I have difficulty practicing Mindfulness Meditation. And yet I do believe it has much to offer in helping to lead a healthy life. Particularly in its emphasis on living in the present, and the temporary existence of events and states of body and mind.

Thinking about the future can lead to anxiety, thinking about the past to self judgement and depression. Thoughts of the future and past can be far from reality. Living in the present is as close as you can get to reality. I can't really argue with that.

And the instructions against judging and striving seem right to me. And yet where personal ambition fits into the picture remains puzzling to me.

The autopilot is a good metaphore. Helpful, and unhelpful at the same time. The autopilot allows us to multitask, to repeat complicated sequences with relative ease, but also keeps us from focussing. It's easy to lose track of the present and become lost in thought.

And sometimes when one is going through a hard time, it can seem like those hard times have been around forever and will last forever. I find in Mindfulness a comforting message in the mountain meditation of the temporality of disagreeable events. The storm passes. Winter turns to Spring.

The sceptic in me still finds much which is mysterious about Mindfulness, some Gurus who make vague and simple statements about happyness, for example. It often seems out of reach. I need to know why and how it works.

But I find it very diifficult to have self compassion, and very difficult to meditate regularly. It's sometimes unpleasant and often boring. It often does not seem like a fun thing to do. Just do it says the therapist. I don't want to says the child in me. I don't find the meaning.