meditation

Maintenance Mode Meditation

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Life’s been busy as of late, ranging from dental work to work-work, to people needing rides, along with insufferable temperatures and Full Metal Assault Pollen. It’s been quite a few weeks of eventfulness.

So sometimes, I find I don’t take the time to meditate as much as I’d like. I have a good routine, but when life was anything but routine, I tried to set up a maintenance mode. What’s the “basic” meditation routine I can keep to stay in the groove.

So I found the very basics I could do in the case of utter disruption, and did them. No matter what else, from airline flights to having to turn my salads into smoothies, I did them. The key thing was to do something, no matter my other limits, if only for a few minutes, every day.

At first I did this out of a kind of diffuse guilt mixed with the idea that I should at least have some kind of continuity. Eventually I realized this made a lot of sense – and actually helped my meditation.

Committing to “at least maintenance” takes pressure off of me. And by pressure off of me, I mean I stop pressuring myself. Not only am I pushing myself less, I’m realizing how much I pushed myself to meditate. I “get into it” more.

Doing “maintenance meditation” keeps up the sense of practice and awareness of what I’m doing. I might not be doing as much as I’d like but I’m keeping the right mindset and any learning or improved techniques stick with me. I also think without the self-pressure, the experiences “settle in” more.

I also found I tried to meditate “better” with these limits, trying to do it right, and asking what mattered. Sure, there was a little pressure on myself, but in times I “got” what mattered in my meditation.

Finally, and this surprised me, the above meant that my meditations were, I guess you could say, more fulfilling. Because the pressure is off, because I have that consistent awareness, it seems they go better when do them in full or in part. It shocked me, but because I wasn’t thinking about meditation, I was doing the best I could, a whole catalog of pathological behaviors became reduced.

So now, I found meditating less I means I meditated better. Go figure.

I’m enjoying being back in my routine more or less. Because it’s something I’m more intimate with, more happy with, and understand on a deeper level. I suppose routine is good, but dealing with life is sometimes the best meditation.

–Xenofact

The Messiah Is The Method

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I suppose I should put this subtly, but I won’t. How many people can claim to follow some religious figure and get it so terribly wrong. OK, I’m talking Christianity in America, but you get the idea. How do you point at someone as your role model, your savior, and then be so completely different from them.

And yes, there’s the usual stuff about scams, grifters, bullshit, opportunists, and assorted motivations people have. There’s the desire to use religion to justify your biases, etc. There’s plenty of utterly evil motivations to say one thing and do so completely the opposite.

But a-holes gonna a-hole.

However I think for sincere seekers these attempts to emulate a teacher miss something – they miss that sometimes you can think too much about the person you’re emulating. The mind you use to contemplate your teacher isn’t the teacher’s mind. In many cases, it’s better to just give it a shot at being like them and seeing how it works out.

If you’ve ever done breath meditation, there’s a strange thing about it – thinking about it really doesn’t help you get better. Instead you have to do it, moment by moment, bit by bit. Somehow the doing of the action – as imperfect as it may seem – helps you get into meditative breath than thinking about it. The you that meditates and the you thinking about it are not the same- and the you thinking about it is probably kinda distractible.

In emulating teachers, it’s all well and good to contemplate and analyze, but you have to get off your butt and actually be like them as best you can. You may not “get it.” You may not get it right. You should think and analyze, yes, but the key thing is to start being a better person and see how it goes. It’s no different than a meditation in this regard.

In America I think there’s this endless amount of books, analysis, discussion, and so on that misses that if you’ve got some great teacher (OK, look I AM talking Jesus mostly) then go be like him as best you can. If you’re not sure read about him, read your Bible (or whatever), read some unincluded scripture, but give it a shot.

You’ll learn as you go.

If you’re all stuck in your head then you’ll argue endlessly – or worse, find ways to convince yourself you’re already fine. If you spend all your time thinking about what to do right, then there’s a chance you’ll delude yourself into thinking you’re right. Sometimes you take your best shot, and sometimes it’s pretty uncomfortable to realize how unlike your role model you were.

The person that’s our great example (yeah, look, again I am talking Jesus) is the one you’re following. That is personal, that following and emulating is a meditation. Just go do it.

–Xenofact

Cybernetics and Meditation

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We’ve heard the term Cybernetics many times, enough it’s hard to remember it’s use in technology isn’t the only meaning – or the original one. It’s the discipline of cybernetics, how feedback works. There’s quite a history there, and one worth studying if you want to get into it and possibly blow several hundred dollars on obscure books.

I took a casual interest in the basic ideas decades ago, but recently was reminded of it via the book The Unaccountability Machine. This book uses some theories and ideas from “Cyberneticist” Stafford Beers to explain why organizations seem to “go mad,” but also includes many asides on some wild and weird days when Cybernetics came to be.

One of the concepts the author explores – and the book, though amiable, can be a little heavy – is that complicated systems may not be worth explaining. It may take too much work to explain, may require breaking the system, and might just be beyond your capacities. Instead you can check the input, check the output, and otherwise not screw around.

I found this concept useful not just in my career, where I manage projects and try not to lose my mind, but in meditation. In some forms or phases of meditation, why is just disruptive.

In my own use of Golden Flower style breath meditation the goal is to tune your breath finely, to make it as slow as even as possible, that being your only focus. It’s too easy to analyze why you’re not doing it right, or what it should be, or anything else. This is especially bad if you have some experience with meditation – I’m sure you’ve been there wanting to get “back” to a meditative state.

I’ve been there to.

But I found lately that when I fret over meditative states that the idea of “do it and see what happens” from cybernetics helps me not fret. I tune and follow my breathing and what ever arises arises. It’s not supposed to be anything as the point is “doing and seeing” and trying to break it down or atomize it is not only difficult or impossible, there’s no point to it.

You’re just breathing and experiencing, and this feedback gets you to where you should go eventually. There’s no need to really try to take the system apart, and in fact you both can’t as the current “you” is the system, you’ll just get lost, confused, or worse anyway. So just do it and let input and output do its thing.

It’s a good reminder that, when you’re on a mystical path, to always be open to learning – and to not assume lessons are confined to a single sphere of knowledge. Not only do I have a new tool in my arsenal as a project manager, I also have a better way to understand meditation – and my own bad habits of “wanting to know how it works.”

–Xenofact