Mastering ADD/ADHD

Three meditations and two daily habits

Disclaimer: Meditation is rarely, if ever, a comprehensive solution for ADD/ADHD. Please do not discontinue your medication(s) without first consulting your physician.

ADD/ADHD is not the easiest thing to live with. Gone unchecked, it is capable of reeking havoc; utterly decimating the lives of those it afflicts. It can lead to serious issues with an employer, detrimental problems in relationships, and it can cause an incredible amount of damage to one’s own self-image.

Like millions of others who suffer from ADD/ADHD globally; almost every aspect of my life has been, at one point or another, devastated by its effects. School was incredibly difficult and employment was always hanging by a thread.

However, the past 15 years (give or take) has been a fairly incredible journey. I’ve now been married for 11 years, I’ve weeded out several social issues, and I can maintain my attention-span for hours instead of seconds. To top it all off, I founded a startup which is beginning to gain a little traction after nearly two years of grueling work. I still maintain a medication subscription to supplement those sixteen and twenty-hour days; but my point is, when I work the occasional nine-to-five shift, I don’t need it.

Several years ago I lost my faith. Without going into detail, I found myself in a world that was alien to me. When I came to the decision that my previous set of beliefs did not align with my personal truth, and those rose-colored glassed came off; the entire foundation upon which I built my life had suddenly been pulled out from under me. It was an extremely confusing time in my life, but it was also a massive blessing.

When one is forced to reassess their entire reality, one finds oneself rebuilding one’s perspective, one logical concept at a time. It was at this stage where I realized there were two fundamental methods by which knowledge is gained. The first is to reach out into the world around you and examine it carefully and logically. The second is to reach inside yourself and examine your internal world in a similar methodical analysis.

I have always loved science and technology, so the first method was something I was already doing. The second method, however, was something I knew very little about. But it just so happened that I was in luck; there is nothing more appealing to an ADD/ADHD mind than the idea of exploring the world of the unleashed imagination. Diving into the great abyss of consciousness and flying through the void of formless dreams. Meditation sounded like the perfect copilot to the rest of my life.

Little did I know that there is nothing more frustrating to an ADD/ADHD mind than sitting down and actually trying to explore the great abyss of consciousness and analyze that void of formless dreams.

I could not, for the life of me, get my mind to focus on anything for more than a few seconds before it was off to who knows where. Bouncing off every other thought that surfaced, shooting through the nonsense of the ego, and never once realizing anything was amiss until the timer sounded.

To think that I, one Ritalin-fueled space-cadet of twenty years, could control what even the most skilled minds in history took years to tame, was hubris incarnate. I couldn’t even read a paragraph of my favorite book without getting lost, and here I was attempting to navigate the mind. No words, no lines and sentences to follow, just an endless universe of sporadic nonsense.

Under normal circumstances, I would have given up; however, I was in a unique state of mind. I needed to find something to believe in that wasn’t nonsense. The closest achievable experiences I knew of that allowed for the possibility of a detailed self-analysis as well as debugging, deleting, and rewriting, were those that required a collected, focused, and controlled mind. I had to figure out how to train my mind; how to effectively meditate, even with ADD/ADHD.

I began reading book after book. I read up on all the scientific literature surrounding meditation as well as all the occult literature I could find on the topic. I spent years experimenting with every meditation I could find.

Then it happened, the magic of coincidence. The right combination of information pooled before me at just the right time.

I had always known that exercise increased the efficiency and performance of the body’s organs. The association between physical exercise and health is a no-brainer. What I didn’t know was how incredibly profound the effects of physical exercise were when it comes to brain function. A quick Google Scholar search returns paper upon paper on this topic.
(see also: MAP Training and Exercise Associated With Mindfulness)

So I began to exercise. I didn’t require a lot of myself. I simply met the goal of walking for forty-five minutes each day. No weights, no pushups, no endurance training; just good old-fashioned street-pacing. Within only a few days, I felt fantastic. My mood elevated to a nearly consistent giddiness. After a month, my mental clarity had dramatically increased. Difficult concepts took much less time to grasp and my capacity for problem solving and creativity shot through the roof. The simple act of walking everyday, and being slightly more health-conscious had another unexpected effect; my mind had settled into a state of concern for my physical health.

So I became conscious of my eating habits. I made it a point to eat only fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, and a very select choice of meats. My dietary rules are as follows:

1. If it has an ingredient list, don’t eat it
2. If it’s in a package, don’t eat it
3. If it is known to contain any amount of preservatives other than salt, don’t eat it
4. No sugar & no sweeteners
5. No breads (this one was tough at first)
6. No caloric restrictions. Eat as much as you want.
7. Saturday and Sunday , eat whatever you want.

That’s it. For breakfast, I ate a half-pound of unsalted bacon, an avocado, and a tomato. Then, the rest of the day was simply eating when I got hungry; an apple here, a banana there, and throw in the occasional monstrous salad.

In one month’s time I lost 30 lbs. I was dumbstruck at how awesome I felt, both physically and mentally.

The stage was set, now it was time to find some meditations I could actually get my head around.

Despite my peak physical and mental health; I continued to have problems with meditation. Admittedly, the problems were much smaller, but problems nonetheless. Finally, I came across an old occult book written around the same time as the Nazi occupation of Germany. A man named Franz Bardon had written this book titled, “Initiation Into Hermetics”. I had never heard of hermetics before, so that’s obviously not what had attracted me. What really caught my eye was the fact that it was laid out in ten main steps; each of those steps were divided into multiple sub-steps and exercises. The book was written for anybody from a complete novice to a seasoned meditator.

Step one of IIH (Initiation Into Hermetics) is broken into three subcategories:

1. Mental Training
2. Psychic Training
3. Physical Training

For the purpose of this article, the mental exercises of the first step are the only exercises in this book we will be focusing on.

The mental training is comprised of three separate exercises. According to the recommendations of both the author and myself, these exercises are to be mastered in order, one at a time.

The First Exercise:

Sit up comfortably, with your knees at a 90 degree angle and your back straight. Set your hands on your knees and relax into the position. This exercise should first be practiced in one minute intervals. The book recommends five minutes; but for our purposes, I highly recommend starting with just one minute. Master one minute first, then work your way up to two minutes, then three, and on up until you can perform this exercise for ten straight minutes without any deviations from the task.

Once the timer starts, begin with the practice of the silent observer. Simply watch your thoughts without getting wrapped up in them. If you find that you’ve become engaged with a thought, reorient yourself immediately and continue. Don’t get distracted by your thoughts and maintain an awareness a consistent of your task. Simply be an inactive observer of the churning of your thoughts.

This may take some time to master, but with a healthy body and a healthy mind, this task it totally doable.

I recommend that you practice this from three to five times per day until you reach five minute intervals of unbroken observation. Then dial things back to only two to three sessions per day from five minute intervals up to ten minute intervals.

Don’t get discouraged. It took me three months to master all three of the exercises for step one. I then spent another year on steps two and three. Everybody is different. Some may find this to be fairly easy while others will find it extremely difficult. No matter which category you fall under, the benefits will be well worth the time.

After the first exercise has been mastered, the author recommends bringing this practice into your daily life. For instance, avoid getting wrapped up in thoughts of work while you are at home and vice versa. Only allow your mind to engage thoughts that are associated with what you are doing. This turned out to be much easier for me than I thought it would be, but you may have a different experience.

The Second Exercise:

Same seating posture, same incremental advance from one minute all the way up until you can masterfully perform this exercise for ten whole minutes.

When the timer starts and you close your eyes, your task is to pick one idea to focus on. Focus on that thought or idea and only that thought or idea. When another thought surfaces, simply ignore it and continue to focus on your predetermined thought or idea. If you find yourself engaged in another thought, do as before and simply reorient yourself and continue focusing on your chosen idea.

When you are capable of performing this task for one whole minute without one single secondary thought arising, you may begin working on two minutes. Then, as before, continue until you’ve mastered this exercise for a full ten minutes without any deviations from the task.

I would like to add here that after some practice with this exercise, you will notice that there is a sort of sense for when a thought begins to bubble up to the surface. The more you practice this, the more you’ll become sensitive to the stages of how a thought forms and from where. This is an important skill. Bardon does not mention this in his book, but I found it to be an extremely important skill for mastering this exercise. The moment you sense a “thought seed” in its infancy, it is extremely easy to settle it back to the depths from where it came. This is an interesting phenomenon in that one’s will has a dramatic effect on thought-seeds. That being said, do not focus your will at the thought. This tends to have the unwanted effect of energizing the thought. The feedback amplification that happens when you do this ramps up surprisingly quickly. Before you know it, you will be dealing with an extremely energetic thought which are quite difficult to deal with.

The proper method for dealing with thought-seeds is to simply will it “into another direction” (that will make more sense when you get there). If you do find yourself with a highly energetic thought (sorry, this is the only way I know how to describe this technique), use its own momentum against it. As it surfaces, simply “step aside” and lead it with its momentum past you and back out of your awareness. I know how this sounds, but you’ll just have to trust me. This is the only way I can think to describe the process; however, once you get to this point, this will make much more sense.

The Third Exercise:

This one is by far the most difficult. I personally spent the majority of my time with these exercises on the third one.

As with the previous two, begin with the same sitting posture and begin with one minute sessions at least three separate times throughout the day.

Once the timer begins and you have closed your eyes, your task is to refuse any thought that attempts to enter into your awareness. This is what is commonly referred to as, “the void meditation”. You are to have no thoughts whatsoever enter into your mind for the entirety of the exercise. As before, if you lose yourself and find that you have actively engaged yourself with your thoughts, simply reorient yourself and continue with the exercise.

When you can perform this exercise for a full ten minutes without having had a single thought enter into your awareness, you have mastered this exercise.

Here, I am going to address a few concepts in some detail. The original author made no mention of these concepts; however, these are key ideas to be aware of when practicing this particular exercise.

What is a thought? That may seem a silly question, but when you begin to enter into the realm of mental subtleties, things get a little tricky. First off, being aware is not the same as having a thought. You will be aware of a great number of things happening within your body and without your body when your mind is skillfully freed from thought. That being said, an awareness can quickly multiply and form into a full fledged thought if you are not careful. Simply be aware. Let the data streams from your eyes, ears, skin, and other sense organs flow through you. Once you “catch” that input stream, it will quickly coalesce into a thought.

Hallucinations, specifically hypnagogic hallucinations will occur. They are not thoughts; but they can quickly become thoughts if you are not careful. A more seasoned practitioner will be able to subdue any such hallucination, but it takes a lot of hard work.

The next concept is an extension of the previous concept I mentioned for the second exercise. Thought-seeds are funny little creatures and they have a vast array of forms and shapes they go through before they become a thought. You will notice, at this level of mental exercise, that you’ll know everything there is to know about a thought from its thought seed. The only way I can explain this is through metaphors, so try not to get too confused. When a thought-seed forms in its most embryonic state, it already carries with it everything it needs to become one specific full-fledged thought. You will begin to “sense” the unique and specific “colors” and “mood” of each thought-seed. No thought-seed is alike because no two thoughts are alike. That ultra subtle disturbance within the ocean of your thoughtless, settled mind carries all the information with it from the start. As the thought grows, and begins to fully break into your mental arena, your consciousness translates the seed’s qualities into the language of the conscious mind.

So the question might arise, “Then, when is the thought-seed considered a thought, and have I still mastered this exercise even with a bunch of thought-seeds but no substantial thoughts?”

Good question! This part does get a little tricky. Remember, however, that awareness is not thought. The more you are able to calm your mind, the deeper your awareness extends into what would normally be considered outside your consciousness. You’ll become aware of the deep, yet subtle movements of your inner-most workings. That all being the case, a thought is a thought. It is blatantly obvious when you have a thought in your mind versus an awareness of thought-seeds and subconscious disturbances.

When you have obviously subdued any full-fledged thoughts; but you can sense that your subconscious is still quite active, consider exercise three complete. Now you may choose to begin working on the art of calming your subconscious mind.

A full void experience is an incredible experience. No thought-seeds, no disturbances, an no awareness-flickering from input stream to input stream is a difficult state to reach; but I assure you, it is one of the most brilliant and enlightening experiences you will ever have. The only way I can describe it is to call it a total orgasmic ecstasy of the mind, but it has nothing to do with sex.

Well, there you have it. And just think, this is only the first step of ten in Bardon’s book.

Here are my final thoughts on the matter. I can guarantee you, no matter who you are, you can do this. It may take some time, but you can do this.

My personal experience, after having mastered these exercises, my ADD/ADHD almost became a non-issue. Sure it will peak through and show itself during times of immense stress or emotional turmoil, but I can deal with that. When I was in highschool, I was so heavily stricken with ADD/ADHD that I used to get lost driving in my own neighborhood and wonder how I even got to wherever I was. I would find myself suddenly realizing that somebody had been talking to me for minutes, and have no idea what they had just said. I was nicknamed, ‘Kramer’, ‘Space Cadet’, and all the other fun names we deal with. Since I put myself through the grueling practices of that book, I have a new mind.

I cannot promise that you’ll feel the same way, but I can promise that you’ll notice a significant and sustained increase in the functionality of your mental faculties.

Much love, and take care of yourselves. You are you, and you’ll probably be you for quite some time. My recommendation is to be the best ‘you’ that you can possibly be. Life is a much better experience when you do. :)

Recap:
Two Daily Habits:

1. Eat well, diet has a heavy impact on your mind
2. Exercise daily, even 15 minute walks help immensely

Three Meditations (be sure to refer to the above specifications):

1. The Observer Meditation
2. Single Idea/Train-of-Thought Meditation
3. The Void Meditation