The Science of Self-Help

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Day 38 & The Mind-Stream

Day 38 Record Keeping SRHI = 59
Day 6 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 29
Day 5 Dynamic Meditation SRHI = 61
Decent night sleep, bleary wakeup

Again a huge jump in Dynamic Meditation SRHI. In my fixed meditation I try to bring up negative feelings in order to practice changing them. I found it very difficult to deliberately bring them up - I would automatically divert them into more positive ones.

This brings up another point - if that is working so well in a moment to moment level, is there any point in doing Fixed Meditation? I’ll really have to think about that.

The way I visualize some of my Dynamic Meditation is like thoughts flowing. There are divergences in that flow where I get sidetrack my negative emotions, but I’m practicing redirecting them back into the larger flow rather than what happened before - the whole flow would become soured and negative - it would totally shift course.

The Dharmic religions have a term for this - the mind-stream. Buddhist literature is incredibly technical in nature, so truly understanding their philosophies behind it are quite difficult for me, even with my background in Asian religious studies.

What I do understand is that they viewed this equanimity training - what I’m calling “dynamic meditation” - as highly technical. There’s jargon for every part of the process and terms for each specific concept. This is exactly what I need - I’m sick of reading the basics of meditation, what I need is this advanced stuff explained to me simply. I want to know their suggestions, their concepts, and their training techniques. But I’m thinking that this doesn’t exist and I’m going to have to wade right in.