I started with the most basic guided meditations almost 30 years ago. Next step, learn to focus on a candle or a dot on the wall without thinking about anything else. Increase the time to hold this focus. It should be a “relaxed focus”; when your head turns read or wrinkly, it’s wrong.

From there, it can go to really emptying your head. Thoughts will come up, but think of them like something external that you can observe, you see the thought, you aren’t the thought. Same with feelings, in my case, especially that I have to stop and get up. I see the urge to jump up, but I am not the urge.

Imagination can help at an early stage, like: I’m this scaffold full of gaps where thoughts and emotions just pass through like a smoke cloud without affecting it. But it’s supposed to go to a point where even that is considered a thought that should pass.

Effects are great in many areas of life: Dreaming, sleep, notice needs like sleep or hunger or thirst before they become overwhelming. Studying and retaining the information.

Yet still, I surprisingly manage to drop the habit for a day, weeks, even years at times.

My most stupid reason is: There is a lot to do / I need to get to bed right now, so there is no time for even 5 minutes of meditation. (But there was time to browse Reddit for let’s-not-say-how-many-minutes, “research” the making of for a movie I don’t even like etc.) Yet that argument seems quite compelling in the moment.