Why I am doing it?
These are effects I observed. They probably start after like 2-3 weeks 10min a day.
- Low-anxiety – lowering both mild and deep-seated anxieties (anything from social anxiety, health anxiety, mild phobias, panic attacks)
- Wisdom – enhancing clarity and improving complex problem-solving (e.g. it's making me a better designer, it’s helping me with difficult decisions)
- Focus – Increasing patience and reducing the lure of immediate gratification (For example, I find myself less drawn to minor addictions like social media or casual snacking)
- Harmony – experiencing feelings of harmony, peace and acceptance (I feel more at peace; it instills a sense of correctness, grounds me in the present, and quiets the default part of homo-sapiens brain fixated on the next thing or seeking more)
How to meditate?
Take this two states of mind: being here and now and being immersed in thought.
- Close your eyes and focus on experiencing the here and now. What are the sounds? How are the sensations of your body? How does your own consciousness feel? How a cloud of sensations like emotions feels like? Focus on any input present input. There is no way of doing it wrong.
- Naturally, thoughts will come and take you away in the abstract space of no-time and no-place.
- Your task is to discover that you are consumed by thoughts and come back to here and now. Be kind to yourself. Everybody fails that. Accept that you will be failing it too and keep coming back.
(In order to feel any effects commit to 10min a day for two-three weeks)
Or just play my fav guided meditations:
My fav guided meditation
Smile by Tara Brach (26 min) I am guesstimating I did that one 150 times in my life, via Maria Popova
Other I like:
Calling on Your Awakened Heart by (24 min) Tara Brach
Framework to try meditation
Evaluating meditation: 20 days x 15 min
How to think about meditation?
- “The advantage of meditation is not that you’re suddenly going to gain the superpower to control your internal state, it’s that you will recognize just how out of control your mind is.”
–
Naval Ravikant
- “Staying for a minute without getting distracted is a heroic feat. The longer you meditate the easier it is to recognize this "torrent of discursivity" which is preventing you from staying focused.” –
Sam Harris
- “You can uncover that consciousness itself has intrinsic quality of wellbeing. Simply paying attention to the experience is the antidote to the feeling of dissatisfaction. That what is aware of sadness isn’t truly sad.” –
Sam Harris
- “All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inablity to sit still in a room.” – Blaise Pascal
- “Meditation as a calibration chamber to avoid instant gratification urges. If one is able to be “bored for 20 min” one is more resilient in the face of any form of addiction: food, social media, substances etc.”
- “Meditation may reduce suffering via defusing state of “cognitive fusion”. Cognitive fusion happens when individuals perceive their thoughts and emotions as objective realities. This fusion can lead to suffering, as individuals perceive thoughts as them and become trapped in their narratives.” – via My attempt to explain Looking, insight meditation, and enlightenment in non-mysterious terms
Nick Cammarata has an incredible tweeter feed where he talks about Dharma, Jhana and meditation
- On a psychedelic like states that are accessible for very experienced meditators:
- The end goal is to have a meditative state in life
Scott Alexander’s guess that meditation may help with Unbias:
Naval Ravikant ‘s approach:
I think most of the people who never meditated have this impression that they are in control of their thoughts. During meditation, you witness how hard it is to stay here and now and that thoughts come up on their own.
“Jhana is extatic meditative state that’s different from enlightenment. Enlightenment changes you forever. Jhana is just a state you can enter during meditation sessions, then leave when the session is over … “Best comparable I have for jhana is sex (many people compare these) bc they're surprisingly similar. Jhana killed my desire for casual sex bc it's 10-100x better … jhana made me not crave pleasure so much anymore. Cured that "addiction" via surplus. … the best analogy I have is if you're extremely thirsty you'd do anything for water but if you're barely thirsty it's kind of just nice and helpful. And you certainly wouldn't break a bone for it. Pre jhana I was always "thirsty" for feeling good, now I'm a lot less so.” – via Nick Cammarata On Jhana by Scott Alexander
“If you would spend 18 hours a day meditating for a month. At the end of the month you will be noticing this white noise, this torrent of discursivity that is preventing you from staying on breath for a minute. And staying for a minute without getting distracted is a heroic feat. If you could pay attention to anything without being lost in thought for a minute at a time there would be neurophysiological correlates that are very drug like. There is immense pleasure that people get from being concentrated. There is bliss, rapture. Feeling of expansiveness in the mind, where your body disappears and consciousness feel like a vast void. And a only thing that appears might be the thing you were paying attention to. And even that might disappear and there is nothing but pure consciousness – an extraordinarily pleasurable psychedelic like experience. If you were actually concentrated as you imagine your self to be that would be very accessible to you.” – Sam Harris in conversation with Adam Grant (1:02:08)
If you want to get out of a trapped prior, is … A final possibility is other practices and lifestyle changes that cause the brain to increase the weight of experience relative to priors. Meditation probably does this; see the discussion in the van der Bergh post for more detail.
“What it really is, is the art of doing nothing. All you do for meditation is sit down, close your eyes. Whatever happens, happens. If you think – think. If you don't think – don't think. Don't put effort into it. Don't put effort against it ... Every meditation technique is leading you to the same thing which is witnessing. And concentration is a technique to steal your mind enough so you can then drop the object of concentration. So you could also just try going straight to the endgame ... Happiness comes from peace. Peace comes from indifference. Indifference is the ultimate super power – this works in negotiation, relationships, and business opportunities. The place that I want to end up the most is just peace. Peace to me is happiness at rest ... The way we think we get peace is resolving all the external problems. There are unlimited external problems. The only way to actually get piece is on the inside – by giving up this idea of problems.” – via Naval Ravikant on Joe Rogan's Show Listen on YouTube 1:19:50
Links
Mastering the core teaching of Buddha by Daniel Ingram via Peter Hroššo – I read first 8% of this book and it had a large impact on me. I need to dose it slowly.
Best pro-argument: How to Master Your Mind? by Sam Harris on Tim Ferriss Show
Best counter-argument: Listen to Adam Grant talking why he doesn't meditate on Sam Harris's Podcast (link to 50:30)
Waking Up Course meditation course by Sam Harriss (paid)