Meditation
Enables the detachment of the Self. Trying to meditate every single day, first thing in the morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_3p81GmHEg&ab_channel=BryanJohnson starting from 35:49 really sold me.
Links of transcripts for Waking Up
Relation with Stoicism?
Concepts
2024-04-14: There’s that book Surrender Experiment, and how he talks about there was that single day that changed his life. Today, I went on a meditation at the Waterloo park, and looked at the water. And I felt a profound shift. A profound awareness of everything around me. How did I get into that flow? Just looking at the water for long enough, and not putting so much pressure on myself. Just doing it.
- How did he enter that state? He also meditated (section 1.4 of book), but then it was the most profound awareness that he’d ever been in
- 2024-05-10: I’m so angry at myself for not writing down the particular meditation that made me get into that state. I want to re-experience that moment. Because I sincerely felt the most profound awareness. I cannot replicate this. I don’t know which meditation it was
Reminders to myself from waking up course (most helpful things):
- Pay attention to where thought arises from. Every time you have a thought, observe that thought. It’s very fun
vaposhna → what we’ve been doing
meta → concentration practice of love
Notes
Why meditate? The quality of your mind determines the quality of your life.
“The purpose of meditation isn’t merely to de stress, or to sleep better, or to learn to be a little less neurotic. The purpose is to radically transform your sense of who and what you are.”
The crucial point is that we don’t know we’re dreaming.
awareness
gets to mind
expanding your consciousness consciousness is what is aware of you awareness is the feeling consciousness is what observes the feeling
Insights
From Saeejith: The flame is like a magnifying glass, you can move the flame through your body.
- and then you can simulate everything. That is cool
You become what you pay attention to.
Progress of meditation?
Some signals:
- Regular practice
- Antidote to psychological suffering (when you pay attention, it actually helps)
- Understand meditation is not about being calm, consciousness is already free of the feeling of self. Glimpse the freedom of consciousness.
- Examine the intrinsic freedom
Your suffering doesn’t come from the outside, you take responsibility for it.