Being Aware of Being Swept Away

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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It is not just easy, but normal and natural to get caught up in our thoughts and emotions. We donā€™t even notice that weā€™re swept up in them until time has passed and weā€™re in the same physical position for x amount of time.

I think this is why doom scrolling became engrained in the culture and human nature so fast. Scrolling through social media is the external manifestation of our internal scrolling through thoughts, emotions, memories, and projections.

Awareness kicks in eventually for most people. Often times after an amount of time passes that weā€™re ashamed to admit to ourselves or to anyone else.

ā€œI was spacing out for how long?!ā€ ā€œI was scrolling through Instagram for how long?!ā€ Two sides of the same coin.

Awareness is the way out. But like everything else, it must be cultivated. Cultivated through repetition. Practice makes progress. There is no progress without repeated action consistently, persistently. Easier said than done, just like everything else in life.

Meditation has helped me to cultivate my self awareness. Journaling has also helped me to cultivate awareness, as long as I occasionally review past journal entries so I may become aware of potential patterns of detrimental thought, emotion, and/or action.

Any journaling is better than no journaling. We have too many thoughts in our head to not take some time, some of the time, to just vomit them onto paper with a pen or pencil.

Any meditation practice is better than no meditation practice. We are too scattered brained to not take some time, some of the time to find stillness, focus on our breath, and attempt to bring inner state into alignment with the present moment.

Both journaling and meditation are put to better use for us when they are done purposefully. Mindless writing with no review can be called journaling. Sitting with our eyes closed, with new age music playing in the background, while we think aimlessly could be called meditation.

To cultivate our awareness, so we can break the cycles of getting swept away by detrimental thoughts and emotions; journaling with review of past journal entries, like extended breath focused meditation sessions with a mantra; are more useful tools to bring about the results we are looking for when engaging in self improvement practices.

Neither of which are one and done magic pills. No such thing. I still find myself getting swept up in thoughts and social media scrolling. Just five minutes before I started writing this essay I found myself standing next to my workstation, scrolling on my phone, unable to remember why I even picked my device up.

I do know I caught myself quicker than I used to. I know I get sucked into salacious social media content less often.

I know I still space out and get caught in streams of past memories and future projections. I also know I do so less often and for smaller periods of time than I used to. Even compared to this time last year or this time last month.

Little by little. One day at a time. One step at a time. One choice at a time. One action at a time.

Awareness is the way out.

Practice Makes Progress.

More Literal & Metaphorical #WeightTraining Please

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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I love weight training. It is one of three things I recommend to every human being. It is one of the things I love that is actually good for me.

Weight training has positively impacted my life as much or more than any other external concept Iā€™ve encountered while Iā€™ve been alive. Iā€™ve been regularly weight training for two thirds of my life now.

I donā€™t plan on stopping. All physical exercise is a marathon, not a sprint. Weight training is not something one does for a season, it is something one does for life.

Every year that goes by more and more scientific studies come out showing greater and greater benefits of weight training. Broader benefits and deeper benefits. Physical benefits, mental benefits and social/emotional benefits. Benefits for children and benefits for the elderly. Benefits for living longer and benefits for living a higher quality of life.

There has been and will continue to be resistance to weight training because of it being intertwined with bodybuilding. Male bodybuilders are to weight training as female instagram influencers are to yoga pants. They go hand in hand but only represent the egomaniacal extremes of the user base.

Most people want to exercise and benefit from weight training for practical health benefits. Not because they are seeking external validation from strangers via their smartphone to compensate for an internal lack.

For every fitness influencer covered in athleisure shape ware from head to toe while they photoshop their selfies, there are 10,000 people who would benefit from going to their local gym, a few times per week, to see and feel tangible physical benefits of exercise, surprisingly quickly.

Warm up, lift some weights that challenge their effort and comfort level, do some cardio, stretch, cool down, go home, shower, and eat. Anything beyond that moves into intermediate and beyond which one can find infinite information on in the growing podcast and youtube fitness video sphere.

Weight training helped me in the deepest, darkest times in my life. From depression, to burn out, to grieving the deaths of both of my parents. It helped me to feel good, feel challenged, feel accomplished, feel pride, feel growth. I wish that for every person I meet which is why I recommend it to everyone regardless of demographic or type.

Weight training also makes for great analogies and metaphors. Meditation, another thing I universally recommend, has been called doing bicep curls for the brain. Seeking general challenges and discomfort has been called weight training for life.

More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.

Notice how I am yet to bring up aesthetics. Except to poke at the social media narcissists who use perceived visual fitness achievement as a fix for their addiction to attention. Aesthetics is a by product of weight training and exercise in general.

Exercising for aesthetics can be a path the dark side of the fitness world. See fit fluencers and steroid abusers. People who are chemically and surgically enhanced, making a living, by living and lie. Lying to anyone and everyone, including themselves, that their aesthetics can be achieved with discipline, consistency, and whatever products they are selling.

Iā€™ve had multiple IFBB pros tell me when it comes to who is on gear/has had cosmetic surgery vs naturals; muscle mass volume to body fat percentage never lies, ever.

So use common sense, although Iā€™m not so sure how common that is anymore.

But common sense would dictate all humans engage in some form of physical exercise unless they spend their days engaging in physical labor for the job/career.

Use it or lose it. That applies to your body and your mind. Physical and mental ailments and deterioration are often brought about by physical and mental inactivity. The happiest and most spry elderly are the most active. The saddest and slowest youths are the most sedentary. Use it or lost it.

More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.

Acceptance & Love of What Happens

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Amor Fati is one of, if not the, most challenging concept Iā€™ve ever learned.

To love what happens, regardless of what happens, is not natural. If we all loved what happened to us, regardless of whether we perceive what happens as positive or negative, we would be living in an unrecognizable world.

I am very grateful to have learned about this concept, through stoicism. Although the term Amor Fati is not of stoic origin. It is a term that comes from Frederich Nietzsche. This is a philosophical concept that is like jelly to the peanut butter of meditation.

Plugging the concept Amor Fati, into the awareness that is cultivated by a habitual meditation practice, has beenā€¦well, Iā€™d like to say game changing, but in actuality it has been very challenging to apply and execute.

It is certainly a concept that goes against the grain. Modern culture and mass media certainly donā€™t put out the vibe of accepting and loving what happens to us. In fact, a solid majority of pop culture in America is about not liking what happens to us.

Amor Fati being the norm would mean the end of gossip, office politics, relationship drama, family feuds, rumors and innuendos. Imagining modern life without any one of those things requires strong, concentrated imagination. To imagine modern life without all of those concepts would be the beginning of a science fiction novel.

So it is natural to struggle with getting a grasp on Amor Fati because it is so unnatural and unnurtured in modern life.

Life doesnā€™t happen in a vacuum. Life doesnā€™t occur in a rehab facility. Life can be loud, messy, challenging, harsh, cold, unfair, stressful, and unnerving. Weā€™re all zen until someone cuts us off in traffic or we stain our favorite shirt.

Life is challenging. Life is challenges. That is why I feel like philosophy and meditation go together like peanut butter and jelly. To think about philosophical concepts during meditation sessions has been a genuine help for me, when Iā€™m able to disidentify from my thoughts and emotions.

Meditation can create space for deep thought. Meditation can create focused pondering of; the big things, the scary things, the confusing things, the unnatural things. Amor Fati is all of those things. It is a big, scary, confusing, unnatural concept to love everything that happens to us.

Amor Fati isnā€™t a philosophical concept that is meant to be all sunshine and rainbows. This isnā€™t a toxic positivity, self help guru, social media influencer like statement. This isnā€™t saying turn your frown upside down.

Amor Fati is as challenging as it gets, because we have been conditioned to think, perceive, feel and act in the opposite direction. If I didnā€™t have a meditation practice to plug Amor Fati into, I would have likely dismissed it instantly, like I imagine a great many people have throughout history since Nietzsche first wrote the words.

It is because Amor Fati is so different, that I believe itā€™s time has come to be mainstream. We need different in the culture right now. We need different in the zeitgeist right now. Amor Fait is what we need to break up the status quo claptrap that monopolizes the perceptions of the masses.

We need a different paradigm. We need to change our perceptions. Amor Fati is the type of concept that cuts across class, race, gender, and generation to challenge us at our cores equally.

It is a concept that I very much need to apply in my life. More and more as the days go by.

Amor Fati, to me, also sounds like something, that we all, desperately need at this point in history.

#Life Taught Me What Is Real

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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It is a sign of privilege to think that everything should go the way we want all the time.

It serves as both a compliment to and a reprimand of our upbringing. Any parent or legal guardian who is worth oneā€™s salt wants their children to have a good life and a better life than they, the parent had, growing up.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

A byproduct of this in America over the past forty years has been helicopter parents, which evolved over the past twenty years into bulldozers parenting.

Life is only easy for the privileged, and that only applies to the external and material aspects of life. I have never met a rich person who didnā€™t have mental and emotional issues in spades. They were just able to throw money at the problems and use their money to create shields and masks for the public.

There is no escaping the yin yang.

There are ups and then there are downs. We wouldnā€™t know one without the other. We wouldnā€™t know sound without silence. We wouldnā€™t know darkness without light. And vice versa.

Frustrating isnā€™t nearly a good enough word to describe when a person has a vision for their life, they make the right choices to manifest that vision into reality, and then something(s) happen that interrupt their journey and block their path.

The Obstacle is The Way.

It sucks that we canā€™t always get what we want. Wouldnā€™t life be better that way?

It would certainly be easier and less stressfulā€¦but better? A life without challenges isā€¦a better life? I donā€™t know about that one.

I know when I was younger; completely socially conditioned by mass media; completely identified with the thoughts and emotions instilled in me during my formative years by the for profit entertainment industry; that a life of fame, fortune, excitement and pleasure was the only life for me.

Then life happened. Real life. Not high school, homework, and hanging out with friends. Real life. Love, loss, triumph, tragedy, success, and failureā€¦lots of failure.

Real life drove me to meditation, philosophy, drinking, journaling, sleeping in, reading, binge watching, weight training, hallucinogens, yoga, smoking, nature trail hikesā€¦and an old enough age to see how cyclical, repetitive, and unique people and life can be regardless of technological advancement.

Itā€™s all the same, only the names will change.

Real life taught me the interruptions from my childhood dreams werenā€™t interruptions. Real life taught me that the obstacles on my path werenā€™t obstacles. Real life taught me that hard times and challenges werenā€™t unfair or punishments.

Real life taught me those things are real life.

New #Meditation, New Me, Temporarily, For Now

Posted: March 19, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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I started meditation because it seemed like a natural extension of a yoga practice as well as a good cool down from the physical exercise that a yoga session can be. I was able to habitualize a regular meditation practice, years before I was able to habitualize a regular yoga practice.

I enjoy doing yoga. Especially after a weight training session or on a day that I donā€™t life weights. At the end of a yoga session I feel good. Often I feel better than I did before I started the session. But meditation, hits different for me.

I feel better during and after a meditation in deeper way than I do post yoga. Not better, just better for me. Better enough that my meditation practice stuck sooner.

I thank the Calm app for that. The guided meditations, to this day, remain the vehicle that has helped me arrive the most frequently, and consistently to consciousness and awareness of the space between stimulus and response.

Iā€™m not describing the feeling adequately. That is the great thing about meditation and other spirituality practices; concepts beyond words.

On bad days, good days, and neutral days alike, when Iā€™m able to break the cycle of thinking, break away from my identification with my thoughts or emotions or life situation, concentrate on my breath, and reach a place of inner stillness and awareness, even if itā€™s just for a couple of secondsā€¦thatā€™s the good stuff. That makes the practice worth itā€™s weight in gold.

That feeling makes me feel like Iā€™ve shed my skin and become a new person on the spot. It feels like coming home again. It feels like putting on all of my most comfortable clothes. It feels like breathing again after being under water.

I certainly wish I was able to get to that place more consistently and for longer. But, we all need goals to chase. I am grateful for every micro second I have spent in the awareness of inner stillness. Just to be aware of it is a blessing for me. Then to feel it and know it, and to know myself for the first time. Tremendous feelings. Gratitude for sure.

Taking my meditation practice off of my cushion and into my daily life was a long delayed happening. For the longest time I just sat, focused on my breath a little, and thought with my eyes closed and a guided meditation playing in my earbuds.

To get into a true meditative state, or even a reasonable facsimile took a while for me. Many times now I simply settle for breath awareness, noticing Iā€™m stuck in my head, or identifying with emotion, and coming back to the breath. Which is also a blessing for me.

Being able to notice Iā€™m identified with my thoughts and being able to break free and come back to breath awareness makes me feel like a new person. I can simply remember the long period of my life where I was completely identified with my thoughts, my emotion and my life situation. The majority of people are.

I still get caught up. Meditation isnā€™t a magic bullet. But it is an aide. An aide for the mind. An aide for our emotions. An aid for our soul. An aide I am grateful for.

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