What if you have no concentration What are the benefits of concentration

What if you don't have any concentration? I know it. It helps build it but what if you don't even have enough to stay keep your focus there for?

Five seconds

Well, everybody else, everyone has to start somewhere. If you think of the analogy to a workout.

Well, if you've never worked out the very first time you workout you get winded in light.

2 minutes right and it's like Oh my God, at this rate I'll never get anywhere.

What you don't realize is that the growth is not linear it's somewhat hockey stick OK so that you grow faster as you grow more so it's true initially that you might very well have the experience that you're describing which is just like.

I'll never get this 'cause you know it's like I'm here 1% of the time in 99% of the time. I'm like lausten ruminations and worrying about body sensations, and the sounds, yeah, memory plan fantasy that's my that's memory plan. Fantasy reaction judgment when I decided I was going to like OK. I'm going to be healthy. I'm going to run so I was 21 years old, but I.

Never really worked out or done anything I run down the block and at the end of the block. I'm late and it's like Oh my God. I mean, I'll never be able to run more than a block.

But within 2 months.

I was running miles right. It was a dramatic change, so initially. Yes, you may have to put up with that, but everyone has to start somewhere. Another way to look at it is if you never start, then you'll have to live your entire life in a scattered state a nun. Recollected state as the Christians would say you know, my quoted TS Eliot before he's got this great phrase.

Where he says.

This is a place of disaffection, meaning ordinary experience right. This is a place of disaffection. Then he goes on and eventually says distracted from distraction by distraction People are so distracted they don't even realize they are distracted.

So distracted from from distraction by distraction that's how you're going to have to live your whole life and it's going to be time to die really quick.

And then you will not have lived and you'll freak out, so you gotta start somewhere. So the bad news is yes. You might have to put up with what you're describing for awhile like getting a stitch when you first try to workout but things get better with practice.

If you don't do something like that, you'll basically just live your life just in that distracted state, meaning you won't really live your life, you'll if you're not focusing on what's relevant back to your concentration model? Exactly when you can either say, Oh my God. This is awful. I'm able to focus 10% of the time and 90% of the time I'm away so you could.

Make that a problem or you can make that an insight. You can realize Oh. This is how it must be directed. I am this is how most People live this is how I would have lived otherwise.

So you never really been president you're spending the present thinking about the past and the future essentially that's the human condition. At least this at this point in history and what that means is is that People don't fully live each moment and therefore they don't really live there. If your present if you discover when you first attempt to meditate that it's 90.

9 to one one unit of focus versus 9 unit of distraction. That means that you're missing 90% of your life.

That's the bad news and when it comes time to die. You won't have lived and you'll freak out.

On the other hand, the good news is with practice. You can get it reversed is it does it take 2 months like it did for you to run 2 miles it takes longer typically like if someone 6 months to a year? What's regular. I would say 10 minutes each day and at least 4 hours of intensive continuous practice per month. That's why I have the whole practice program so People can call by Phone. Wherever they are in the world and ask about that later. Maybe we should finish. It later just finish up this one thought.

So the bad news is that if you may have what might be called a sobering realization when you first try to Meditate, which is it's like like I say it's 99.

You know 90% of the time I'm not I'm unable to focus.

Well, with enough practice you can eventually reverse that so you're 90% focused OK. So we've basically multiplied your ability to be present by a factor of 9, well so that means you get to live life 9 times as big as the average human being. And when it comes time to die, you will have participated enough in life.

But that you won't freak out, you will have completed your life activity, so that if I were to tell a person Hey. Give me 10 minutes each day subtract 10 minutes each day from your life and every month. Subtract 4 hours and keep that up for the duration and I'll be able to live to be 300 years old that would be.

Sound like amazing right, yeah, well. That's not possible. You can't add 100 and 200 and however. Many years to a person's life. However, what you can do is multiply your ability to be present in each moment and you can do that dramatically.

As the result of that you'll get to live life to 3, four times as big as you would otherwise and the effect will be the same richness as though you live to be 100. Two hundred or 300 and that's actually doable by anyone so formal meditation practice subtracts a little bit of time from your life, but it multiplies. The richness and depth of the rest of the time so as we say do the math. It's a good deal.