
Meditation is one of the five habits I'm cultivating in my [five years project](/articles/five-habits-for-the-next-five-years). Currently, I'm meditating for every 35 minutes every morning, right after waking up. Still, it took some time to reach these minutes, and I wrote this text to share with you the roadmap I followed during my meditation journey, which fits me very well.

The roadmap consists of these steps:

1. [Sit up straight with eyes closed for five minutes;](#sit-up-straight-with-eyes-closed-for-five-minutes)
1. [Watch the eye and the voice of your mind;](#watch-the-eye-and-the-voice-of-your-mind)
1. [Stop your mind's eye;](#stop-your-mind-s-eye)
1. [Silence your mind's voice;](#silence-your-mind-s-voice)
1. [Stay in the absolute silence state for one minute;](#stay-on-the-absolute-silence-state-for-one-minute)
1. [Reach the absolute silence state any time you want.](#reach-the-absolute-silence-state-any-time-you-want)

## Sit up straight with eyes closed for five minutes

This step is crucial because it determines if you'll keep meditating once you start the practice. It would be best to start with a small amount of time to make you enjoy the moment. If you want to practice for an extended period, you have the chance of being uncomfortable with it, and your chances to give up increase. Once you become comfortable with your current time, you can increase little by little. In my case, I raise the period one minute every two weeks.

## Watch the eye and the voice of your mind

Once you become comfortable sitting with closed eyes, you can start to notice the eyes and the voice of your mind. The eye of your mind is your [visuospatial sketchpad](/zettelkasten/visuospatial-sketchpad), a slave of your [working memory](/z/working-memory). It is because of it that you can imagine scenes or experiences. The voice of your mind is also a slave of the [working memory](/z/working-memory). It is the [phonological loop](/z/phonological-loop), and it acts as the inner voice and the inner ear of your head.

In this step, try to notice when some of these slaves enter into action and observe them. Observe the pictures and the talks inside your head.

## Stop your mind's eye

In this step, instead of just observing the [visuospatial sketchpad](/z/visuospatial-sketchpad), you also try to stop it. In the beginning, you can think of nothing for some seconds, but without you noticing, soon you'll imagine other scenes and experiences again. No problem, try to catch every new thought and stop it.

## Silence your mind's voice

This stage is as tricky as the previous one. This stage is challenging because you'd try to stop the inner voice with the inner voice. You'll keep yourself talking to you, "Now I won't talk nothing," but you did talk. This step requires a lot of practice, but it is interesting.

## Stay in the absolute silence state for one minute

Once you silence your inner voice and stop your mind's eye, you reach the absolute silence state. It's the state where you're only observing what is happening in your head and your environment. It's not easy to keep this state initially because you lose concentration quickly and when you realize you're thinking in something at random. So in this stage, try to keep the absolute state for one minute.

## Reach the absolute silence state any time you want

The final step is the most powerful one, which is when you can stop your working memory at any time you want. Right now, I can't say the real benefits of this skill because I didn't master it yet, but in my opinion, the most significant advantage is that you can control the enormous quantity of thoughts and emotions in your day by day. For example, you're in an environment with many things happening, a stream of thoughts in your head, and you can control them by just closing your eyes and activating the absolute silence state for some time. In this information age we're living in, this is a powerful skill to master.

I hope you like this roadmap and that it helps you as it was for me. In the future, I'll write more about my experiences with meditation, and I improve these abilities. If you also meditate and want to share your experiences or give me feedback about this roadmap, please, [get in touch](/contact).


Five Habits for the Next Five Years

Visuospatial Sketchpad

Meditation Roadmap


## Notes

- The visuospatial sketchpad is the mind's eye.

- You can imagine scenes or experiences from the past or imagining the future because of the visuospatial sketchpad.

- It is a slave of the [working memory](/z/working-memory).

- It has two main components: the **visual cache** that stores the image and the **inner scribe** that rehearses and replays visual, spatial, and motion data.

- People that suffer from aphantasia can't visualize images in their heads.

## References

- [David Handel, MD. Slow-Reading is the New Deep Learning](https://betterhumans.pub/slow-reading-is-the-new-deep-learning-452f179c0289)

## Backlinks
- [Meditation Roadmap](/articles/meditation-roadmap)

#visuospatial-sketchpad