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2021 - ANNUAL MEDITATION REVIEW

Posted 2022-02-11, written throughout January and February to help me consider practice themes for 2022.

THEMES

  • I don't have any sense of making progress in my meditation, and this has come up as a major question. TMI seems to imply that I should make progress if I'm sitting correctly, but there are certainly other views that say I should just sit and be in the moment. At any rate, it's not clear that I'm getting any closer to insight or awakening.
  • I continue meditating because it feels good for my overall wellbeing.
  • Thinking on the cushion, particularly when I don't have clear idea of what practice I will do in a given session.
  • I'm generally trying to combine WEEB into the TMI framework. I prefer whole body awareness over single location awareness, but perhaps that's because it gives my mind more to do.
  • Difficulty maintaining the habit in new places, while establishing new routines.
  • Saturday is consistently the hardest day to meditate, particularly if I was up late Friday night. I want to sleep in and then there are activities taking place which I would need to decline in order to sit.

INTRO

This is my end of year reflection on my practice during 2021. First, it bears mentioning that 2021 was a busy year for me. I moved 5 times in one year. Ended one job, applied for a few, and started another. Each of these changes threatened to throw off the meditation practice, and to some extend they did, but I still managed to sit most days. The main exception to my consistency of practice was the Christmas holiday, where I gave up in advance. I often feel stressed about meditation when staying with family because I'm not the first one awake, which makes it much more difficult to get to the cushion. This year I just decided not to worry about it, which resulted in no sitting for a little over a week. I cannot remember the last time I went so long. In fact, I could sort of feel it creeping up on me over time.

My first thought in trying to summarize the year in meditation is that I should review my journals. I have very little electronic meditation journal this year. I think for the early part of the year, I was probably writing on paper and would need to locate the journals. Paper's good for avoiding distractions, but then the journals never accessible for review when I'm ready. I should dig those up. However, I'll try to write some impressions now, without having read through the journals. From the springtime through the rest of the year, I didn't have a consistent style of meditation or even clear goals for my practice. I feel I need to sit every day, but many days a lot of my sitting time was just me thinking. Saturdays are the most difficult day.

YEAR IN SUMMARY

January through March - I mostly stopped doing walking meditation and came back indoors. There were few distractions, so as long as I woke up in time it was not terribly difficult to get to the cushion. On the other hand, when working from home it's easy to procrastinate and tell myself I will sit later in the day. There's some competition for early morning time, though, because that's also the ideal fitness time in the heat. I began a project to read two meditation guides more thoroughly and take notes along the way: /With Each and Every Breath/ and /TMI/. For /TMI/, note taking is useful for the chapters where I feel I have some experience with the states he's describing. However, I don't beleive I've reached the advanced stages, which makes the process feel more tedious.

April - Upon moving to a new location halfway around thw world, I was dealing with allergies and some stomach upset. After about 6 years of being 90% blissfully allergy-free, it was a huge downer to come back and struggle with allergies or digestive issues almost every day. It was the equivalent of having a month-long cold/flu. In retrospect, it's a visceral reminder that my body and health is not under my control and that I should be grateful for every day I experience of excellent health. Meditation certainly helps me feel more OK with my allergies, but I was sleeping a lot and frequently overslept and missed my ideal meditation time. I was barely holding a practice together through the month.

May through July - With this second move, most of the allergy issues receded, which was wonderful. However, I was living in a busy household where the earliest riser is often up before 5 a.m., which tempts me to have my coffee and a chat when I should be meditating. By 6 a.m., when the rest of the house gets up, it will be very difficult to convince myself to go sit. Eventually, I established an outdoor sitting area, which helped a lot. Once I was out in my tent, there was effectively nothing else to do. There was also some travel during this time period, visiting friends and family. On the whole, once again, I was barely holding the practice together. I was often unclear on my style of meditation or object of meditation. I sometimes really enjoy "just sit" or "do nothing" in the Shinzen style, but if I don't explicitly commit to that at the beginning of a session I don't typically implement it in a way that allows me to benefit. I find myself lo-key efforting through it, which seems to allow most of the drawbacks of that style without delivering the benefits.

July thrugh September - Another move. Bigger house with a dedicated meditation space. In August I signed up for a one day zoom retreat while my partner was out of down. I did not feel like anything special happened that day, other than lots of meditation related pain. That turned out ot be a big disappointment for me. I caanot help but think about the fact that I'm approaching 3 years of practice and there's been no noticeable deeping of the concentration after the first year. It's not even clear to me whether or not I should be trying to progress in my meditation. Around the same timeframe I started the Unified Mindfulness online course, which was initially quite enjoyable. I was disappointed to discover that the next step in their program is the teacher training course, which IIRC costs over a thousand. That didn't seem like a probably path for me and I kind of lost interest in the course.

September and October - Moved across town to be nearer to my partner's work. Still staying in someone else's home. I don't have a dedicated sitting space, so the best time to sit is after my partner leaves the bedroom. That takes me away from my preferred time, when I first wake up. Having a lot of struggles with the new job, the main guy I'm dealing with seems to not trust me and acts as a restriction from me getting access and information. Trying to deal with these emotions put back in a space where I felt I needed metta, so I picked that up again. When there's not enough time in the day, sometimes I trade off meditation time to make room for a run.

October through December - We finally have a permanent home! I still had some trouble establishing a consistent pattern to ensure I complete my meditation before the work day begins. I started doing walking meditations with metta again, which I'm a little more consistent about for logistical reasons: it's much easier to focus on walking meditation in the early morning when there's less traffic and activity. My goal was to walk 3 times weekly and sit the other mornings.

August

210524 | 45m TMI/WEEB mashup

1219 Today was the first day I felt my attention was mostly on the breath, rather than listmaking. I have not been pushing myself to do anything specific in meditation this past week. My main goal is just to get a streak going. My objective has been to take care of the body and to try to generate some meditative joy. Most of the week there was a lot of mental work taking place as I built up my to do lists. I felt it was OK to be patient and allow this to take place, since I was still putting in time on the cushion and not experiencing a lot of frustration. I would also like to increase the sitting time up closer to an hour, but 40 minutes was a good place to start. Now that I'm reading TMI it doesn't feel very much like stage 3 is the place to start. Also, I had entirely forgotten that I also started a thorough reading of WEEB, which is likely to be more useful for my practice. Today I'll review my Stage 3 notes and then decide what's next. I had a moment toward 30m where I was losing vividness. Things quickly spin off into dream-like thoughts. I did some Kegel contractions to revive the energy a little. Usually the deep dullness passes without me having to quit my sit.

2020