I started meditating again
As the title states, this is not the first time I am doing this.
The first time I really got into meditation was during high school, in a last ditch attempt to avoid a permanent solution to what a psychiatrist later told me was probably depression. School in italy is already really difficult for normal kids (1 IN 5 teens report self harm or suicidal ideation). Add in very religious parents and you’re left with a not particularly appealing shit sandwitch you have to deal with on your own.
Meditating helped me detach from my situation, analyze how I felt, and control the worst emotions. It did not solve the underlying problems, but sometimes those cannot be solved.
Then I started university, went living on my own, got distracted by life and stopped.
I was not in the same head space as I was at 16: yes, I still joked about killing myself every now and then but I wasn’t really thinking about doing it.
I thought I didn’t really need it anymore, and in a certain sense it was true.
A new reason
This time I don’t need meditation to deal with anxiety and emotions.
Sure, as of this week the Epstein files got released and we found out that the world is controlled by a group of pedophile chabad jews and that basically all conspiracy theories are real.
But on the grand scheme of things it’s probably just another fun fact that will be wiped out of mainstream history with a little bit of money and a little bit of bloodshed, I digress.
No, this time the problem is attention. In the last ten years I got addicted to doomscrolling, and probably you are addicted too my dear reader.
Do I even have readers? I won’t be assed to implement trackers to jack off my ego, but if you really want to let me know send me a mail lol.
We are force fed and endless stream of AI slop, influencer product placements and end-of-the-world trumpet sounds. My hypothesis is that millions of years of evolutions did not take into account that the colorful images moving really fast might not be our next meal. Which is why we don’t have any protection mechanisms from dopamine hijacking.
I started scrolling, and it got really difficult not to.
I read less, practice less hobbies, watch less films, even anime sometimes feels too much work after spending three hours fingering the screen like a monkey that has just found out about opposable thumbs and their implications in a post-industrialist landscape dominated by tactile interfaces.
I started meditating again because I missed that sensation of stillness behind your eyes, when thought condenses in something that, even if impossible to hold, can still be collected and observed while it drips through your hands.
Different types of meditation
From my very limited knowledge about meditation there are three main methods:
Open monitoring: the type I started with, where you are meant to observe your experience without judgement or attachement. It helps detaching from the you-that-worries and it worked pretty when that was the objective.
Focused attention: focusing on something that can vary from the classic bells, to a mantra, to an image. It goes without saying that helps with concentration and mental clarity. This is wat I am practicing right now.
Transcendental meditation: I still do not understand this and, to be completely honest, it wanders too close to my spiritualistic bullshit cutoff. If you live in a monastery hidden amongs Tibet’s peaks this might be your cup of tea.
How to practice focused attention
Sit down: on a chair preferably, or you can cross your legs if you are feeling fancy. Personally I kneel for two main reasons: the first is that it hurts a lot after a while. I think that pain really helps training for concentration by being a strong bodily distraction, kinda like adding an extra plate on the bench press, while also canceling by magnitude other exogenous distractions that might break the flow.
The second reason is that I look like a samurai and that’s really cool.
You can also do this lying down, but to be honest every time I tried it that way I woke up after a couple of hours, or the morning after, depending on the time I closed my eyes.
Find something to focus on:
I recommend your breath.
Bells are not always on hand, mantras have a tendency of falling into the realm of spiritual bullshit, and if you need your phone for playing sounds the chance is you are going to read one notification and the whole session will get postponed indefinitely.
I think it is pretty safe to assume you will always have some breath at hand, and it is free.
Focus on something: listen to your breath, feel it go in and out of your lungs. Feel the air filling your alveoli, your diaphragm extend, then contract. Feel the warm vapor moistening your lips on its way out.
Get distracted: think about the groceries and how fucking bad your knees are hurting. Why do you do this to yourself? You goddamn retard you should be working on the software your boss has been hassling you about even if he really does not need it and everybody knows it will be incompatible with whatever logical horror the path planner team comes up with and as such -
Repeat:
Breath. Lungs. Diaphragm. Simple.
Very profound mental Enlightenment awaits!
