Day 426 Record Keeping
Day 395 Fixed Meditation
Day 341 Bodyweight Exercise (3 bridges)
Day 268 Writing (editing)
Day 441 Eating
Day 76 Dynamic Meditation = 76 (1 hour 10 min)
Day 23 Marketing = 74 (action + research)
Great sleep, great wakeup. I might’ve achieved first jhana in fixed meditation. Not sure, still researching. For writing Lydia suggested I do one week of writing and one week of editing to alternate. Makes sense considering I’ve lost that flow that I had during NaNoWriMo - I could write and write knowing that it was a first draft. AND when I was editing other people’s papers it was so crystal clear - I got into a rhythm of editing. That’s a concept that might be crucial for writing and other habits where I have cycling actions.

Dynamic Med Notes (1 hour 10 min):
x1 shoulders
x8 fidgeting
Notes: In fixed meditation I think I achieved first jhana. In it there was a switch that was flipped - I usually have a feeling of attention to force attention to keep on one object. But there was a transition where the concentration was “sticky” - it was easy to maintain, it was hard to get out of it, and it felt really good - the suffused pleasure of a mind that had found refuge in focusing on a topic.

I was trying to mimic that in fixed meditation as I did tasks that I find stressful. When I do marketing research or edit I’ve got all these other worries attacking me - just like in fixed meditation. There’s a tension of fighting them off and having this little space to myself. With first jhana that disappears - and is similar to the idea of flow - where just focus clears a path and it’s a relaxing focus. I didn’t get there today at all - things were really stressful. But I think I’m going to focus on this in future practices.

My theory is that if I can get into flow all the particulars of physicality - fidgeting, picking my lip, tightening of shoulders - will all fall away.