Month: August 2021

Guided meditations through apps and beyond

I started practicing meditation again, regularly. Because practice scares me as a commitment (meaning, I treat it as something that I should do, and not necessarily something that I want or choose to do) — I start small, with 10 or 15 minute sessions. Mostly ten minute ones. And because I have access to Headspace, I go with their pro levels, of which there are eight ten-day courses.

From experience, I know a few things. First, that I need at least twenty minutes to get to the deeper levels of my practice. Not even that — these first 15-20 minutes are simply to calm the mind. It means that with shorter sessions, that are simpler for me to commit to, I don’t get to the place where my meditation matters. Like with running, my pace only settles in after the first seven or eight minutes. That means, running for just one kilometer is pointless. That’s why, as soon as I figured it out, I didn’t stop after getting through the hard part — I kept on running at a comfortable pace.

When I sit zazen, the first minutes are there to set the pace of the mind, to start grasping suchness, to calm down the monkey mind.

Next, I know that I can’t do guided meditations for a long time. They are good to start with, and to get into the habit. In addition to guided “courses”, I also use unguided sessions either on Headspace or on Oura. Eventually, I think I will get to longer sessions. Headspace has the don’t-break-the-chain motivation built in. However I scoff at the concept, because it’s not a “real” motivation after all, it works. You want to see 19 days turn into 20, and when you hit three digits, how do you stop? This is your pride and medals and sticker collection. But, say, I do 30 or 60 minute meditations daily, unguided ones. If I had to pay for a Headspace subscription, would I? No. Because unguided meditations are just a timer and a streak count, inside a specialized app. Hopefully, by the time someone builds a strong practice, they achieve levels of clarity where streaks don’t matter even as a fun toy.

Now, I’m not saying that Headspace, Waking Up, Calm, Oak and the like are useless. But they don’t get me far. They can get me to the starting line, but then — I don’t know. A timer. Better yet, a dojo, and a master to guide you further, where I wouldn’t be able to get by myself.

I’ve been thinking about meditation and its “goals” a lot lately, and even attempted to write about it. How and why to meditate? Clear purpose, clear intention, no additional dingling of baby rattles in the form of specialized apps. Especially none that focus on meditation as something like a collagen treatment for the skin, to improve whatever collagen is capable of improving.

Truth be told, I still have to empty my own cup.

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Reinventing traveling

A lot of things are getting “reconsidered” and “reimagined” during or after the pandemic. If limitations make artists more creative, then the constraints that we face also can have this transformative power in our lives. Maybe a reminder that we need less, or different, to be happy.

The first trip that involves a flight and going to another country since what feels like forever. I find myself re-learning the essentials. The airport felt very new. It is new, technically — and old, also technically. First time I was flying from Berlin Brandenburg Airport, thirty years in the making. It’s not as bad as people try to picture it, but nothing special in terms of architecture either. Probably more comfortable than both its predecessors. The airport procedures felt somewhat foreign, like maybe the first times you were flying, all by yourself, and you know the theory, but are going through the practice for the first time.

I’m now in Venice, the city that’s very dramatic all in itself, it’s as if there’s no border between the museums and the streets. I’m learning to take in a foreign city, and enjoy the things that are not available to me at home — water public transport, and the general closeness of water, one of them.

How to vacation? I’m used to overdoing it. Some people (and I was one of them) think that after a proper vacation you come home needing a rest, and using your everyday to unwind. That might be the case when we talk about a trip full of nature: hikes, yachts, mountains… And while I agree that one needs to come back un-tired from home, a city vacation should not be a perpetual hunt for activities. At least, for me. I want some of the habitual, pieces of home, with me. Like now, I’m typing this up sipping sencha that I brought with me. And I don’t want to always be on the run. For sure, I want to see some things that the new area has to offer. But I don’t want to be exhausted by the end of my trip.

Today, I was in Accademia Gallery — without trying to take pictures of art (they are pointless), and without trying to grasp everything. I skimmed through most of the exhibition, and really took in a few things: Titian’s “Pietà”, and works by Hieronymous Bosch, that were of course different from the rest of the collection.

What I want to remember for city travels in this and future trips is to focus on what’s essential for you, and not hunt everything else. Food, sights, experiences. Make it fewer and increase the intensity. After all, you’re not going to remember everything, but some things you’ll keep dear.

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Working with new teams

New teams (that I have worked with) go through a similar process every time. Confusion and uncertainty, that can lead to either apathy or aggression, as egos are hurt and people are not used to admitting their confusion, they want to blame others and find fault elsewhere. Then slowly, they find their groove, get more comfortable with the project and start working more confidently and in sync.

When I’m in the same boat with the team, when I’m new, it feels strange but positive — I work at detangling the current puzzle and finding the solution. When I’m already comfortable with the project, but the team is not, that’s when it gets strange. I don’t want to sound like “know-it-all”, because first one needs to build trust with the team, and only then, they will listen. Right now, I feel like whatever knowledge I can offer is getting pushed back as irrelevant, because again, people don’t like to admit their confusion. All I can do is be patient. Don’t push back with my ego, but instead, allow enough time to pass for the team to build confidence in themselves, so that they don’t have to rely on the confidence level of the outside members (non-engineers, and engineers from neighboring teams).

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A city needs its dreams

In an old post “My Blog, My Outboard Brain”, Cory Doctorow makes a point that rings very true to me: blogging is a way to systematize information flows, and reflect on what you consume (for lack of better word).

“Blogging gave my knowledge-grazing direction and reward.”

“Writing a blog entry about a useful and/or interesting subject forces me to extract the salient features of the link into a two- or three-sentence elevator pitch to my readers, whose decision to follow a link is predicated on my ability to convey its interestingness to them. This exercise fixes the subjects in my head the same way that taking notes at a lecture does, putting them in reliable and easily-accessible mental registers.”

Having shielded myself with a quote from 19 years ago, I feel no remorse about writing yet another post on my current read, Christopher Alexander’s “A Pattern Language.” (A 44-year old book, by the way).

(On that Cory Doctorow blog post, by the way — Matt Webb in his Interconnected writes about Apple’s photo scanning and our paranoia, also quoting that same post, and making a different, and a much more important point than I am. I’m no comparison to Webb’s brilliance. Just read it, it’s great.)

There was one thought in particular that was invading my brain in the past couple of days: I miss music festivals and concerts, big and small. I miss them as an outlet to my energy, to let myself go. And that’s when I got to pattern #58: Carnival.

“Just as an individual person dreams fantastic happenings to release the inner forces which cannot be encompassed by ordinary events, so too a city needs its dreams.

Under normal circumstances, in today’s world the entertainments which are available are either healthy and harmless—going to the movies, watching TV, cycling, playing tennis, taking helicopter rides, going for walks, watching football—or downright sick and socially destructive—shooting heroin, driving recklessly, group violence.

But man has a great need for mad, subconscious processes to come into play, without unleashing them to such an extent that they become socially destructive. There is, in short, a need for socially sanctioned activities which are the social, outward equivalents of dreaming.

In primitive societies this kind of process was provided by the rites, witch doctors, shamans. In Western civilization during the last three or four hundred years, the closest available source of this outward acknowledgment of underground life has been the circus, fairs, and carnivals. In the middle ages, the market place itself had a good deal of this kind of atmosphere. Today, on the whole, this kind of experience is gone.”

Excerpt from
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander

Right now, without big celebrations, festivals, music gatherings — there is very little opportunity to cut loose. I’m all too civil all the time. I think this makes me more irritable, more like a tight spiral that is waiting for an impulse from outside to spring. Various sports activities are fun, but they are not the same as dancing wildly and mindlessly to some of your favorite music, being a part of this big moving organism of the crowd. I miss this kind of rites, of shamanism. To unleash my energy out in a positive key. Cities need carnivals!

Posted on by T