3 months

of meditating 1 hour a day. documentation of a shift in perception

Just need to leave a quick note here to unpack my life experience with meditation since the past 3 months.

i mostly meditate an hour before going to sleep, and sometimes in the morning.

My current meditation cocktail is a mix of Vipassana in the Goenka method and Emptiness practice as taught by Rob Burbea. i mostly try to tune into a stable state of samadhi and go through all the sensations in my body, welcoming and allowing them. i might still be intellectualizing and eager to go through too many concepts at once, and could probably spend more time with each pov in depth. But i also trust my intuition and up to this point the results are promising.

i think the juice of meditation is in dismantling the reaction to experience. To do so, during the past months i’ve doubled down on the somatic part of meditation, realizing over and over how deeply interconnected my awareness and my body sensations are. Additionnally, on twitter i found this advice about fear, giving further insight into the whole process :

Throw yourself at your fear. Again. And again. And again.

To break the chain of reaction from experience to sensation, one needs to study one’s own desires and aversions. To study those, it makes sense to study fear. Every form of attachment stems from a tension around experience. Every tension around experience stems from an underlying fear.

Here are some layers i’ve been unpeeling during the past 3 months through meditation, with down-to-earth concrete real-life description of consequences :

1. Each day i feel more secure

   After a busy day, during the first few minutes of meditation the surface of my body is roaring, full of heat, activity, and directionality. i can feel the instability i’m carrying on me all day, built up from all the moments i’m not fully present in space and time.
   On a very basic level, the meditation resets the score by creating stability, and a sense of safety coming from within. Coming to terms with an impulsive urge to self-destruct. Realizing there is no danger, no need to be tense and agressive, and i will not hurt myself if i care for myself. Reassurance in understanding this state of calm stillness is now my home.
   

2. Decreased resistance to experience
   Deep fear often translates in resistance to action, and the false perception of a choice to make. Precious insights on the topic in this text by Adam Mastroianni So you wanna de-bog yourself.
   Meditating is helping me turn off the thought processes dragging me out of flow state, such as “should i really be doing this?” or “let me create a mental model of what this experience is going to be and let me examine its consequences on my future self, and then decide if i want to live it”. Most of the time the experience itself is not the problem, and there’s an unchecked fear involved at the subconscious level.
   

3. Finer noticing of my cravings and aversions
   By the time i get agitated or irritated, i can tune in to my body sensations and instantly find a way to regulate. i don’t necessarily do it, but now i know i can and in a matter of a few minutes of continuous awareness the stuck emotion usually flows through.
   

4. Rejection hurts less
   As obvious as it sounds, creating a space to bathe in self-acceptance is a total hack to move unfazed by rejection. Social life feels less like the overshadowing fear of being shattered by potential lack of validation, and more like spreading my perfume around other people — the harmless immaterial aroma of interactions free from expectations.
   This one is especially huge for me. Growing up i used to be like sand, where meeting any model of reality different than my current one could decompose me and send my mind spiralling requestioning everything. A rejection was total demolition of my character. i used to be unable to rely on any internal signal and would let external signals shape my perception. It’s been a long grueling journey creating a solid ground of self-acceptance and learning to trust my internal compass.
   

5. i put my attention in my lower belly ( thanks Pranab )
   

6. Found a lot of fear in my lower belly
   

7. Then a lot of sexual energy got liberated from my lower belly
   

8. i’m increasingly more available for my intuitive desire
   This one is the most abstract but the most rewarding. There’s a lot of somatic noise that goes against receiving the signal of pure intuition, and too often by the time my conscious brain is listening and starting a validation process, the cards have been dealt again. Receiving and trusting intuition without delay is a huge super-power — reason why i’ve always been around musicians, shout out to MUSIC !
   A good grip on one’s intuition is the best possible tool that precedes all other cognitive faculties and skills. Through meditation i get a dedicated time to tune in to the frequency level of my intuition and feel how it reacts to ideas.
   

All of this is really exciting and i’m amazed i can write these words from lived experience. From the moment the day starts i look forward to sit and meditate. It feels like home, it feels like being held by a caretaker in complete acceptance, and cultivating immaculate vibes.

i’m struck by the realization i did not have clear healing processes before. Reason why every 6 months i used to press the red button to jump ship and get a deep emotional reset. 99% of the time i was in states of contraction. i did not know how to internally switch to release mode — deep unchecked emotions were getting in the way. The more i meditate the less my emotional activity feel sequenced in such a way. On the best days it feels like a stream of photons is travelling through me and everything is aligned.

On the flip side i can envision how this path might become addictive and shift all my life priorities. It’s already been doing so : i’m fully aware, my ambition has taken a blow. Everyday nudging increasingly towards the most-accessible-happiness-generator, a lot of the abstract layers of status games and material gain and long-term goals are becoming irrelevant. i can find instantaneous deep sense of alignment in jotting down an idea or talking to a friend.

There was this tweet from meditation twitter that struck a chord with me :

shame is dirty fuel. insecurity is dirty fuel. addiction is dirty fuel. compulsion is dirty fuel. revenge is dirty fuel. hatred is dirty fuel. run clean and feel clean. walk into the light

Looking through this lens, meditation is about cleaning ‘dirty’ fuel and moving from ‘clean’ fuel. Acknowledging the influence of deep attachments, so that internal motivations can be seen clearly, and so that action stems from love and compassion. Motion doesn’t need to happen through relentless contraction — i wish i had experienced this so much sooner. i am now standing somewhere in the middle, cleaning it up, embracing the unknown.

i have been told my challenge in life is to learn moderation. i got my credentials doing the opposite, but ended up crashing out. Now, i’m learning to hold things softly. i’m learning to cherish volumes and space over lines and velocity. i’m learning to move in and out of states, to glide in a current of non-narrativity. No highs to chase nor lows to fend off. This is freedom. This is pure bliss.

Let’s see where this all goes in 3 months . . .