Around November last year, I discovered the waking up course and wrote about it.
Fifty days of lessons created a habit, and I didn’t miss a day for more than 200.
Then I missed a day.
Then a couple.
But I still had a steady practice.
Why meditate?
I wrote about that here.
Then I wrote this because I keep forgetting….
And then Why Meditate? Redux.
And then I stopped.
What stopped (past) me?
One day Sam Harris asked a question in one of his daily guided meditations.
The question was: “Are you waiting for something to happen?”
My answer was: “I am.”
And then: “Holy shit! I am waiting.”
And realizing that, the roof fell in, or the floor dropped from under me, or some goddamn metaphor.
I was doing the exact opposite of what I was supposed to be doing.
Well, not the exact opposite. But opposite enough.
Instead of being there and being aware of the contents of consciousness, I was sitting there and waiting for something to happen.
And I was not aware that I was doing it.
What stopped (past) me?
I don’t know why that stopped me. Looking back, it doesn’t seem like quite that big a deal. But it was.
How could I do all this work—hours and hours—to get myself pointed north, and then discover that I’m pointed south-southeast?
I wish that Past Me had seen that as an “invitation to inquiry.”
I wish he’d thought deeply about his experience and written a blog post like this one.
But he didn’t. He had to wait for me to appear and do it.
He took a different path.
He let himself unravel.
He abandoned the practices that he’d developed.
Not just the daily meditation, but most of the things that went with it.
What started (present) me?
And then I turned it around. Or a more recent Past Me did.
And now I’m here, with knowledge that I didn’t have before.
I know how to rebuild my practice.
Start with one thing, this thing: Daily Pages. Writing 750 words.
Do it mindfully.
Use the practice to think things through.
And, FFS, read what you write once in a while.
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