It turns out there’s a wrong way to meditate. The ultimate goal of meditation, the desired end of mindfulness practice, is to reach a state of perfect equanimity where the most enlightened practitioner is able to greet all states of being, good or bad, with neutrality. The desire to cling to what is good disappears.… Continue reading I’m Doing It Wrong: Part I
I’ve been breathing for a long time. I learned this to my surprise in about 2018. The only times I noticed the breath, and I wasn’t even really noticing the breath, was when I was smoking or exercising (which I did only briefly in 2002). When I started meditating, I held grimly onto the breath,… Continue reading 24/7 Friend
Distraction is powerfully addictive. Some distractions feel like paying attention. Some distractions feel like flow. But they are not real in the same way this room is real, or my cat is real, or the breath is real, or my mom is real, or a forest is real. For my whole life, TV has been… Continue reading An Analog Message on a Digital Platform
All our lives, we hear about fight or flight – our body’s response to threats to our well-being. I got the impression that we are under near-constant existential stress. It’s like there are no other experiences except a panicked or hostile reaction to threatening stimuli. There’s a lot of this in life, but there are… Continue reading Safety and Contentment
Meditation was a huge leap of faith for me. You have to do it a long, long time to get the sense that it’s working. And then, you have no control group, so it’s hard to say that it’s helping. Did I react better because I’ve been meditating? Or did I just happen to be… Continue reading A Leap of Faith
Recently I marked the second anniversary of the death of my beloved cat, Barnacle Pete. Wasn’t he handsome? I know, this bougie white childless lady is obsessing about her cats way too much. As Groucho Marx says, “I resemble that remark.” Hey, we’re all working with what we’ve got. Pete was a friend who was… Continue reading When Bad Things Happen
“When each moment of our lives is an opportunity to practice [mindfulness], work is not some tedious burden that saps our energy and dictates our lives. Instead, work is yet another opportunity to be mindful.” -David Gelles, Mindful Work Mindfulness at work. I love the playfulness of this phrase. I have seen mindfulness at work… Continue reading Mindfulness at Work
