So, what happened yesterday was that I was trying to meditate after months. So, when I sat with good intentions, my back started hurting within 2 minutes of spine being erect.

Now, the teacher on the app is telling me to focus on the breath and my back is singing its own song. I, somehow, resisted the urge of pain and strengthened my resolve to only focus on my breath.

Few seconds elapsed and I am back to square one - focusing on the pain erupting in my back.

At a loss, I decided it's not going to work this way. I thought of a solution. I said to myself that I would allow my mind to focus on breath as well as back, i.e. fragment my attention. Just let it go where it wants to go.

I noticed that it was much easier to focus on my breath that way.

Using force, suppression, repression never works with the mind, oh no way!

What is interesting to note is when you suppress your thoughts your mind fires back with more thoughts. But, as I experimented once, when I forced my mind 'to think', it went blank.

I literally told my mind:

Think a thought right now and it went blank!

Experiment to do

When you sit to relax, tell your mind that it can think of whatever it wants but do not, repeat, do not think of monkeys.

As you might have guessed, your mind will only think of monkeys! Haha

Takeaway

Mind works in mysterious ways. But, the idea is to keep exploring the mind and let loose the noose over mind. Because suppression never works.

The mind will always come up in ever new ways to deceive us and play tricks on us. And all we can do is 'watch' the games that mind plays on us.

Many times, we will fail miserably but we will have to try.

Just watch!