Tag: self-care

Meditative Epiphanies

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Day 26 of ? of meditation & blogging!

14 minutes 39 seconds

Friends,

I did my usual preparations of coffee and ice water. I bopped into a couple of ongoing online conversations catching up here and replying there. ! watched a brief video. I had had a good nights sleep and felt fairly rested and relaxed, if feeling more of the follies of my 52 years rather than the fabulosity. Then I sat down and synced my timer and the music, this track having a strong drum beat, and I began.

The music was rather easy to focus upon, and a touch to loud, I adjusted the volume slightly as I found the rhythm of my breaths and began to trace their routes. I found myself flowing into that place of quiet and calm within me even as a few stray thoughts presented themselves. I acknowledged them and let them go. A few times I mentally repeated my chosen charm or mantra of “It Is What It Is” to the beat of the drum to chase some stray thoughts away. There was the rhythm of my breath, it’s route through my body, and the music. Thoguhts came and went. At some point the thoughts and many strongly visual images began to start flickering past my minds eye like a rapid fire slide show. For a moment I simply acknowledged them as thoughts and tried to let them go, yet they kept flashing past.

I thought once more of my mantra “It is what it is” and in that moment I had an epiphany. Why pour energy or effort into showing away this manifestation of my thoughts? The flickering slide show could simply flicker away, the thoughts were what they were and some moments are what they are. Instead of grasping white knuckled onto my attention and awareness, I continued to gently hold onto them; neither letting the humming bird of my mind start racing through them nor allowing memories or emotions to rise or fall in response to them. They were what they were, it is what it is, and what it was for an unknown span of time was my breath and its’ path and the music and deep and abiding sense of inner calm and quiet.

The timer chimed and I silenced it and it continued to be what it was for a few moments more…

It is a strange and delightful aspect of a healthy daily meditative mindfulness practice that the lessons and epiphanies and sometimes profound spiritual moments we can experience can happen. Yet even in their happening, the ways they can change our spiritual journey or lead us to places of growth and blossoming, they are still what they are, the merest side effect of the work that is daily mindfulness practice.

What epiphanies or lessons have you found in your own spiritual journeys? Have they touched you or transformed you? Have they been side trips or distractions on your journey? I look forward to your answers!

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

Two to Three & ADHD

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Day 23of ? of meditation & blogging!

14 minutes 39 seconds

Friends,

It is what it is, and what it is today is the rather amazing difference something vaguely resembling a proper nights sleep can do for one! Between last nights desperately needed 2+ hour nap before yesterdays session, and last nights 5+ hours of deeper and prolonged sleep, I woke up well before my 8am alarm feeling relatively well rested. I got up and got coffee and ice-water ready and then spent some time checking socials and selecting a music track and just sort of enjoying a little early morning calm before settling in for todays session. I readied my music track and phone time, sat down with my now refilled coffee and a sugar-free iced soda. With practiced ease started my music and timer, closed my eyes, and began.

I focused first upon the music track as I established my breathing routine. Thoughts came but somehow less insistently and less frequently. “Should I call the post 23 and Me?” *leg itches* “I should really rearrange this room to make it more of a formal writing and practice space” *imagines new layout of room* “What if instead of letting mean-spirited people online get to me I just started telling them to F*** off?”

Noting these things as thoughts I let them go and returned to the music and my breath. I felt myself settling and relaxing both physically and mentally/emotionally. I turned my primary focus inward letting the music receded from my active attention. Thoughts continued to come and after repeating the cycle of noting thoughts and letting them go and returning inward to my breath and the borderlands of stillness and silence, on some instinct I returned to the mentally repeated mantra of “It is what it is” after noticing I was thinking. I would hold the music and breath and this repeated phrase in my awareness for a time, before letting the words drift off and settling into the music and my breath. Letting the music recede as I narrowed my focus and attention onto my breathing alone and dwelt in an inner calm and quiet for a while.

My old frenemy self-doubt quietly crept up upon me… “If I am holding all these things in my awareness and focus am I really being mindful or am I just deluding myself?” Common sense and self-knowledge answered, “You have ADHD. Your brain is literally build and works differently from neuro-typical people. Instead of trying to fight that fact work with and within it as you are training your awareness and focus.” Then, because of course, those are also thoughts however distressing or comforting, I acknowledged them and told them to shove off by once again mentally repeating my mantra until if felt right to let it too go. I held the music and my breaths in my focus for while until the music was no longer serving me and I let it recede into the general environment, and returned once more to my breath, to a place of peace.

While I didn’t feel the blissful floating sense of timeless at the same time I didn’t really feel much about time one way of the other? It did not feel like a long time, nor did it seem to pass all too quickly. Time was. Yet, again that slight sense of surprise at how seemingly soon my timer began it’s chiming. I stopped the timer and dwelt in the place of my breathing and peace for a while longer.

Then I began writing today’s entry in our little inner travelogue. Wherever you are in your spiritual or life’s journey I hope you are well.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

The Observer Effect & Mindfulness Practice

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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

Sometimes It’s a little of everything

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Day 20 of ? of meditation & blogging!

11 minutes 12 seconds

Friends,

Todays session came at the end of a full days work and (unusually) vigorous physical activity.

I was called the other day and asked to do a morning shift, 5am to 1pm in this case. So I tried and failed to get to bed early last night, woke with the alarm around 3am and got myself ready and headed into work. I did, briefly debate myself as to whether I should meditate in the morning and then blog after work, but I thought I might not remember key points and had little to no time to both meditate AND take notes before leaving the house. I worked a full 8 hours, and did a number of projects moving large, or unwieldly, or heavy items from one spot to another. Some of the items were combinations of the three or all three. I had to take a number of rests. It has been far far to long since I have been accustomed to long stretches of activity. (note to self: let’s work on that shall we?)

A few times today I was able to notice thoughts and feelings that were not serving me in the moment and acknowledge them and the shoo them away to get on with whatever business was at hand. I was also the most comfortable in my own skin I have been in ages, emotionally and mentally speaking. I felt a lot more like the me I remember being and have been wishing I could find again. After work I ran some errands and picked up some prescriptions and a few necessities. Finally mercifully I headed home. I completed a few writing exercises, made The Fabulous Jonathan and myself some toasted open faced Cheddar and Simple Chicken Salad sandwiches, and then finally fetched myself some ice water and cued up the music and my phone timer and began.

The music, with a strong simple drum beat this time, was easy to focus on; as were my breaths. Thoughts came, as they do, and were easy to note and allow to float off. A measure of stillness and peace was found within. Yet the aches and pains of the body after a long day and some rare vigorous activity were much harder to ignore that the general stiffness of a body still waking up. A few times I tried to breath out some of the tensions of my body, with some success. Thoughts continued to bump into my consciousness or snuck up upon me until I realized they were happening again and returned to the music and my breath. At one point I dared to kick off my shoes from my aching feet with my eyes closed and some measure of attention upon my breath. I found at times my focus would switch, seeming on it’s own, between the music and my breath. Time seemed to crawl, and while I was at times more aware of aches and pains and feeling bones deep tired, there were also times of the inner stillness and quiet. The timer chimed and I stilled it and continued for a little bit longer.

Now, I did feel some measure of the inner silence and stillness. It was fairly easy to focus on one element of the process, say the music, or my breath, or recognizing thoughts and letting go of them; the difficulty lay in holding my focus for very long and in letting things fade into the background from where I was trying to focus. I think I was just a little too tired today.

Lesson learned, I hope. Sometimes you have to pace yourself and sometimes you have to rest. Meditation and Mindfulness are Practices, and there is a reason so many traditions speak of Spiritual Practice as “work”!

Have you every had a similar time, where you engaged in a regular spiritual practice and it wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad and it… just sort of was? I look forward to seeing you in the comments.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

Delaying tactics and being kind to oneself

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Day 14 of ? of meditation & blogging!
*end of week 2*

10 minutes 6 seconds

Friends,

So I slept very very deeply, until around 5 something am when I woke up and then puttered around online for a couple of hours before laying back to bed for another 3 hours or so. After waking up I puttered around social media some more and then set up for meditation.

Today marks the second full week of daily meditation & blogging. Among the lessons learned one is that it is very difficult to blog daily about a spiritual practice. The descriptions and analogies, naturally enough, tend to blend together and repeat themselves which is fine in a personal journal but feels somehow boring when you know there are readers? On the other hand I’ve had a number of likes, some of them repeated by the same readers on multiple posts in this series, and I’ve even had a few subscribers sign up during my current meditation and blogging adventure. I will try to vary things up a bit going forward both for my own ADHD blessed brain which craves a certain novelty in a regular practice, and for my readers.

I also did not feel the same eagerness in either the urge to meditate or to write. Even as I poked around social media and with some writing related things I found myself recognizing I was delaying today’s meditation for some reason. Had my ADHD kicked in on some level and I was no longer getting the same spark of dopamine from it that my brain requires for motivation in all things? Had the CPAP and the deep and nourishing sleep it is providing me changed me somehow? Was I just not feeling it today and would be fine tomorrow? Some over thinking ensued.

I was a bit distracted because I had a lunch date with one of my BFF’s for our regular in person socialization and nosh session for sometime after noon and after my puttering around it was around 11. I was tempted to wait until after lunch but the odds of my doing anything once I was bloated on Thai food were small.

I was procrastinating, for whatever reason. I set up my timer and my music, began them, closed my eyes and began my breaths; focusing on the breath and following it’s path, letting the background music fall further into the background as I turned my attention inward. Breaths and thoughts, the later gently noted and released. After an unknown time the thoughts became less frequent and my breathing and the flow of the air through my body came to the foreground. A few times my breaths took on a timeless quality and I felt a deep peace and calm and at the same time as if I was on the boundary or precipice of an even deeper or more profound experience… each time… like the tide lapping up against the shore and then retreated, this sense of being on the edge of…something danced away… this then resolved into an inner calm and my breaths being everything until the the timer’s soft chimes began.

I shut the music and timers down quickly and went back to puttering, then started a few attempts at today’s blogging and some notes, before my BFF called and I got ready and we went to this weeks lunch. After a brief rest to digest and catch up on a couple of vlogs I follow, I sat down to wrestle the words and had written earlier today and my notes into something. I also took some time to review the last 2 weeks of posts in this little project of mine. It feels as if some of the lessons of perseverance and the ways in which I think and react to both the thoughts and the moments of peace that come in meditation, and the ways I can use the same technique of acknowledgement and letting go in difficult situations are going to serve me well going forward.

Another thing I am learning to appreciate is that in a LOT of my past efforts at returning to writing and blogging and spiritual and magickal practice and my relationships with The Holy Powers, I have not always been kind to myself. I have often times run away from my fears and self doubts I have recognized this in the past as being a weakness or a failing, rather than a very human and common foible or folly of existence and a part of human nature that I can work on and with to then move in the direction I want or need to.

I will be working on that.

What sort of realizations about yourself or your life and behaviors have you had through spiritual practices? How did you deal with them? What did you do about them? I look forward to hearing from you in the comments.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

A brief Delightful Sit Down

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Day 8 of ? of meditation & blogging!

Friends,

7 minutes 57 Seconds

I slept late today, having been told to not come into work today because of the exceptionally low volume of check ins at the hotel. Something that has been happening FAR to often for my liking the last few weeks. Luckily I have a small financial cushion so I can afford to take this extra time off as a temporary blessing. It is still vexing though.

I readied my coffee and some water and an iced beverage, surfed the web a bit, and then when I was ready I cued up some music and closed my eyes and began. The rhythm of my breathing came easily today, in through the nose, out through the mouth, tracing the path of the air through my body, the swelling and shrinking of my belly, the rise and fall of my chest and shoulders, the gentle repositioning of my body as needed. Even the reaching for and taking a sip of whichever beverage with my eyes still closed and keeping my eyes closed and one minds eye on my breathing flowed naturally. Thoughts and imaginings came and were acknowledged and allowed to drift away. I was able to sink into my body and breathing. All of these seemed to come with relative ease today.

As always seems to happen when I am engaging in mindfulness meditation time seemed to lose it’s meaning in the tracing of breath and the sinking into a place of peace. There were a couple of times where I felt the almost toaster-like urge to pup up and get back into my everyday but I resisted that urge to continue for a little longer in my inner dance of mind and breath and self and selflessness. So when I DID open my eyes to rejoin the world I was a bit surprised at that “7:57” on the timer.

Surprised and briefly disappointed. Common sense swiftly reasserted itself and instinctively I took that reaction, acknowledged it, and released it. I am not in some sort of endurance race. I am seeking and seeking to protect my peace in an all too troubled world. It is, what it is and sometimes when you are done, you’re done. For today, at least.

Or, perhaps not. After all I can return to a mindfulness meditation, or another form, later today as needed. For now though I will wish you well and as always invite your questions and comments in the comments section down below.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax/Geoffrey

Week One & Just Begun

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Day 7 of ? of meditation & blogging!

Friends,

10 minutes 22 seconds.

Today was my first real challenge to the morning routine of our current project. I had fasting blood work first thing in the morning in advance of medical appointments next week. I got up, showered, sipped a little water and took my morning medications and headed directly out the door. Luckily, the lab has a location fairly close to me so it was a short drive to have them draw my blood, then it was off to a corner store for some MUCH needed caffeine and breakfast. Back to the house and after a few minutes of setting up water and iced coffee and music, I settled into meditation.

This morning I had relatively little trouble focusing on my breathing and tracing the path my breath took through my body. Inspiration in through the nose and down my throat into my lungs, savoring the sensation of the air at the back of my throat as if I were drinking in the sustaining breath. Down deep into my lungs. First expanding my belly, then the rising of my chest and shoulders as I filled my lungs until I could feel the fullness of them teasing at the base of my throat. Then, after a first few gusty breaths, slowly out through my mouth lowering my shoulders and then chest, then contracting my belly until it was time to breathe in once more.

I kept wanting to breath entirely with my belly first and foremost, the upper parts of the lungs and chest were just sort of along for the ride at times. I need to do some more breathwork and perhaps do some practice focused breathing sessions to get more comfortable with using my entire lungs and all the parts of my body? Where there was tension in my body it was not difficult to reposition myself, to gently move or take a moment to breath into my tension and within the space of a few breaths relax it. It was fairly easy to note the random thoughts popping up with the thought of the word “thinking” and letting them drift off.

Today’s biggest challenge was that as soon as my breath had found its rhythm and I had shooed away my thoughts, as soon as I started to be within a place of peace, I found myself wanting to pop back up out of it and back on out into the everyday like a piece of bread popping up out of the toaster?! I was able to acknowledge and release that urge a few times but I did notice that when I ended today’s session the transition back into the everyday was a quick one. It is entirely possible that my sometimes mixed blessing of ADHD makes my brain crave a certain base level of chaos and stimulation at all times, or perhaps find discomfort in a place of internal peace? On the other hand it could be my eagerness to be writing, having finally begun to find my flow and rhythm in the writing process after so long struggling to find it again. Whatever it is I know I want to work through it. Perhaps some book journaling around it and some additional meditation sessions will help me smooth out this newfound wrinkle in my daily practice?

One wants to be careful to avoid too much meditation as meditation sickness is a thing. There are two main types referenced in the literature of both Psychology and Buddhism, primarily (from what I have found so far) revolving around mindfulness meditation. The first revolves around an excessive difficulty in quieting the mind and settling into a meditation practice. The second is associated with excessive meditation, which can result in mental and emotional breakdowns and psychosis. Psychologists are just becoming acquainted with this phenomenon, where as there are apparently Buddhist texts dating back hundreds of years or more that note the phenomenon, and the term Meditation Sickness is itself a direct translation…. I think from Tibetan but I could be misremembering the reference. The good news is that the second sort of sickness seems to be associated mainly with hours and hours of meditation, and that the consensus of Psychologists is currently that 30 minutes or so a day is a healthy level.

Any further experimentation with meditation and journaling for today will have to wait until later, as it is time for me to start getting ready to meet up with some friends for a late lunch and socializing. It’s funny, I started this meditative misadventure with a spur of the moment desire to try doing something to rekindle my creative self. It has certainly succeeded in that. It has also reawakened several other parts of my head and heart, genuine desire for more physical and social activity for example; or perhaps spurred action on the desire that has been there for a while yet seemed somehow out of reach before?

Whichever it is, I need to sign off. Before I go I’d like to encourage you to share your questions and observations and experiences with writing or meditation or any other observations you may have in the comments below. Thank you for traveling along with me on this journey!

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey