meditation

Who You Really Are (Pt. 2)

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This is part two of a two-part post. Monday’s article explained that you are not your mind or your body, but the aware space in which your mind and your body (and everything else) exist. You’ll have to read the first part to understand the context of this post.

So if you are in fact the space in which all things happen, how come you don’t always notice this space? Why does it often seem like it’s just the things that exist? If the space is you, wouldn’t it always be apparent?

Not necessarily. Think about it: you are that space, so when you are not aware of that space, it only means the space is not aware of itself. But it can still be aware of the things happening in that space, without seeing what it is that is aware. It’s a major oversight, but it is also the normal state of human existence — complete identification with form, with things.

We usually don’t recognize the space in which the tangibles of our lives happen, so we figure we must be one of those tangible, perishable things, or some combination of them. The thing, or collection of things, that we normally think we are is called the ego.

When you lose sight of the space that contains all things (including your ego) you are lost in things. You have lost sight of yourself, and the play of things seems to be all there is. Things become supremely important, because they’re all you have.

That’s a shame, because all of those things are doomed by their very nature. They’re nice when they’re around, but they are fleeting and perishable. So it’s no wonder that when we become identified with things we feel a persistent uneasiness. They are all fleeting — very certainly, inarguably, on their way out, and some part of us knows that. When life is only a race to manipulate material things into the most preferable arrangement possible before you die, it feels like a losing battle. It is.

This is how most of us live, utterly identified with our thoughts, under the impression that life is nothing but things, and that we are nothing but one of those things. Read More

by David on September 9, 2010
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Who You Really Are

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Okay, this post is the last thrust in our trip down the proverbial rabbit-hole, which so far has looked at what the ego is, and how the late Douglas Harding can help us answer that big, big question — who are you, really? This is part one of a two-part post.

I had no idea what I was getting into. Back in October, I arrived at an island retreat called Hollyhock, to take what I thought was a five-day course on Buddhism. I didn’t know we would spend those days in uninterrupted mindfulness, without speaking, and that we’d spend about six to eight hours a day in formal meditation.

After the initial welcome at the main hall, our teacher led my group up the path to our meditation hut in the forest. On the way there, he stopped us and told us to look up. It was a still and clear night, much darker than we city dwelling visitors were accustomed to. I had never seen stars like that.

“Please be aware,” he said, as we all stared silently, “that you are seeing.”

He repeated himself. I was transfixed on the stars, but I remember thinking, “Well, duh,” when his comment registered. Of course I’m aware I’m seeing. How can you see without being aware of it?

His comment echoed again in my head a moment later, and I realized what he meant. For the first time, I recognized that I was normally only aware of what I was seeing, and had taken for granted that I was seeing at all. My awareness had become preoccupied with the content of existence, not the fact of existence itself. Suddenly, it struck me as so peculiar that there was stuff out there to see at all, and especially peculiar that there was something present — me, evidently — to see it. I don’t know why it had never occurred to me there was anything odd, or at least curious, about this arrangement.

In that instant, the stars became more real, more imposing, though I can’t say their appearance changed. It was something like admiring a photograph of a tree, and then realizing you were looking at a real tree. This experience definitely had an effect on me, but I didn’t grasp its relevance right away. Read More

by David on September 6, 2010
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First Things First

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birds on light post

Ever since I declared my Big Goal — complete self-employment by my 31st birthday — I’ve been flip-flopping about where specifically to start. Because I’m working with such a long timeline, it doesn’t make sense to chart out every action along the way, because I just don’t know how it’s all going to play out. It’s almost all new territory for me so I’ll need to be making constant adjustments the whole way.

So the “middle game” and “end game” of this goal are going to stay undefined until I get closer to them, but the opening sequence is to be decided now.

I am still abroad at the moment, so my workspace is constantly changing and never predictable. I have no desk and no filing cabinet, not much privacy, and often internet access is expensive or unavailable. There is also an uncomfortable internal conflict between my desire to make the most of my time abroad by sightseeing and socializing, and my desire to get this project underway.

Most of the sub-projects involved in my goal will have to wait until I return home, where I’ll have the stability and privacy to work, with fewer distractions. But I can still make one or two big strides between now and then.

I’ll be living out of my backpack for another six weeks yet. I’ve left New Zealand to explore Australia until I go home. Not that six weeks is a long time — I can’t believe I’m so close to the end of my trip — but I do want to get closer to my goal during this time, rather than defer it all until I get home. Enjoying my trip is the number one priority, but I don’t need sixteen waking hours a day to enjoy myself.

My goal’s general plan is clear to me, and I know that the first stage is going to surround establishing certain fundamental habits: writing habits, workflow habits, networking habits, and blog marketing habits. These habits will put me in a better position to complete everything between now and D-Day (October 8, 2011.) Any good habit established now will pay great dividends over the next eighteen months, and will facilitate the development of other habits.

In my research on habit change, one point keeps coming up again and again: the likelihood of your habit sticking decreases dramatically for every additional habit you’re attempting to change at the same time. If you only focus on one habit, a successful take is almost guaranteed, but trying to change five habits concurrently almost guarantees failure for all of them. Read More

by David on May 18, 2010
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What Were Your Highlights in 2009?

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bright spot

The first week of January is a natural time to look back. Just as the earth begins another whirl around the Sun, we can’t avoid confronting the reality that yet another sizable chunk of lifetime has been sealed and locked away in the archives. We don’t get many of those chunks, seventy or eighty if we’re lucky, so it makes sense to step back, look at how we’ve spent this last one, and adjust the sails if necessary.

A family member had a great idea and passed it on to me. This time of year, we should all come up with the year’s highlights, much the way they do for sports, news, and the arts. It’s a good way to identify exactly what the year means to us when we consider the big picture, zoomed out far enough that we can only see the brightest bits.

So here’s the deal. I’ll post my top five highlights of 2009, and hopefully you will be inspired to post yours, either in the comments below, or on your own blog if you’ve got one.

Approach it however you like. They can be things you started or finished in 2009, decisions you’ve made, experiences you’ve had or any other memories that stand out. All that’s important is that they serve to represent to you this particular chapter in your story, whether you’ve been authoring it consciously, or haphazardly. Read More

by David on January 4, 2010
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What Five Days of Silence Taught Me

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Mainland British Columbia, from the shore at Hollyhock

Just before flying to Thailand, I spent five days at a retreat community called Hollyhock. It’s a humble, rootsy little hamlet on the relatively remote Cortes Island. I knew very little about the program I’d signed up for, only that it was about Buddhism.

It turns out that it was a rather intense regimen of meditation. Our group of fifteen or so spent virtually our entire days (from 7am to 10pm) in some form of meditation. Sitting, walking, dancing and even eating. I’ve experimented with meditation, but never for extended periods. This was a bit of a shock, finding myself sitting in a candlelit hut with nothing to do for hours but stare into my own mind.

In the tradition of Theravada monks, we undertook several Buddhist precepts, including refraining from consuming intoxicants, and refraining from killing people for the duration the five days. We also observed “noble silence” which means we were not to talk or engage other people, even with mere eye contact. Read More

by David on November 5, 2009
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The Results Are In — Experiment No. 1, Day 30

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Buddha dog

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

by David on May 6, 2009
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David vs. Monkey Mind — Meditation Experiment: Day 15

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Monkey mind

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

by David on April 21, 2009
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Raptitude Experiment No. 1 — Sharpening the Mind

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Little Buddha

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

by David on April 7, 2009
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