I would like to at least try to meditate but I am not calm person. Not at all. Even coffee and green tea kick my nervous system into overdrive, so 8 don't consume them.
What could possibly make meditation accessible to a person like me?
What could possibly make meditation accessible to a person like me?
Just allow yourself to be bad at it and repeatedly apply the rule that when observe that your attention has wandered, you just consciously bring it back to what you're supposed to be focusing on. You haven't "failed at meditation", you're learning it. Don't beat yourself up for your mind wandering, just acknowledge that the repeated application of the redirection is what it takes and it's all part of the practice. At first it's non-stop, and eventually you get better at it. Sometimes it's excruciatingly boring and tedious and sometimes it's immensely relaxing, and occasionally you get weird hallucinatory stuff out of nowhere (although that to me feels like just going into a dream state, which I've always interpreted as "I'm so relaxed I fell asleep and dreamt").
That's really all it is for me. A way to relax and slow down.
I just finished watching two informative series that I recommend: “The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path to Well-being” and “Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation”. They’re long (24 30-minutes episodes in each series). You can watch them for free on Kanopy.com with a library card from a participating library.
This is generally understood as a recommendation to kick hopeless monks out of the monastery, not literally kill them.
You'd have to ask a competent meditation teacher, which I am very much not, how to know. I am pretty sure that the answer involves spending some time trying, with good guidance.