Tag: writing

Coffee and Rekindling ep. 2

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Friends,

I am alternating sips of strong fresh coffee with a splash of cream with ice water. Having engaged in my morning mindfulness practice and jotted a few notes in my journal, I am reviewing some things I found interesting in my online wanderings in recent days…

How Too Much Information Can Make Us Stupid and Miserable, is a fantastic article from Social Scientist and writer Katie Jgln’s blog The Noösphere over on Substack. It’s discussing the harm to individuals and society that can come from the unrpecedented firehose of information we can experience in modern life.

Another thing that has caught my mind’s eye in the last few weeks has been this quote from Van Badham, an Australian writer, columnist, podcaster, and student of disinformation pipelines and counterdisinformation campaigning over on Threads…

“… Apparently, one of the main factors for the creation of information resilience in people is… a happy childhood. And I certainly had one of those. What disinformation campaigners target with their material is *unhealed traumas* in people. Distant parenting, neglect, abuse and PARTICULARLY parental abandonment are very powerful psychological triggers that disinformation campaigners prey on with their key mythos, narratives and imagery. The invitation is for (you, the viewer) to take on the role of rescuer of (a child, or children) by following an instruction for action. That’s why QAnon wants to convince you there are tortured babies under pizza restaurants, why homophobic/terf campaigners are targeting drag queens (!) as somehow imperilling to children, why every war propagandist from terrorists to authoritarian governments are going to pump out imagery of suffering children as a means of slyly provoking enough traumatic empathy to manipulate you into action. The good news is that if you are AWARE of your own trauma, and make a point of invoking that awareness when exposed to traumatic information, your inoculation kicks in and you can resist disinformation. …”

Quoted from a longer Thread by Van Badham on 6/22/24

Another posting that is in the mental mix as I think about things and future projects this morning is a delightful blog post “Sunlight Is The Best Disinfectant” Summer Solstice Ritual over on White Rose Witching’s blog.

There are a number of other influences floating around in the background as I consider a longer piece of writing related to the themes above. For now though I have to sign off and refill my cups and try to get a few things done around the house before getting ready for work.

What interesting or idea-sparking posts or articles or quotes have you come across this week?

Bliss and Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

Ancestral Prayers: Sylvia Rivera

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“I am tired of seeing my children — I call everybody including yous in this room, you are all my children. I am tired of seeing homeless transgender children, young, gay, youth children.”

Sylvia Rivera in a speech archived here…

A Prayer to St. Sylvia Rivera
(c) Geoffrey Stewart 2024

Across the Universe,
Across the years & miles,
Across the Veil,
To Sylvia Rivera do I call,
Our Lady of Civil & Uncivil Disobedience,
To Sylvia Rivera do I call,
Fierce protector of the Lost & Abandoned
To Sylvia Rivera do I call,
Revolutionary & Mother of us All,

Sylvia, the kids are scared.

A lot of the same old bastards are back Ms. Sylvia,
The Assimilationists & The A-holes,
The religious nuts, the rightwing nuts,
The greedy & the selfish,
The misinformed, & the just plain evil.
They are all back & going after everybody all at once,
They are trying to turn back the clock,
Turn back progress,
Turn things back to what they call the Good Old Days,
When people like us could be beaten, could be killed,
To ‘Straighten’ that moral arc of the Universe AWAY from Justice.

They want to turn things back to what they call the Good Old Days,
When people like us could be beaten, could be killed,
Could be treated like so much dirt beneath their boot heels.


They are saying the kids are indoctrinated,
They are saying the kids are confused,
They are saying the kids can’t possibly know who they are and what they want,
They are saying ‘protect the Women & children’,
All the while finding new ways to torment the kids,
Our kids, the kids we were,
To torment us all.

I’ll tell you Ms. Sylvia,
A lot of these kids are the kids we wish we could have been!
They are smart these kids, and courageous!
Committed to Justice, to Liberation, to The Revolution,
Most wonderful of all Ms. Sylvia,
So many of these kids are cherished and Loved!
Until those people came back they did not have to grow up in fear!

A lot of these kids are scared, Ms. Sylvia.
Hell, a lot of the adults are too,
Their parents and families are scared,
The adults who remember being them are scared,

Please, Sylvia,
Provide us what protection you can,
Grant us your guidance & counsel,
Help us to find true friends & chosen family,
Lend us your courage & perseverance in these fearful times,
Spare us some of your fire and fury that we might find our own,
And then let us do you proud!

15 Minutes 27 Seconds & So Much More

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Day 30 of 30 of meditation & blogging!

15 minutes 27 seconds

Friends,

I was awake shortly before my alarm this morning, and started some dishes soaking and got coffee brewed and puttered about the internet for nearly an hour. Despite a good nights sleep I was feeling a bit more fatigued rather than fabulous. Another element in the procrastination was an odd mix of not wanting to end this experiment of daily meditation and blogging about it, and already being ready to move on from it.

I will be continuing my mindfulness practice.

I am looking forward to other writing projects and blogging topics. I am also looking forward to being better able to take some of the morning hours I have carved out of my life and schedule for myself to take care of the seemingly endless list of chores and projects very much needed around the house. Writing, especially when we are trying to do it well, and introspection and discernment these things take time.

At the same time I have learned SO MUCH about myself in this journey. I have grown and stretched my mind and spirit in so many ways and found an inner stillness and silence, a peace and strength I had not known in myself or that I had forgotten. Even with the obstacles and limitations this long-form writing about my daily practice present, the exercise has been a transformative journey for me.

I would be lying to myself, and to you dear reader, if I did not acknowledge that a part of this mornings procrastination was influenced by my life-long frenemies of self-doubt and worry. “What if my practice falls away without the blogging component?” “What if this burst of writing and the creative spark was some flash in the pan?” “What if I fuck it up?”

Procrastination and distraction were the order of the day this morning. However those old frenemies of mine are thoughts. Whether I am feeling it, or not, I have my practice. So I refilled my coffee and my ice-water. I sat down and synced today’s music and my timer. I took a breath. I began again.

Closing my eyes i was able to focus on the music and fumbled towards my cycle of breaths. Thoughts came sweeping in and for a time I simply let them as I began to find my breath. Even as I found my breath and tried to hold it in my attention, even with the thoughts lapping at my awareness and sometimes washing over me in waves, I brushed up against the ghost of my inner quiet and calm. At times I could simply note that I was thinking and let the thoughts go, returning to the music and my breath and then simply my breaths and its path through my body. At others, I would invoke the by now familiar phrase “it is what it is”, repeated mentally over and over as I let the music fade into the background a bit and held my mantra and my breathing in my attention, letting all else fade away for a time… before more thoughts would come. the cycle of inner peace, distraction from thoughts, noting and letting go of thoughts, and sinking back into peace continued. Finally I was able to silence my thoughts and sink even deeper into my inner silence and stillness and moments later the timer chimed. I silenced it and tried to continue further…

Meditation is training our attention and awareness. Sometimes that training is like gentle stretches, sometimes it is like a good long walk in nature that leaves us relaxed and invigorated, and sometimes it is more like a wrestling match. It is what it is.

Thank you to all of you who have joined me in this journey. I will be posting a wrap up post about my meditation misadventure in a few days. I hope you will continue to check in on my journey and wish you every blessing and joy in your own.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

An Inner Dance Marathon

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Day 29 of ? of meditation & blogging!

15 minutes 03 seconds

Friends,

Today’s session has been a lesson in how far I have come in my mindfulness practice so far.

I awakened a few minutes before my alarm feeling very well rested. Thanks in part to my recently prescribed CPAP and in part due to having spent a mostly cloudy and slightly rainy afternoon yesterday trailing behind The Fabulous Jonathan in his remarkably fast mobility scooter as we checked out new developments at one of the local theme parks. I prepared the usual hot coffee w/ cream and some ice water. While the coffee brewed I bopped around my socials for a moment, but wasn’t feeling too engaged in them. I selected and synced up my music and my timer, started them and closed my eyes and began.

I closed my eyes and took a slow deep breath and found myself brushing gently against the place of peace within me. I focused upon the music and tried to find my breaths. A few thoughts came and were dismissed. I began to find the rhythm of my breaths and turned more of my focus from the music to my breath and my bodies dance with the air within it. Thoughts continued to come and sometimes sneak up on me stealthily until I had the sudden realization that I was lost in thought and not holding my focus. It is what it is. I let the thoughts go and returned to my breath. This dance of mind and focus and thoughts, of breath and air and body, continued. I felt a ghost of frustration, and amusement, at the this waltz between the ten thousand distractions in my mind and keeping my focus upon my breath as they danced on or near or through the inner calm and quiet within me. Those, of course, were also thoughts and observations so with another breath I dismissed them and continued this inner dance. Then the timer was chiming, and I eagerly silenced it and the music and rested a moment.

In the past, in past attempts at establishing a meditation practice and even at the start of this meditative journey I’ve been chronicling, I would have considered today’s mindfulness session a failure and a source of frustration at not dwelling in a place of timelessness and peace and quite from the time I closed my eyes until the timer chimed. Now? It is what it is. What it is is what today’s mindfulness meditation was. Sometimes we dwell in the hands of the Gods, and sometimes we are sitting there waiting for our brains to do the thing. All that really matters though is that in the moment, we strive to remain in the moment and to keep our focus upon whatever we have chosen to focus on.

It is outside of meditation sessions that we find the joys and the benefits of our training our minds and awareness.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax/Geoffrey

Stretching and In The home Stretch

On By PaxIn everyday2 Comments

Day 28 of ? of meditation & blogging!

15 minutes 31 seconds

Friends,

One of the challenges I have found in this meditation and blogging journey is in trying to not repeat the same descriptions and metaphors each time. A juggling of word orders here and noting where I’ve used that metaphor before and trying another, all in trying to not bore any readers while also conveying something of the experience. This is made more difficult by the fact that each day, each session, many of the same elements are in play each time. Yet each session and each day can bring it’s own experiences, lessons, and challenges.

Today, I closed my eyes and gently held the music in my attention and feeling within myself the stable surface of that new yet familiar place of inner calm and quiet as I tried to settle into my usual cycle of breathing. In through the nose, down my throat and deep into my lungs, my belly swelling as I filled my lungs, followed by the expansion of my chest and the raising of my shoulders till the last of my inhalation tickled at the back of my throat, then the equally slow exhaling through my mouth. While I slowly found my proper breaths the first thoughts came.

They were mostly dismissible with a slight acknowledgment a few requiring the invocation of my mental charm of “it is what it is” to help fill the spaces within my attention and focus until the words faded and my attention turned more fully towards the airs journey through me. Thoughts came and went but they were what they were and it was about my breath and to a lesser degree the music and the inner quiet and calm within me blossomed for a time.

Time… It’s hard to explain but time seemed to contract and stretch at different moments in todays mindfulness session. There were pockets of timelessness where it was as if I had sunk deeper inside myself into that place of peace. At other moments I would note that a particularly shiny thought or observation or emotion had crept in upon me before letting it drift away and I would feel like the stillness within was slipping away all too quickly…which of course was another thought…returning to breath and air and body, then time and worries would drift away once more. At a certain point I began to feel a sense of fatigue… I noted this especially as it was a relatively unfamiliar sensation on the journey of this practice. I had gotten used to the gentle chiming of the timer coming upon my like a surprise. Yet I had reset the timer for a longer time and it would come when it would come. These were also thoughts observations and judgments so with another breath I let them go and tried to remain with my breath and my inner silence.

The timer did finally chime, was silenced, and I stayed a few moments more with my breath and the stillness.

I cannot know if that sense of fatigue was genuine or some illusion of my mind trying to do its job and think and feel and process. I will be interested to see in the coming days if this continues or fades as some part of me gets used to the new time on my timer.

I can definitely say though that I have begun to learn to control my awareness and focus related to my thoughts and feelings in everyday situations, more so than I could 28 days ago at the beginning of this journey. I find myself able to deal with various people and situation in my life MUCH more effectively because I am not viewing situations through random feelings and emotions from the past triggered by current events. I am more able to set aside accustomed lenses or habits of thought through which I have looked at the world and deal with the world more effectively on its terms.

The other thing I can (now) observe is that the place within me of calm and quiet is rather delightful, even though in the moment I am striving to accept it as it is! The newness and delight of it is at times a distraction from the training and work of cultivating the focus and awareness that in turn helps cultivate it? In some ways it reminds me of the sense of stability and calm I feel when I engage in any of the various Grounding and Centering exercise I have tried within my journeys in Witchcraft and the Occult. Within most of those, though, you are connecting to something outside of yourself… you are becoming more fully a part of a greater whole. Mindfulness practice is helping me to find this place of stillness, silence, and stability within (dare I say inner peace?!) has been a delightful and new revelation to me of something… perhaps a capacity… within myself that I did not really appreciate or know that I possessed.

In a couple of days I will have reached my 30 days limit on daily blogging about my now established and ongoing mindfulness practice. I will post a wrap up piece for this journey. After that… well I may take a few days off. I have a number of other longer form pieces that I have been wanting to write but where my writing skills were so rusty that I could NOT get a start on them… now…well this journey has also served to get rid of a lot of the rust and dust clogging my mind and writing skills/process!

We have a few more days together on this particular journey though, and it is always best not to get too distracted from the current journey.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

On Not feeling it

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Day 25 of ? of meditation & blogging!

14 minutes 43 seconds

Friends,

Awakening this morning I realized something was not right. The vibes, the mood, something. I felt half-way between well rested, and feeling like Mr. Sandman (song not Comics) had beaten the hell out of me with the bag of sand. Something was off.

A little investigation shoed that something was my newly prescribed CPAP machine. Source of deep restful sleep and odd baby elephant vibes at bedtime and awakening. I had gotten up in the night for a couple minutes, and when I came back to bed I apparently very carefully put my mask back on, adjusted the straps for comfort, and passed all the way back out without remembering to turn it on again! Luckily the 4 hour minimum required by my insurance company to cover the expense of the machine (terms & conditions blah blah blah) had been reached before my subconscious tried to commit self-harm by sleep apnea.

*sigh*

I made the usual preparations of hot coffee and iced water cued some music and my timer and proceeded to have a few false starts. I would start my music and timer and close my eyes and begin to focus and breath and simply could not hold it together. The old frenemies of over thinking and self-doubt decide to come by and say hello. I tried surfing the web for a bit to purposely distract myself but I really wasn’t feeling that either. Finally I went through my music playlists to a meditation track that would seem to hold my focus. I set down having refilled the coffee and water. I began, again.

I combined my usual ingredients of practice together in their usual combinations yet the results seemed lumpy. I focused on the music and followed my breath. I found my place of inner silence and calm, i seemed to have more difficulty staying there theough? Thoughts would come and be noted and let go of. Time flowed as it would and when the chime of my timer came up I silenced it and moved forward for a while longer.

On the one hand I do feel a bit better afterwards and ready to deal with things. At the same time today felt routine and kind of blah.

My ADHD blessed brain has locked onto the metaphor of meditation as training. I wasn’t feeling it today, but I still did it. The usual routine, the usual time. Training and Practice. It can take years to get good at dancing, or martial arts, or music, or painting, or writing, or cooking, or jogging, or well, so many physical and creative things; all of which we speak of with the words Practice and Training. Here though, I am training my awareness and focus. In some pursuits if you are not feeling it you can let it go for a day. I don’t believe meditation is one of them. Meditation, most especially mindfulness meditation, is not just the training of ones focus and awareness, it is also the building of ones will. We do this so that we can use that training in whatever situations we may encounter in life. Without the interference or undue influence of ur memories or emotions or complexes or traumas or internal scripts. So that we can deal with things as they are and not as we perceive them to be or wish them to be.

Not only is it what it is, it is whether we are feeling it or not, so we may as well deal with or do it?

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

Diving in and Out

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Day 24 of ? of meditation & blogging!

14 minutes 50 seconds

Friends,

I woke after a full nights sleep. I started my coffee brewing and sat out side on the back porch for a cigarette.

The Sun was bright and the trees and their branches were still in the still and deceivingly cool air of morning against the clear blue sky. It was quiet out this early in the day as was I. I savored it all for a few moments as I finished my cigarette and went inside to pour and doctor my coffee as appropriate and ready a cup of ice water. I spent a few moments messing about online, still feeling a mental and emotional calm that was an advertisement for mornings or perhaps a good nights sleep. I synced up my timer and music and closed my eyes. I began my mindfulness practice.

I focused on the music almost immediately and felt myself once more, near that place inside me of stillness and silence and peace. As I tried to establish my breath thoughts came bubbling up and were noted and let go as I slowly found the rhythm of my breaths. Thoughts began to lap up against me, sometimes washing over me in great waves of distraction, at others just lapping at the edges of my mind. Noting them or gently shooing them away with my repeated charm of “It is what it is” I began to find my breath’s path through my body. The imagery of being like a boulder at the oceans shore came to mind, and after a few moments of appreciating the metaphor for mindfulness practice, I tried to let it go with gratitude and grace because “it is what it is”. Time also was what it was flowing neither quickly nor slowly as, again, the chiming tone of the timer came and was silenced. I stayed at the shores of my inner peace for a while longer and then began the rest of my day.

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

Distracted Yet Determined

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Day 19 of ? of meditation & blogging!

14 minutes 36 seconds

Friends,

Today’s session was a bit of an uphill battle emotionally and mentally.

Distracted, not only by the usual random thoughts but strong emotions and a litany of my current worries simmering inside me. The cause was relatively minor, unimportant really. I an unpleasant interaction the other day with someone rando online who was being rude derisive and hateful in a comments thread I was in. Their petty and mean spiritedness combined with my ADHD to leave me very off kilter emotionally and mentally until I fell to bed in the wee morning hours.

I woke up today and definitely felt my ADHD at work in the cascade of thoughts and emotions I was feeling. Despite trying to set that one negative interaction aside my mind kept coming back to it and adding to it a litany of my fears and memories of being bullied many times over many years and my genuine worries all in a cascading avalanche of thoughts; from which I wanted distract myself. I was feeling wildly out of sorts and unbalanced BUT…meditation is a practice the training of our focus and awareness. Gods know I needed to adjust my focus! To not spiral internally. I set aside the internet and all its shiny distractions. I cued up today’s chosen music and my phone alarm and began.

Thoughts assailed me as I established my breath and tried to focus on the music… or my breathing… or… well *something* other than the circling thoughts and spiraling emotions. I noted and pushed the thoughts away as best I could and focused on the music, but I had trouble settling my breath into a relaxed even rhythm. I found myself thinking that the session wasn’t feeling like anything except someone trying to sweep away a hoard of oncoming ants with an old broom. Of course, that’s a thought, so I noted it and tried to push it away along with the rest of my mental and emotional avalanche.

I took a deep breath and mentally began repeating my chosen charm of “it is what it is” filling my mind with the phrase to keep the thoughts and feelings at a distance as I began to calm and my mind to quiet… somewhat. I was able to focus on the music and my breath and the air’s journey through my body. I began to settle down inside. In through the nose out through the mouth, my “mantra” fading along with the music as I began to turn more deeply inward, into a place of calm and much needed peace. Thoughts still came but … more leisurely and somehow they were less intense or my emotional response to them was less intensely felt. I could notice them as thoughts and let them go, sometimes summoning back my friend and familiar phrase “it is what it is” in repetition until it faded once more and I was with my breath once more.

After a while the timer chirped and I stopped it and returned to the the place of hard won quiet and inner stillness. A while after that I opened my eyes.

We are not always in “the right frame of mind” to engage in a mindfulness practice.

These are often, unless we are in active danger or incapacitated, the times we need to meditate the most though? What sort of use would all this practice and training be if we were not able to apply the techniques and awareness and focus we learn in our everyday life moments as well as times of personal crisis and turmoil as well as when we sit (or move) in practice? So we return to practice, again, and again, and again. Rain or shine. Through annoyance or turmoil or tribulation.

I will return sometime tomorrow, and wish you all well!

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

It Is What It Is & Understanding Ourselves

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Day 18 of ? of meditation & blogging!

12 minutes 55 seconds

Friends,

Today’s session was much less frustrating than yesterday. I tried adding a new wrinkle and was not trying as hard for peace and timelessness and was more simply accepting the journey of today’s practice, so of course timelessness and peace showed up for a bit!

I woke up having had a very good nights sleep, made my way to the kitchen and got my preferred beverages sorted out, opened YouTube for my music selection, and then I faffed about the internet for a while. The ADHD is strong in this one, sometimes, and today was no exception. Finally I settled into place cued up my background music and my phone timer and began without any preliminary breathing this time.

The rhythm of my breathing came to me like the embrace of a dear friend, the relaxed and even breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, taking note of the air’s path though my body and the sensations of it. Thoughts were bubbling up in my mind seemingly before I even had a chance to really focus on the background music. I gently pushed on. Acknowledging the effervescent simmer of thoughts as I turned my focus and attention to the music and maintained the rhythm of my breath. This helped somewhat but while my thoughts calmed down a little they were still bubbling up. I chuckled to myself briefly and continued. Sometimes meditation is like that and we just have to keep showing up. The thoughts quieted a little bit more, and I felt a hint of timelessness and inner peace and quiet. In a moment of amusement I both the concept of mantras (here and here), and the personal mantra of a late dear friend “it is what it is”; in the aftermath of the end of a bad marriage my friend had found herself driving to the shore and simply watching the ocean and thinking of that phrase over and over. As thoughts came I noted them as thoughts and mentally repeated “it is what it is” and returned awareness to the music and my breath.

It was a bit like some sort of mental or emotional balancing act but I found myself holding in my attention the background music, my breathing, and the mentally repeated phrase “it is what it is”. Sometimes all at once, then allowing my awareness of the phrase and/or the music to fade as I turned further inward. If thoughts did start streaming back in I would note them as thoughts and mentally repeat the phrase again, sometimes focusing on the music as well and sometimes just repeating the phrase a few times.

Finally, for an unknown stretch of time, there was just my breath and awareness of it. The timer chirped, and I shut it off and continued for a short time more.

So… was that actually a mindfulness meditation? I mean, I was doing a lot of mental gymnastics in todays session, right?! Part of ADHD that makes it a challenge is its unpredictability. At times I am focused on something like a weaponized laser over which I have little to no control of the aiming mechanism. At other times I am, to judge by the reactions of my neurotypical friends and family, STARTLINGLY aware of everything going on in the environment around me. There are also times where my brain seems to be processing multiple streams of thought at the same time. Understanding these aspects of my diagnosis is an important step in how I engage in and with any meditation practice, but especially mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a tricky practice. We are trying to ’empty our minds of thoughts’ and simply focus on something. Even a neurotypical brain is an organic thinking, observing, and feeling machine. Different techniques are going to work better for different folks and at the same time different types of meditation and mindfulness meditation are going to work or not work for folks depending on how their thought and emotional processes work!

One could journal, or have a good sit down with a trusted friend asking them questions about what they have observed about how we think and patterns they may have noticed, or even engage in a small dose of counseling or therapy if available. A small dose of self-awareness and understanding ourselves while not falling into the traps of self-judgement and any negative inner scripts we have developed about ourselves over the years can go a long way towards our happiness and mental and emotional health, calm, and stability.

I hope this helps you in your own journey and would love to hear your thoughts!

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

Lusting for Results & Mindfulness

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Day 17 of ? of meditation & blogging!

10 minutes 4 seconds

Friends,

When we open our inner eyes and turn them inward, focus upon our breath and trace the river of those breaths through our body, this journey can take us to different destinations every day.

Mindfulness meditation can be like gently drifting on a warm sunlit raft though the warm waters of timelessness and tranquility. At times we are sitting on that raft silently breathing feeling time crawl over and around us waiting, waiting for something to happen, for anything to happen. Sometimes we are standing upon the raft in rough waters using the oar clutched in our desperate hands playing whack-a-shark with our thoughts. Today’s session was a bit of options 2 & 3 from our menu.

I awoke before my alarm. Feeling a blend of well rested and grudgingly awake I padded to the kitchen and prepared my coffee and ice-water. I spent a few moments fussing around my socials and with the volume on my speakers, set my meditation timer. I took a few slow even focused breaths a stretching of my metaphorical muscles of my attention and awareness before todays mental training. Then I started the music and the timer. Focusing first upon the music and then turning further inward towards my breath I felt myself sinking into that timeless peaceful territory within, and yet, time slithering against me rather than slipping by unnoticed. Thoughts came, were acknowledged and gently sent packing, and yet, the thoughts came and kept coming again and again. Finally, mercifully, the timer chimed and I stopped it and the music eagerly.

I felt peaceful and calm, also rather frustrated and amused as well. After all, having defined mindfulness meditation as the regular training of our attention and awareness, the seeking of mental and emotional calm and clarity and stability while also maintaining our awareness of our thoughts and feelings and our understanding of where they come from in the present moment, I do not expect it to always be easy. It would be nice though!

I also felt intrigued because at some point in the midst of todays mental mindfulness workout the thought came to me that I was “Lusting for Results”. “Noted,” I responded internally at the time,”Now begone thought!”

The phrase ‘Lusting for Results’ and its variations entered Western Esotericism largely thanks to the writings of Occulture’s favorite Evil Uncle Al…

This Bitch!

Crowley was of course inspired in part by his time studying Buddhism and Hinduism in India. The concept of Lusting for Results can be seen as sort of a cousin to discussions in Buddhism around desire and it’s cessation and paradoxes. Within Occulture one of the better definitions comes from Donald Michael Kraig‘s work Modern Magick, as quoted in Llewellyn’s online Encyclopedia,

“Being focused on results rather than on the ritual to obtain the results. It uncenters you, diminishing your focus and chances for success.”

Donald Michael Kraig defining Lust for Results

Which is of course today’s root challenge. I am wanting that timeless place of peace, forgetting that it is a benefit of the mindfulness meditation but not necessarily the goal. Which is why, I remind myself, meditation is a practice and not some sort of achievement to unlock. I am going to go take a shower and get ready for work and return to the training and it’s rigors and struggles and diversions tomorrow!

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey

PS- I hope your own journey is going well and as always let me know how you are doing down in the comments!