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Lessons in Being Human

camping desert

I received a little hailstorm of lessons in being human this week.

Aside from the everyday stuff, Raptitude went down inexplicably Monday, right as I released a new article. Then Wednesday there was a major server outage—apparently caused by a single typo—and half the internet went down. My first response was to make coffee, and instead of pouring water into the coffeemaker I poured it into my electric coffee grinder.

After some significant cleanup efforts, the website, the grinder and I survived, and Camp Calm’s doors are open again. 

If you have been waiting to register, you can do so right now here.

If you don’t know what Camp Calm is, it’s a lightweight intro-to-meditation course I do a few times a year.

It’s meant for people who are interested in meditation, but who:

1)      don’t know where to start

2)      have tried to meditate but find it difficult or confusing

3)      have never been able to do it consistently, for whatever reason

Camp Calm is a gentle, supportive environment designed to fully answer the two most common questions about meditation:

“What do I do?” and “Am I doing it right?”

Meditation is super popular but there are still a ton of people who are stuck at the “interested, but not actually doing itstage. At least partly this is because traditional approaches aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.

In Camp Calm I dispense with the dry, traditionalist instruction you might have encountered previously. No New Age pretensions, condescending fables or wishy-washy spiritual language. You will find no imagery of prayer beads, religious figures or East Asian calligraphy. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

Meditation is just a simple practice you do with your mind. It helps you get better at being human: reducing stress and rumination, overcoming self-defeating behaviors, and connecting with others.

Camp Calm has a simple goal: to help you develop a modest but consistent meditation practice that works with your schedule.

After the camp you’ll have some real, experiential knowledge of what it can do for you, and where it might fit into your life.

The camp is easy enough that virtually anyone can do it, but structured enough that you do actually get somewhere.

There’s a daily lesson via email, a short reading, and a daily practice. There’s also a forum where we chat about our experiences and help each other out.

Including everything, it requires 20-30 minutes a day, and you can split that time up if you like.

Day One of camp is March 13th, 2017, and the last day is April 11th. The readings and practices are very short and you can do them according to your own schedule each day. Everything else is figured out for you.

Camp calm lessons

Registration is scheduled to stay open for a week, but as I mention frequently, all three previous seasons sold out early and the number of spots available will be the same.

The price will also be the same as last time: $69 USD.

This is what comes with registration:

  • The Orientation Booklet explains everything you need to know about how Camp works, in a few pages. All you have to do when you register is read it, and you’re set.
  • 30 short daily lessons, which arrive by email
  • The digital guide Making Things Clear: A Brief Guide for People Who Think Meditation is Hard (in PDF, epub and Kindle formats)
  • The digital guide You Are Here: A Modern Person’s Guide to Living in the Present (also in all three formats)
  • Guided audio meditations in MP3 format
  • Access to the discussion forum where you can make friends, ask questions, and share your experiences with other campers

Campers can also email me directly with questions at any time. I will do anything I can to help you establish a lasting practice that enriches your life.

You can download your welcome package right away. If it interests you, I hope you’ll join us.

Register for Camp Calm

Questions? Just ask!

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Photo by Liam Matthews

Mrs. Picky Pincher March 7, 2017 at 9:03 am

Hahahaha, sorry for all of those cases of Mondays. Once I sat a plastic container of sugar on my hot stove. I ended up with melted plastic AND molten sugar everywhere. Sometimes you make a mess so bad that you have to stare at it for a second to register what you should even do. At least it isn’t Monday any more. ;)

David Cain March 7, 2017 at 9:01 pm

Haha that sounds awful. I can almost smell the burning sugar/plastic smell.

I have melted all kinds of plastic things on my stove top. One of my spatulas has a long tendril after I discovered it melting and part of it was stuck to the element already.

Freedom Planner March 7, 2017 at 8:54 pm

Some days just don’t go as planned! Getting stressed and worked up about it rarely helps. Didn’t notice the internet being down..

David Cain March 7, 2017 at 9:02 pm

There were a few thousand web services down, and lots of websites make use of them, so it was a kind of domino effect.

اتوبار March 27, 2017 at 4:48 am

thank you for sharing this post

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