Day 22 of ? of meditation & blogging!

12 minutes 52 seconds

Friends,

Another night last night of getting nowhere near enough sleep. Another day of waking up, fooling and fueling myself with vitamins and coffee to the point where I could get through my day. Another afternoon where I came home and passed out for enough of a nap to function (are we so sure about that?!) for a few more hours to see the project through.

I wake up for the 2nd time, the usual preparations are made, I cue up the timer and some music and begin.

I find my attention going to the music. I let it as I begin my breaths. Thoughts, from my waking until now having been seemingly silent, come as they will and I note them and let them go. In through the nose and out through the mouth. The slow swelling and compression of my belly and the rise and fall of my chest falling into their rhythm. After a few moments of this I feel myself relax into the process. I take hold of my focus and awareness and turn them inwards towards both my breath and that place of inner stillness and quiet. The thoughts still bump up against me from time to time, sometimes they simply are, at others I let myself be distracted into a place of frustration with them; but of course those are thoughts and I let them go. When I am pulled back into my mind or emotions or imaginings I acknowledge them as “thoughts” and let them go. Returning at times to my breath, at others to the music, then gently taking hold of my focus and turning it inward once more until I feel the familiar stillness and quiet again. I did not notice a sense of timelessness, but neither did time seem to crawl, it simply was. I was still slightly surprised when the gentle chime of the timer came. I shut opened my eyes enough to tap the screen and silence it before returning inward for a short time more.

One of the benefits of recording these descriptions is that it holds little lessons of its own. That I have called the inner silence and stillness, the sense of peace that I can find within my practice, that I can call it “familiar”, is something of a wonder to me!

In some ways I look forward to the end of this project of daily meditation and blogging about it. In some ways simply being able to meditate and perhaps jot a few cryptic only for me notes about the experience will be something of a pleasure and perhaps a new set of lessons in the art and practice. In my mindfulness practice I have already learned how to better aim my focus and awareness and let distracting thoughts fall to the wayside. Yet, one of those thoughts that feels uncomfortably accurate is that the process of journaling about it long-form may be generating more thoughts, or is somehow a held onto thought process that might be making the process more complicated or serving to block or alter it?

“In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation.^[1][2] “

Wikipedia contributors. (2024, May 26). Observer effect (physics). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:44, June 13, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Observer_effect_(physics)&oldid=1225739653

At the same time as I acknowledge this I have to say that the process of journaling about it in long form near the start of my process has provided a lot of lessons and realizations that feel like have propelled me forward on the path to regular ongoing daily mindfulness practice. At the same time I think that the long form writing of it seems like a best practice for beginning ones journey in mindfulness practice.

Thank you all for joining me on this journey. I hope your own journeys are progressing well.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey