Day 545 & Between Scylla and Charybdis

Day 545 Record Keeping (63)
Day 514 Fixed Meditation 
Day 460 Bodyweight Exercise (7 typewriter pushups - 60)
Day 387 Writing (56)
Day 560 Eating (72)
Good sleep, good wakeup. Feeling good.


Per my previous protocol, I’ve dropped recording the SRHI for fixed meditation because I maintained an 80 or above in it for a week, giving it superhabit status. As an aside meditation has been going well. Last night I started meditating (I’ve been doing this  more and more often lately) vipassana style. I found myself getting into this solid groove of letting thoughts flow without clinging, and it started to feel really good. Just as though I was entering first jhana.

Lydia has been reading about this more than I have lately, and Daniel Ingram does mention that you can enter first jhana through vipassana. I’m liking how a lot of his book reflects my personal experience after the fact, for items I didn’t read clearly or just skimmed over. It makes me feel like I’m making solid progress.

When I meditate I often don’t really want to go through with it - but that first initial repulsion is overwhelmed by the solid habit of just getting into position. Once I start it starts happening. That’s exactly what I’ve been feeling the last couple of days with writing. Thinking about the nitty gritty I immediately don’t want to do it, but I find myself just walking to my chair sitting down, and setting up my next writing task. That’s exactly where I want habits to be, especially ones I’m pushing - I’m never going to like the pain involved, but I’m not thinking about that - I’m mechanically and habitually getting set up, and the rest flows. This has clearly resulted in a higher score in the SRHI which I think will continue.

Eating has been amazing - it really clicked this weekend, as  I had some old college friends visit. Despite going out and having dinner, I was on autopilot, ignoring the bad foods and eating the solid ones. That’s also resulted in a very high score on the SRHI, and that’s exactly where I want that habit to be.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

I feel a lot better about my habits. Last weeks depression has fallen away, as predictable. It feels like it regularly takes a week or two for that strain to fade. The opposite is what I’m feeling now - the urge to do more. 

Having more latent energy makes me want to expand my exercises, expand my writing, expand my meditation…This is dangerous. 

It’s like Scylla and Charybdis in Ulysses.  Scylla was a monster, Charybdis was a whirlpool, and ships had to figure out how to navigate the Strait of Messina without being torn to pieces. This metaphor is particularly apt because I’ve described this scenario before as a battle of two forces that threaten to rip a part progress in this project. Too much depletion, and you don’t want to do anything. Too much energy, and the internal urge to do more overextends your willpower/endurance/grit.

Ulysses survived with few losses by choosing Scylla, I can’t afford the losses and must choose to angle my ship precisely in between the two dangers.

Lydia said something interesting today. “Now that you have done what you need to do, your job is to be satisfied.”

There’s a lot of wisdom and skill in that statement. It means sacrificing sudden momentary swaths of gains for long term steady progress, which is the heart of this entire project, yet so difficult to remember when in the thrall of vortex forces.

It is very interesting how these emotional urges play out time wise….it’s something I need to pay closer attention to.

Day 538 & Current Status (I’m Back!)

Day 538 Record Keeping (55) 
Day 507 Fixed Meditation (84)
Day 453 Bodyweight Exercise (3 typewriter pushups - 74)
Day 380 Writing (59)
Day 553 Eating (66)
Bad sleep, bad wakeup.

Current Status (I’m Back!)
In the last several weeks I moved to Spain. Dealt with finding an apartment. A week later, just when I was acclimatizing to the time difference, I left for India. Adjusted to the time zone there and after 10 days returned to Spain. Dealt with paperwork for residency. It’s been a week and I’m finally back!

Needless to say, this has recked havoc on my habits. I had very spotty internet in India, and somehow regularly got into a quadphasic sleep pattern, sleeping for four hours twice a day, which was incredibly discombobulating.

My record keeping is shot. Bodyweight writing, shot (the next article on my list was one I needed to do some heavy internet research for). Eating, shot - there really wasn’t much choice as to what to eat there. But surprisingly my basic bodyweight exercises have been pretty stable, AND my fixed meditation has been incredible. Made some real progress there, and got a perfect score on the SRHI today.

Not too shabby despite extreme circumstances.

I took stock today, and decided that what is best for me is to just nail my habits this week. I’m back to my basic minimums:

-2 typewriter pushups for bodyweight training
-basic meditation. I can regularly get to 3rd jhana, but I’ll settle for quality timed durations (starting with 20 minutes) of first.
-basic writing - that is 50 words on an article for work or any amount of editing

I’ll start pushing next week. On that note, today a few points came up:

-I can feel vortex forces ripping at me - I want to do everything NOW. One possible solution would be to push one habit and change what I push the next day on an alternating schedule. Lydia has done something like this and it seems to work by preventing those psychological forces from ripping apart her habits.

So, instead of selecting on thing, say writing, to push for a few weeks, I would push write on day 1, bodyweight exercises day 2, and repeat.

-Writing is a real problem right now - it’s always been tenuous - I think I went too far too fast. The step up from writing x amount of words to writing x amount of a work-related paper was too much. I didn’t sufficiently form a “ledge” like I did transitioning from pushups to typewriter pushups.

One way around this would be to treat doing x amount of work-related words as “pushing mastery”.

Also I can switch up my habit order, doing writing as soon as I get out of bed.

I’ve recently been doing meditation, which is great, but today I pushed it hard and was utterly exhausted. Depressing and frustrating in the moment, utterly forseeable in hindsight.

I think it’s really really important to make sure I know where I’m at, and what the next ledge is at all times (and I feel this should be emphasized when improving upon Timothy Ferriss’ DiSSS protocol). Having adequate metrics and a pathway to the next ledge prevents stagnation, and I feel that I’m having severe problems with that nowadays, even despite the chaotic moving/travel situations.

There’s a lot of talk on Reddit, Quora, and random online articles about all this. But what I have to remember is though the advice being given is good, it’s all about one habit. I’m now entering that intermediate stage of this project of dealing with the dissonant harmonics of trying to level up multiple habits to mastery, and that’s no easy task.

Day 496

Day 496 Record Keeping
Day 465 Fixed Meditation (2nd jhana? -82)
Day 411 Bodyweight Exercise (2 typewriter pushups - 76)
Day 338 Writing (pitching - 73)
Day 511 Eating (63)
Horrible sleep, horrible wakeup. 13 days missing, willpower and endurance has been totally drained, emotions in the dumpster. BUT, yesterday and today I got a huge surge of strength. I thought that my project had collapsed again, but today I feel totally renewed. Tomorrow I’m going to really think about the focus of my project and if I’ll be continuing marketing and dynamic meditation - I think I might be tightening up my project to focus on mastery.

Had a powerful meditation today, possibly brushed 2nd jhana. Excellent bought of writing yesterday - I thought that my DiSSS protocol training was a failure, but yesterday it was clear that I had learned an immense amount.

Meditation, First Jhana, and Buddhism

I don’t really know where to put this, but I feel it’s important to record all things, so here goes.

A few months ago in Barcelona I found a book called Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram. In it Ingram outlines a series of maps and guides for advanced practitioners of meditation.

In the book - and in other books and I have read by similar “hardcore” practitioners- Buddhism is painted as a path by which you not only fight the day-to-day arisings of negativity, but how you can destroy the uprisings from the source. And this is all reachable and doable. HERE is a fantastic article about this in the New York Times about a practitioner who did a retreat with Ingram.

One of the waypoints of this meditation map are several states called jhanas - altered states of consciousness, in this case caused by single pointed meditation. Last week I believe I reached the first of these states. Without a formal teacher there’s no way to ascertain it - but I read everything I could get my hands on and it seems to match the descriptions exactly. I’ve since felt myself brushing it…today I definitely got there again. There was a sense of single pointedness, of altering of perception, numbness of the body, pleasure and bliss.

I have a lot more reading to do, but the point of all this is is something entirely different. IF this is a path that works, then is there really any point of doing dynamic meditation? I’ve felt like my dynamic meditation practices have recently become lackluster. I observe my thoughts, sure, but is it really doing anything? Or should I ratchet it up - should I practice specific exercises, or use it to facilitate regimentation - specifically not thinking about work when work is complete?

What confuses the issue is that since getting to this jhana - if indeed I did get to the state - is the amount of turmoil it has seemed to arose in me. I’m filled with rage followed by calmness. Maybe it’s me sleeping badly, but I don’t know. My calm has been perturbed, and I don’t know if it’s meditation that’s causing it or if it’s some point in my habit formation project that’s causing it.

EDIT: I wrote all this yesterday without actually posting it. Today I had an excellent dynamic meditation practice - but perhaps I should expand the practice. 

Day 426

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.