If I told you to sit in the corner of the room, and get up whenever you want, how long do you think you’d stay?
Chances are, not long. From my meditation experiments I’ve learned that it takes about ten seconds of sitting still before one feels an impulse to do or change something. Wants begin to appear, and start barking orders. Stand up. Get a glass of water. Stop wasting your time trying to meditate. Go eat some grapes. Get something done, jeez.
It’s amazing how quickly and ferociously these wants arrive on the scene. The brain is constantly generating them, and they become especially apparent when you attempt to sit still and do nothing. It becomes almost unbearable, and relief happens almost instantly when you act. Doing anything at all keeps the mind busy so it has less time to come up with suggestions and demands about what you ‘need.’
This is why it’s easier to watch television than sit and do nothing, even though watching television doesn’t really get us anywhere better. Merely distracting oneself from the incessant mental shouting of wants is probably the most common strategy of responding to them, and it does work to some degree.
Multi-billion dollar industries are built on exactly this impulse. Television, video games, smartphones, iPods. Distraction is easily one of the most profitable commodities of the 21st century. Read More
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David on July 27, 2009
“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
~Cesare Pavese
By six o’clock on a Sunday night, the streets of Invermere were deserted. It was early fall, the middle of dead season for a skier’s town, and I was trotting down to the highway to hitchhike back up the mountain, to the resort where I lived and worked. It had rained earlier, and the damp streets were glowing with one final hour of of sun before it ducked behind the mountains.
I’d spent the day in town, alone, on what was as much a photo-taking excursion as a grocery run. Walking along a silent residential street, I passed an overgrown picket fence, peered nosily into the adjacent yard, and saw something that made me stop. Read More
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David on July 16, 2009
“Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish opinions.”
~Zen saying
I don’t watch the news anymore, and I don’t get the paper. It took too much time to read, and often it would put me in a bad mood. There was too much to disapprove of, too many unsettled and unsettling stories. So I cut it out.
Television news was no better, mostly celebrity misbehavior and crises of some kind: fires, diseases, bombings and market trouble. I used to turn on CNN first thing in the morning, and listen while I made breakfast. One day I quit.
Initially, I feared I would feel out of the loop, that suddenly I would not know what was going on in the world. My peers would be exchanging crucial details about the state of the universe, and I’d have to ask sheepishly, “What’s swine flu?” or “Who’s the US president right now?” How embarrassing. Read More
David began a 30-day daily meditation experiment on April 6, 2009. The original post is here. David’s progress log is here.
Well, the first official Raptitude experiment has come to an end. I just got up from my final meditation session. As far as I can tell, I am not enlightened. I can neither hear the mountain stream nor make the sound of one hand clapping.
But I will never be the same.
If you’ve ever had trouble meditating, you might appreciate this account.
I have wanted to try meditating on a daily basis for a long time and I am glad I did it this way, accountable to you, the reader. Because let me tell you, if I didn’t tell anybody I was trying this, I would have quit in the first week. I’ve left detailed entries in my experiment log, but I’ll recap the highlights here.
That first week was rough. I could not decide on a method, so I tried a few, with discouraging results. On Day 5, I decided to settle on a (seemingly) simple and well-known method called vipassana. I think I even announced in my progress log that my confusion about methods was over, because I’d found plain instructions for a tried and true method. Hah! Read More
David began a 30-day daily meditation experiment on April 6, 2009. The original post is here. David’s progress log is here.
Well it’s been a real trip so far. Here we are at the halfway point.
After a rocky first week, I’ve settled into a comfortable groove. But it took a bit of trailblazing. About a week ago I decided not to follow a prescribed traditional method. I didn’t want to compromise it with my own assumptions. I wasn’t comfortable with written or prerecorded instruction. I felt an intense need for a flesh-and-blood teacher to show me.
And I will find a teacher, either in a meditation class, or on some sort of retreat, but not during this experiment. I decided to take a more free-form approach to my daily sessions, and it’s beginning to pay great dividends. Read More
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David on April 21, 2009
Little Buddha says, “Chill out.”
In my About section, I mentioned that experimentation is important to the spirit of Raptitude. From the start, this blog has been about improving humanity through improving yourself, and improving yourself primarily by developing mental skills. Most of the skills I’ve talked about already, namely keeping life fresh, investing your attention on purpose, and enjoying the mundane moments are contingent upon one’s ability to direct their attention to where they want it. I am conducting Raptitude’s first public experiment to help to develop my ability to do that.
I exercise mindfulness in my actions every day, but I’m much less consistent with sitting meditation. These days I never really sit down to actively practice the deliberate rendering of attention, whether it’s onto my breath, my body or some other foci.
If I were to define meditation I would call it “the art of directing one’s attention.” The human mind is so flighty and fickle it’s actually hilarious how difficult it can be to keep it in one place. Civilization does a good job at distracting us 24-7. As I type this I’ve got four Firefox tabs open, TweetDeck keeps popping up, and I’ve already answered two phonecalls. Shutting them all out seems like the most obvious response, and I will do some of that (ok TweetDeck is closed.) But I am more interested in improving the other end of the equation: me. Read More
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David on April 7, 2009
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
~ Ernest Hemingway
For a long time I didn’t feel like I had a lot of people to relate to. Being shy, I didn’t find myself in a lot of conversations with people I didn’t know, and when I did, I was uncomfortable. Bonds did form, deep ones sometimes, but it was always a product of circumstance. I made friends with people I was in class with or worked with, because some interaction is bound to happen in those places. But to actually form a relationship without the help of circumstances was something I had never experienced.
I’ve shed much of my shyness through deliberately speaking up more and other forms of comfort-zone-pushing, but I eventually made a discovery that really opened the floodgates for me. I see the potential for connection in just about everyone now; I no longer feel bound by differences of age, interests, cultures, or opinions.
The secret to connecting with people is Read More
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David on April 5, 2009
When I was a teenager I might have identified money as my most valuable resource. I don’t think that’s extraordinarily naive, I mean it did always help to bring me the things I wanted: freedom, influence, power, comfort, beer. It’s so versatile you can do just about anything with it. More money meant more ease, more pleasure, more happiness.
As I got older and busier I learned, as many do, that time trumps money by a long shot. One can use time not only to make money, but also to build the capacity for making more money in less time, by improving skills and setting up streams of income. Not only that, but extra time gives you the temporal space to enjoy the privileges and powers you already have. More time means more freedom, more options, and less stress.
Unlike money, everyone is ultimately on a level playing field when it comes to time. We all get the same allowance of twenty-four hours a day. Just as there are ineffective ways of investing your money, there are ineffective ways of investing your time. Read More
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David on March 25, 2009
“Children are all foreigners.”
-R.W. Emerson
Children have a precious talent. They become enamored so easily, and by anything. Take a walk through a park with a young child, and it doesn’t take long before he’s stopped, crouched on the side of the path, captivated by a red leaf or line of marching ants. Wide-eyed and oblivious to you and everything else, he just watches. He’s become enraptured by a curious sight that is — to him — a miracle.
About six years ago, when I was at my most miserable and unpleasant, I remember being asked by a concerned family member, “Well when were you happy?”
I had to think about it. “When I was a kid,” I answered, vaguely aware that it was not really an exaggeration. In particular I remembered the feeling of sheer abundance of summer break: sixty straight days of nothing but exploration and imagination. Read More
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David on March 19, 2009
It’s one of life’s best highs. That certain freshness you find only in new experiences. Getting off the plane in a new country, settling back as the lights dim before the movie starts, driving your new car off the lot.
Of course, it soon goes stale. We’ve all had the experience of excitedly tearing the gift wrapping off a new toy, only to be bored with it a week later. Even adults do this.
Why is it only that good when it’s new? And is there any way of finding that freshness in something that isn’t brand new?
I’ve discovered a few ways, but the one I’m about to share is especially interesting. Read More
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David on March 17, 2009
I'm David and Raptitude is a street-level look at the human experience -- what makes human beings do what they do, and what that means in real life.
I write about how to make sense of the earth's most ridiculous animal, how to get better at being one of them, and how only those two things can save the world. 
Wow, this was so inspiring, David! Thank you!