Stage 1, establishing a practice, is by far the hardest stage. The vast majority of people attempting to follow The Mind Illuminated will fail here. The prospect of adding another commitment to one’s already busy life is completely unappealing.

My advice is that there is a block of time you are willing to commit to – and in Stage 1 the length of the block doesn’t matter. 15 minutes per day? 10 minutes per day? 5 minutes per day? 2 minutes per day? Surely one can commit to that. The nature of TMI is that you will make progress no matter how much time you spend in a session, but it has to be regular.

The second point is related to Your Mood is Critical. If you become frustrated during a session, or feel obligated, or resentful, just stop. Try again the next day. If you have blocked out the time, sat down to do the practice in good faith, but your mood is negative, you have fulfilled your commitment.

During the first few weeks your commitment to practice is usually very fragile and subject to breaking altogether. It helps at this point to use external crutches. Set a “meeting” on your calendar at a fixed time. Have an accountability buddy or check-in with a teacher. Give yourself an “atta-boy/atta-girl”! just for managing to sit. Your objective during the first few weeks is to use as many tricks as you can to just do the practice and not quit.

Within a few weeks, this fragility of practice usually changes entirely for the better. TMI is structured so that results – admittedly small results at first – start happening very quickly. Usually a practitioner will feel slightly better after finishing a session. When that occurs, focus on or “sink into” that feeling. Within a short amount of time, when you think about meditating, your reaction will change from “I’m committed and I’m going to do it, even though I’m not sure I see the point” to “Huh, I feel better after meditating, so okay, let’s do that” to “Yes! I get to meditate today!”. That last sentence no doubt seems very improbable to you now, but it is the usual experience.

Somewhere early on you’ll start noticing “off-cushion” effects. For example, a stressful situation at work seemed less bothersome. Traffic seems less annoying. You seem slightly more resilient. Once any of these things start happening, you will begin internalizing how life-changing the practice can be, and you won’t be able to imagine giving up your practice.