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Why I stopped dry meditation: (the sitting, intentional, insight, concentration kind) https://t.co/Sz5CfSNPC0
What I’ve done since: https://t.co/t0oJLR13H3
How I’m resuming: Very gently. I’m ready to use intention again. But it’ll be a different from before. The spontaneous kind. The kind where it effortlessly takes. I have more of a feel for that now. https://t.co/PhBIz6T9Ql
I’m prepared and trust myself to bring in another techniques and materials as I need. For now, no explicit curriculum, no forcing, no doing, no drama, not doing this for anyone, or any coercion at all. https://t.co/D3YS7Lf8hE
Eventually settled into actually wanting to follow breath. Didn’t expect this. How nice to not force and eventually have it come effortlessly! Overall only 9 minutes. I enjoyed such a small time, yet it feeling long. I will never sit for multiples of 10.
Before sit, spent 3 minutes just replacing batteries in my kitchen timer, didn’t end up sitting them. Came back to it later. Glad I didn’t force continuing the sit right then out of some sense of “I didn’t actually sit”; putting in the batteries counted. https://t.co/phI7jL0UJG
Surprise! I wanna do it again. Genuinely wasn’t expecting this. Like . . . 9 minutes? And it already flipped from “ughhh” to “omg so funn 🥰🥰”? This is what happens when you don’t force your sits and make them happy & kind & playful like a kid playing however they want friends
Reminds of how to non-do sleeping. Instead of trying to sleep (trying to not-awake), just enjoy and chill for 20m, by the end, you’ll stop doing awake and thereby fall asleep. https://t.co/1Mca5lFqPl
@mabokpanadol @WeftOfSoul @GeniesLoki sleeping = cessation of trying trying to sleep = trying herein lies the problem what do neither try to sleep nor try to not try to sleep just chill and enjoy your rest in 20m trying may just cease https://t.co/U2BQhPLADS
@praguyerrr likes to say: joy comes from paying attention. I wasn’t giving any, or I may have taken pleasure in my breath, or being alive, or any of the nice things around me. https://t.co/uk0B3k0L1e
Another frame: actively recovering energy, while working. I didn’t realise then, but so much of the way this works is attention and awareness. Loosening the tight grip of attention. Paying more attention to my body and surroundings. Expanded awareness and happy typing away. https://t.co/eVXDUsbVhL
I always want to be regaining energy. Using awareness in subtle ways, subtle wiggling. Before: - oh no exhausting zoom call - now five minute break to space out After - wow zoom call recovering soo much energy! - oh break time time to exercise and release energy!
10 minutes later, I’m sitting far less irritated with a much cleaner room. Did I fail? Only if I consider success to be “sitting down there for the entire 13 minutes.” https://t.co/phI7jL0UJG
Instead, sitting down made me present to all the small ways I was irritated, and I brought peace to my bodymind and environment. That’s 𝘩𝘶𝘨𝘦. Just the act of sitting down was enough. Why beat myself up for not staying the X minutes?
I wasted on the order of hours the last two days distracting myself with videos. I feel more choice, freedom, and gratitude tonight in shaping my time if I continue prioritising being present and attending to my irritations.
Staying the X minutes still matters. It’ll further my concentration and insight. But god, too many people put on blinders in that specific technical direction, and miss all the other more basic and simple ways just sitting brought them presence and quality
in general, basic ways that matter a lot, like a clean room and clean body, but aren’t as sexy. https://t.co/aRAZdpp6eY
I didn’t meditate. I just took a boredom break. But the 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 of having a sit, as an option in my environment and mind, improved my life. https://t.co/nroqjF4GkG
Here’s a trick: Whenever you’re working 👩💻 and feel bored 🥱, distracted 😒, or just plain don’t want to work 😫 . . . Take a boredom break. Set a timer for 7–18 minutes. Rules are: You just have to sit there 🪑. No phones, no exercising—just sitting there. Bored. 1/n
I have to say: I’m way more invested in non-coercive meditation than forcing myself, but I am looking forward to when my sits progress into real, 2-hour practices, and I continue the concentration and insight meditation practices I started last year.
📆 Sit 4 An almost-sit. I sat down to meditate, then started writing long Twitter threads that just came to me. When I was done, I felt like eating ice cream; got up and did it. I felt like washing the dishes; went over and did.
The thought of meditating is still in my mind. I could still go and do it. Instead: I release it, and let it go 🕊🌸 That’s the thing about desires and intuition—they are in the moment. When the time passes for them, it’s passed, no matter how good they were. https://t.co/PJEtrmhITi
I let the desire to meditate go, so it can truly come back again. I become involved in the moment, ready if it does. Hold on to the bird, and she grows cagey. Let the bird go, and she may come back, truly enthusiastically again.
Does this not matter? I’m showing there’s something here that matters just as much as any insight or concentration meditation, and that’s being with myself, and standing with myself. I’m not willing to have drama anymore. https://t.co/1MRidolCNS
It’s part of dating myself and moving towards less drama. https://t.co/lBishybfbz
To me, this is as noble, no more, no less, than those people who do their daily sits with discipline. https://t.co/KSTEOTMY2s
Those people recognise that if they sit everyday, no matter how they feel, that too will lead to good results. Good for them. https://t.co/FCkRGvHuJt
When you’re scared and serving other’s goals, discipline sucks. It keeps you embedded manufacturing, doing, doing on someone else’s terms. Of course it will feel yucky. It should. This is by design. When your system KNOWS what it wants, discipline rocks. https://t.co/QMdRYyYtWT
Discipline is self-devotion from another angle anyway My self-devotion is the discipline to take my wants seriously, not do the easy, habitual coercive thing, that doesn’t lead me to the life I truly want Their discipline is the self-devotion to work towards sth they care about https://t.co/hyS3NaFwe8
Is this even a meditation journal at this point, or a non-coercion one? I think sitting meditation is an especially fascinating activity to bring non-coercion too, because it’s so wrapped up in “good for you” memes. 🧘♂️😌 Non-coercive Meditation 🌸 Spring 2021 Journal it is
🗓 Sit 5 I plopped myself down in the middle of a whispering wall circle and meditated 🧘♂️😌 Strange, but nice location. Some people looked strangely. Others smiled. https://t.co/y7ZBiZ8cre
Here’s the full post-sit transcript. 13 minutes. Highlights: - Reality was shimmering after. I often notice visual artefacts after meditating. https://t.co/uC6nAJtg1h
- A nameless sense of presence after. I turned and looked at the same people sitting me, the trees, the grass, the men. Something felt different. I eventually articulated it as: I could look, without the usual barrage of thoughts, fears, musts arising. Just seeing. https://t.co/sLkXFUzEGf
- A lot of chaos during the meditation, settling into settledness. Didn’t have to force it. I can either try to accelerate myself into intentional practice from the get-go . . . or let chaos reign, till I want to arrive at that place myself. https://t.co/2CF7SEiXQw
- My god, look at this internal narrator. SOoooo dramatic can you tell it’s an ego-voice afraid of dying. I can’t help laughing a bit. I think that’s a good thing. I love you lil dramatic ego voice (aka me). https://t.co/eJGFEKi6w7
🗓 Sit 6 Just for 5m. I had an important thought, and I wanted to get up for it, but I didn’t. . . . damn. Beginning to trust myself already. Two sits ago, I would have gotten up—and it would have been important to. https://t.co/3I2NBAOv7I
Now, I’m building trust — non-naïve, *earned* trust—that I will not coerce myself. And that gives me the ability to actually continue onward, despite not wanting to or not feeling like it, with maximum of good faith and minimum of drama. https://t.co/jWHR4zu9SA
At 3m, I felt fear—intense, raging desire to leave. I didn’t. Fear, tranquility, uncertainty, bliss—they all flitted by quickly. I didn’t always “know” what to do. But I stayed. I can’t explain why, except that I did. I didn’t have a problem with those feelings.