A month long meditation experiment

I have just concluded a month long meditation experiment and this post is about my plans, experiences and conclusions. The reason for publishing this was to force myself to take a few moments and think about what I got out of the experiment. And I also hope that it will be of inspiration or entertainment to others.

What I planed:
The idea was to go for a walk everyday in the month of May with the aim of looking within.  I intended to follow the instructions outlined by Art Ticknor in his common sense meditation (In short it’s looking at what you think you are till it’s confirmed or denied, if you don’t care to read the entire instruction). He also advice to keep a journal on the progress.  And finally I decided not to set a timeframe for the meditations and just make sure to get out every day.

How it actually turned out:
I somehow managed to meditate every single day of the month, but I did miss writing the journal a few times. Having a daily meditation not only made me look/think when I was walking but also kept my attention on the subject at other times during the day.

The time spend on meditation differed from day to day, but was between 42 and 59min; 13 times, between 1h and 1h 45min; 14 times and both less and more 2 times each (15min, 30min, 2h and 2h 26 min). Total was 32h 48min in 31 days. Timing the meditation has been valuable to get a sense of the amount of time I put into it, but I don’t see a reason to keep this up in the future.

Another thing I noticed about time is that I tend to put more energy and time into the meditation when it’s carried out in the beginning of a day. The quality of the meditation was also lessened by being tired, just having eaten and not getting enough water. And if I walked in crowded places the focus tended to drift more out into the world.

When I first started this mediation I tended to get caught in thinking about the issue rather than just looking. And this tendency repeated itself in the end, when what I observed got more abstract. But keeping at it seems to be the solution to that.

Much of the time for looking was spend with random thoughts that came up. And whenever I noticed this I just led my attention back to the problem. The amount of random thoughts was highly affected by the turmoil in my life and planning for tranquility is probably good to get the most of the meditation. Another thing to note on the random thoughts was that they had much higher therapeutic value during meditation, than during the rest of the day. So maybe the random thoughts weren’t so bad after all.

I experimented with both running and sitting with a pen and piece of paper. Running seems like a good thing for a creative process more than for this kind of intense looking, as my mind kept popping up new ideas. The sitting with a pen and piece of paper was a good way to keep my attention on the subject at hand, but I still prefer to combine it with physical activity. The days, when getting out of the door was the most difficult, was also the days when the break, fresh air and change of environment was most needed. I suspect that part of the positive effect came from the physical activity.

In the middle of the month I noticed myself planning to “do a little more tomorrow”. When I noticed this I did a little more that day and from then on I tried to focus on what to do this very moment.  Remembering why I meditated and keeping the intensity up was not easy to do, but focusing on what I can do right now and having reminders like a journal helped.

Keeping a journal has been valuable in tracking the progress. And writing out what I realized during my meditation helped to make my thinking much more clear. I thought I would skip the journal after this initial month, but I guess I’ll stick to it.

What I learned along the way:
I started out from scratch – believing I am a human being on planet earth, even though I had given the subject some attention earlier and had seen that it might not be the case. But I moved along quickly in the beginning when looking at familiar things, but that soon ended.

First thing I examined was whether the essence of me is a physical thing. And it’s obvious that I would still be if I lost a body part. The only thing I wasn’t sure about is if I will still exist if the brain or the vital body organs are removed. But I decided to take the word of scientists, who have cut away different parts of the brain (in rats I believe), word for not being a specific part of the brain. I realize that it isn’t a very scientific approach to use unverified data, but the wimp in me won that battle.

Next thing was thoughts. And being able to observe them made it clear that I’m outside looking at them. And the same thing goes for emotions. Then I got a hint to look at the sense of self and even though it was very strange to me at the time I quickly accepted that I was looking at it and it wasn’t who I am.

The senses are feeding information to what is looking, so they were disqualified as being what I am. I then had a look at mental identities like being a job title or a citizen in a country – having looked at this before they were just noticed as already ruled out.

I played around with decisions for a while, looking at the process, doing experiments and so on. But I finally came to the conclusion that decisions are just thoughts that pop up and in some mysterious way one decision gets picked over another. Sometimes there aren’t even arguments or comparing of the benefits and negatives.

This led me to look at if I can influence thoughts or in other words if I have free will. Just thinking about not having free will was painful, but I kept going. After looking at thoughts and decisions and noticing that I don’t know how to create a thought, I formed a theory on how this could be that left room for free will. The idea was that I can influence thoughts by setting an intention and that I am able to veto a decision after it has been made. The conclusion to this issue came as a realization of me looking at the mind being torn in two different directions. One part was pursuing my goals and kept leading my attention back on the issue and another part kept trying to lead my attention to anything but the issue. When I saw this it became obvious that it is a natural process like the shift between night and day. And it also showed me that I am outside looking at what’s going on with no way of influencing the process.

This was a big relief but at the same time it made me unsure what to do next. So I spend a few days in confusion and at last I decided to find out what I really want from this. Finding an answer to that question got me back on track. What I really want is to know who I am.

After a few days of identifying with the observer of experience and trying to live life from that perspective a greater percentage of the time I got a hint that it might not be my ultimate definition. So I started to look at the relationship between the observer and the observed. And what happens to the observer during unconsciousness. So far all I got is a lot of unanswered questions.

Another thing I had to look at was what “consciousness” and “awareness” actually are. To me they were just empty words. I understood the definition of them, but was unable to relate them to something in my own experience. And my understanding of these words is that consciousness is what is turned on when you wake up in the morning – the screen experience plays out on. And awareness is what you are looking out from and can be seen with Douglas Harding’s exercises.

Conclusion on the experiment:
Looking back at where I came from and where I am now, I have to conclude that the experiment has been a success. But on the other hand I haven’t figured out who I am yet, so I guess I’ll have to keep looking.

High Tension

I want to stab this week. My last meditation restored some hope but my tension over feeling I’m so in my head, I’m not seeking, never started, and am in a very uncomfortable rut, was getting huge and maybe it was just a temporary release valve. When it gets this confrontational (like most days) I want the fetal position, but that isn’t enough. Inspiration could be a way out — or more non-action, procrastination of getting serious.

This sense I haven’t moved is so horrible and usually I dissipate its tension by indulging in ego boosts and false inspirations (apparently false after the confrontation I’ve gotten). I am running, but I remember that too infrequently to act on that perspective.

Egotism and progress

Meditation-wise I missed half. I’ve been splitting the two one-hour sessions commitment into one one-hour session with five minutes prior to choose a topic and one one-hour session where I work on insecurity. One day I noted “action is so nice”.

Went to TAT’s April meeting and was caught in my thoughts and spinning almost the whole time. Actually, this is probably not unusual – paying attention would be unusual. My two main battles were 1. between a part that wants to expand my ego and a part that is afraid of the inevitable feeling of new attachments being torn away and 2. between putting attention on that battle of egotism and defensiveness and a part that values truth. On the good side I did see some of my psychology, some new robotic viewable stuff, at least for now.

Bubbles Bursting

Listening to podcasts at work has been great. Whether or not the speaker is really enlightened doesn’t matter too much because I turn the volume down, so while working on the computer, I may hear “everything is perfect exactly as it is” or “sentient beings” or an Asian name like “Genzo” that stimulates thinking. Less logical lectures are better so I don’t have to follow them.

Highlight was meeting in Baltimore with three other friends on the path. We sat, talked and confronted each other for three hours. The restaurant kicked us out at closing time and we stood outside for a while, some of it in silence.

Had a celibacy accident. As the weather warms up the value of mental celibacy gets forgotten.

It keeps striking me looking at the mind is like looking at an eyeball in the mirror.

It’s not really what’s alive. This isn’t as disturbing as it would be if I hadn’t been looking for it… but should be. I saw a corner of truth that would have shaken up my beliefs in the past and made it’s truth value a must-know. But I think since I knew I was looking for this it has had some muted effect.

Some media and some confrontation

Watching Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun” affected me pretty strongly on Thursday and Friday. I felt overwhelming poignacy and it left a sense the mind is a joke, essentially a lie. Also listened to a couple podcasts that got me thinking: What happens when you don’t use intuition? You get ghost stories on your show like #2 in Anything Ghost podcast #80. This series is otherwise thought stimulating, so far. Also, in a success-book-highlights podcast Philosopher’s Notes, in an episode called “The Secret of Happiness” the question raised is: What do you love? And, what percent of your life do you dedicate to it? My answer was, truth and friendships (esp. on the path) and 10% and less than 1%.

The Saturday PSI meeting and meditation left me in a spot of high tension. In life there are things I both want and fear and watching such a “perfect” conflict (as Art put it) leads me to feel it really is a terrible experience and I want transcendence or death. He also pointed out within threat is I will get thrown back into the void, and so I’m fearing the void/death. When I am meditating on being on my deathbed, however, the songs of only life lose their value because I want to know about life and death now. To really know death I need to die, so I am trying to bring my mind to that point and beyond.

Uncertainty

Below is the first thing I wrote in an attempt to publish a post. I felt like it was really heady and intellectual and so I didn’t finish it or post it. But alas, I wrote it – and there are some genuine thoughts and sentiments in it…

After several months of being hyper-focused on the “design” of my life(style), I can’t help but wonder what any of it has to do with anything on the Path. It feels so remotely related to the Problem. Am I deluding myself in this? Rose harped on lifestyle – and there have certainly been times in my own life where I felt compelled to make some real changes in my “life setup”. However, in all of these cases, it was ambiguous as to whether this change was made out of a desire to make my life “better” or to make my life more centered on “Seeking”. But the truth is that it was neither: I made the changes because they felt right, they felt like “further”, “forward”, “growth”, and “health”. Now, I am questioning whether “healthy” and “spiritually driven” or “spiritually on track” are the same thing. My intuition has always said that they are. But this doesn’t seem to be the position of Rose and others in the world of TAT. That’s not to say that anyone is claiming that “spiritually driven” is unhealthy, but that seeking Truth doesn’t have a lot to do with seeking “health”.

What do I mean by “health”? Well, what the hell do I mean by “Truth”? I think that capital “T” Truth is conceptually rooted in the Longing. But I don’t know what the Longing is for other than total freedom from suffering. We can (pre- or post-enlightenmnet) whip up a Platonic metaphysics wherein all manifestations are shadowy intimations of Truth. Thus, the root of Longing is in actually in Truth – in Who I Am – but appears to be rooted in some thing. But the other explanation is equally as valid: Truth is nothing but the moment when the yearning for total freedom from suffering finally inverts the gestalt of experience – nothing more. Personally, I feel that it is both simultaneously. To me, this possibility seems paramount.

The Rosean notion of “backing away from untruth” is nothing new. This is the “neti, neti” of the Indian sages; the “via negativa” of Pseudo-Dionysius and the Christian mystics; the “drg drsya viveka” of traditional Advaita Vedanta; and so on. It’s clear that this is a proven path of great importance. What isn’t clear to me is whether this skeptical stance serves to pre-form the “enlightenment” experience that one has. What I mean is that we are starting this journey from the vantage point of being the mind; thus, whatever we do is inherently a stance. The stance of “no stance” is as much a stance as any other. So, “backing away from untruth” is still starting from a proposed truth, namely that truth can’t be approached directly. This observation is very antithetical to the traditional perspective of the path to Enlightenment, which likes to assert that we deny untruths and approach Truth obliquely or indirectly. The “guiding system” we use to say “this is untrue” is called “intuition” – but this could be just a fancy name to fill in the gaps and make the system of the negative way appear coherent – just like any other system. In other words, we say that it is “intuition” when we don’t have any other explanation for why we choose one thing over another; but saying that such choices are based on “intuition” allows us to feel that the choices are not based on assumptions that we are reifying and upon which we are building toward Truth, but are rather in tandem with a deconstructive operation whereby we dismantle assumptions.

The above paragraph is, of course, a subtle and nuanced objection of the mind – an alternative explanation. But I feel that it is not complicated at all. It’s quite simple, in fact. Again, we’re starting from the vantage point of being the mind: we take ourselves to be the observer of experience, and yet we also take ourselves to be an object within experience, within the field of observation. So we are aware and we are consciously aware. Within this formulation, we have to admit a contradiction: how can I be two awarenesses – the one that’s aware and the one that’s conscious that it’s aware? The via negativa takes one of the inherent assumptions of this self-conception and runs it to its limit point. The ultimate stance of Advaita Vedanta is one of non-duality or complete Oneness. It’s for this reason that Advaita Vedanta considers itself “avidya” or “non-truth” – it’s a prop to assist in the dismantling of the mind. So when Shankara composed “Drg Drsya Viveka” (“Subject-Object Discrimination”), he wasn’t laying down a creed, but a methodology. He was saying, “You take yourself to be the observer of your experience, so admit that and run that to its logical conclusion, bearing in mind that anything that you observe cannot be yourself”. But this is – undeniably and irreducibly – an assumption.

Now, for one who yearns to be free of suffering, the fact that we cannot not make assumptions may not be of much interest, but it does not change that fact. Mentioning all of this may not effect much, but it does seem important – at least to this person – to be honest in every way possible. I think that the denial of this fact and the endorsement of the notion that we can really honestly say that we are asbolutely backing away from untruth is built on fear. I have seen this in myself a thousand times! The denial and its correlative endorsement are built on the fear that (a) if I admit this fact, my search will be jeopordized; and (b) if I admit this fact, I must also admit that a final and impregnable relief from my suffering may not be possible.

What’s been going on lately?

Job search – I’m looking for a job. This task is difficult in our current climate of ‘economic crisis’. I spent most of last week preparing for a numerical and verbal reasoning test that I was given to complete by last Saturday by a firm I’m interested in. I’m not a big fan of these tests! They’re designed to assess speed and accuracy. I haven’t heard back from them yet.

Meditation – Since the 18th of March I set myself the task of meditating daily for 30 days. Why? I wanted to build ‘power’, to build an ability to DO what I say I’ll do. It was going well for 17  days, and then a slip occurred last Sunday, when I slept through my meditation session. This slip was followed by a complete miss; the next day, Monday, I unintentionally missed a meditation session. 

So what does this say about me? 

Well, the first two weeks of an endeavour set by myself seems to be easily carried out. This is probably because I’m riding a wave of inspiration. (It has been recently revealed to me that I’m an emotional type). But after this two week ‘grace period’ when my inspiration peters out, things get difficult. There’s either a slip of some kind, or there’s a temptation to slip. I’ve seen this happen before on numerous occasions and it’s about time I do something about it!

I started this task again two days ago, (the 7th of April).  In Shawn Nevins’ article, ‘The Seeker’s List of Things To Do’, he says the following: 

Fall and rise a thousand times if need be: I know some people who will set a goal to meditate every morning, do so for a week, then give up after they miss a morning. They despair over their temporary failure. The key is to keep at it, even if you miss every other day. Even if you never manage to meditate every single morning, to keep trying is what matters. If you approach the task in that manner, you will discover of what you are capable, and what you are — likely different than your original conception.

Inspiring words. I’ll keep hacking away at this until I reach the 30 day goal I originally set for myself.

I’ll update you on my progress.

Maybe I’m on the path

This week I missed a lot of meditations, and when meditating I’d feel no energy, no desire, and just wait for the time to be up. Many meditations were also while driving or walking, few of those ever being good for me.

The brightest spots came listening to early Rose lectures at work. Best was a recording of his The Path lecture. It seems like I’m understanding what he’s trying to point at better than three years ago. This feeling doesn’t come with a sense I’m definitely right, in fact it has a lot of doubt, e.g. how could it be that simple – I thought this was mysticism, where’s the un-understandable transcendence? I know I could be way off, but maybe I’m right.
Also on Monday I want to Ben’s PSI meeting and one question in the vein of what do you know for sure led me to sense I need the mind to stop to see myself.

I did pass on movie watching and restaurant going but worked very late two days and spent my weekend with family, so lost any prioritization effect. With family, I did spend time with kids following advice to become like a little child. After no weekend meditations, I felt a desire for a good meditation on my trip home, but didn’t stop and wait for it to possibly happen.

This coming week, I’d like to continue to manage my influences and allow inspiration and clarity to carry over into most meditating.

Underwater

I breathe normally, but I feel like I’m underwater. At work, at home, in bed, I’m never on the surface, but just below it. It’s like I’ve been holding my breath for 39 years, staring at life through a liquid-air interface. I want to breathe out and in again. I’m out of my element.

I’m always in my own way. I cannot pass myself. Everywhere I look “I” block the view. We fit in the same space. We are like opposites sides of thin sheet of paper. Who is this person who won’t leave me alone? Or maybe it’s me who won’t let him go.

Something is wrong. Everything is wrong. Can we retreat from untruth when everything is untrue? No, we can only simplify the lie…and hope that between the lie and the not-knowing there is a letting go.

Trying to prolong focus from retreat

This week was very good. Following last weekend there was a desire to prolong the focus of the retreat rather than return to the rut of net-surfing and procrastination.

It seemed like the retreat raised my level of honesty – both mental truth and verbal truth – and so my intuition was well tuned too, but has dulled over the week. But this dulling of intuition/honesty/inspiration seems to have been slowed by some choices for tension and continuance of the spirit of the retreat over dissipation of it. For instance despite persistent and nagging desire to go into a restaurant I made a deal to hold off until after the weekend PSI meeting and kept it. And with temptation to watch a movie when exercising there was a sense it would dissipate intensity, and a debate continued for a while before I thought to try asking “Why?” Asking why opened my mind to sit and see if a better solution could be found to the boredom of stationary bike riding, and catching up on e-mails came out as a great one.

Listening to zen podcasts and Rose lectures, several days I came home from work eager to meditate rather than have down-time and many meditations were good. Of my two problems more meditations were on the angst. I am sensing it is a leap beyond my honest toolset from, the answer is to challenge assumptions, to, the assumption to challenge is my self-definition. At the PSI meeting Saturday however, Art pointed out I am afraid to admit to myself I don’t know what I am which is true – I can’t respond to this question internally when it is posed.

But Art also came back to the point that while I’ve narrowed to two problems I see my mind work on, there’s still one primary. In my case, my mind is much more engaged with the problem of threat than the problem of angst. My thought is the former is not deep enough for multiple ulterior reasons – yet that thought keeps me stuck and I sense a focus that is possible were I to take the threat issue seriously that would blast away the problem so quickly. The 3 ways I thought of to fight threat are, confidence, facing fears and introspection, and Art pointed out these are on the level of experience – the 4th, the most obvious, is to inquire into who is threatened. Maybe. Both meditations since were bad, though.

This coming week with the temptations to go to a restaurant or watch a documentary when excercising I’d like to keep asking why? – because it’s a very good question.