DO anything to change the sensation--when I lay still and accept the itch or the muscle tension--this deepens my perception of subtle bodily sensations.  there have been times in the last week, for example, that I would notice aches or hunger and then would focus on my breathing and heartbeat and actually feel my pulse in my hands, stomach, face, legs, and chest all at once along with the rising and falling of belly and chest with each breath. It felt good, and when the meditation was over, I had a shift in my visual perception of light and color for several hours--not distorted, just more appreciative of light coming in through the windows and bringing out the colors of whatever it touched.

Finally, the narrator guides me to notice emotions.  This happens anyway as I observe thoughts and bodily sensations.

The narrator keeps reassuring me that wherever my mind wanders, as long as I notice the wandering, I'm "doing" the meditation correctly, that it is all "part of the meditation" and that it is all the "perfect" way for the meditation to unfold.

I sense that the designer's of the app kept in mind Buddha's best known teaching about "mindfulness" meditation.  Buddha taught that, when being mindful, we should tune into body, mind, and emotion, noticing what happens whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, and thus learning the reality of our changing selves.  Similarly, in this app, wherever the mind wanders is OK as long as the wandering is observed.

I find that repeating the use of the app, day after day, does not get boring.  She is a very skilled guide for meditation, a guru in my iPhone.  In the last few weeks, using this app, I have been having some of the deepest meditation experiences that I've had in 30 years.