Steve Jobs's Ingenious Meditation

An ingenious creator, a guru in the world of IT technologies, a man who changed the world, for many years practiced meditation awareness. It helped him to relieve stress, clear his mind and develop creativity.

"If you sit down and just watch yourself, you will find how troubled your mind is. And when you try to calm him down, the situation will only worsen. If after a while the mind calms down, the finest things will be revealed to you. The intuition will sharpen, the vision will become clear, you can feel yourself in the present moment of time - here and now. Your thoughts will slow down, consciousness will expand, and you will see immeasurably more than before". So described the effect of meditation on Steve Jobs his biographer Walter Isaacson.

A special kind of meditation is meditation of awareness, originating in Zen Buddhism and Taoism. Jobs told Isaacson about it shortly before his death, by that time he had been practicing meditation for many years. This is evidenced by the journalist and writer Jeffrey James, back in the early 1990s, discussed with Jobs how zen and programming are connected.

In those days it was something exotic, James admits, but here Jobs was ahead of his time. Indeed, today the positive effect of meditation has been proven by neuroscience, and giants such as Google, General Mills, Target and Ford have specially trained their employees about the same meditation that Jobs discovered decades ago.

HOW TO MEDITATE?

Judging by the quote quoted by Isaacson, the meditation practiced by Jobs is very similar to the one that James the famous martial artist Yang Jwing Ming taught in his time. Here is his lesson, which includes six steps.

Step 1

Sit cross-legged in a secluded, quiet place, preferably on a flat pillow to relieve tension in the back. Begin to breathe deeply.

Step 2

Close your eyes and listen to your inner monologue, to the thoughts that jump at your head: work, home, television ... This is the chatter of your fussy "monkey mind". Do not try to stop it, at least not now. Just watch how your mind jumps from one thought to another. Repeat this exercise for 5 minutes a day for a week.

Step 3

Without trying to calm the whirling of thoughts, try to switch attention to your "mind-witting mind," that is, to that part of your mind that thinks calmly and slowly. "Volky's Mind" simply observes the world around him. He does not give assessments, he does not seek meanings, he simply sees, hears and feels.

Most people do not even know about it, although someone can open it at moments of turmoil when the "monkey" mind is silent. But even when we are completely at the mercy of our "monkey mind" when his team "Hurry! Come on! "Do not let us come to our senses, our" mind-witted mind "imperceptibly continues its slow, thorough work.

Step 4

As you begin to realize your "mind-full mind," ask him to gradually slow down the work of the "monkey mind". Jeffrey James, for example, helped such a method: he imagined how "wolf" slowly wanders along the road, and this spectacle lulls the "monkey mind". Do not be upset if from time to time he wakes up. Monkeys, they are like that. Nevertheless, you will find that he began to rest more than to fuss and make noise.

Step 5

Having reassured your "monkey mind", continue to focus on the "ox mind". And then your breathing will slow down. You will feel the skin touching the air. Perhaps you will feel the blood running inside your body. If you open your eyes - the world around you will seem a bit different, new and even kind of strange. Say, the window will become just a rectangle filled with light. It is not required to open or close, repair or wash. It just is - here and now. Like yourself - here and now.

Step 6

To achieve this state, it will take some time. But if you did everything right, you generally will not feel the time that has elapsed since you turned on the timer until it turned off. Gradually, day by day, increase the duration of meditation. Surprisingly, no matter how long it lasts, you will not feel the flow of time.