Mondsee

Day 59 Days in a row: 1 Start time: 5:30 p.m. Finish time: 5:50 p.m. Location: Room at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: I know Leo says one should sit upright and not lay down for a meditation, but I decided to lay down today to see how the experience was. Of course I almost fell asleep, which is exactly what we are supposed to avoid by sitting instead of laying down. Lesson learned.

Hey, I recently re-read my diary of 3 years ago, and I was surprised that there was a time where I even thought that my (mediocre) performance in college was a result of my genetics i.e. something I had inherited from my parents!! Also I attributed it to the way they had educated me... Now that seems like a joke to me. You definitely need to watch this:

Day 58 Days in a row: 12 Start time: 7:45 a.m. Finish time: 8:05 a.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: closed Highlights: I felt as if today was the first time in my entire life I sat down to meditate. I had non-stopping monkey mind and worries about things on my to-do list, and deadlines coming up again and again. I didn't feel in touch with anything around me, which was all separated. The dog barking was a dog barking, the birds singing were birds singing, the children playing were children playing. All of that had nothing to do with me and my important worries.

Obviously you've read a lot of books to be able to deliver the content you do. Practically, how do you do it? Do you set time aside every time aside every day to read? If yes, is it always the same amount of time and at the same time of the day? or do you rather read only when you feel like it? Do you read different books at the same time, or do you finish one before starting the next one? Also, how do you decide which one is the next book you're going to read? Thanks in advance!

Day 57 Days in a row: 11 Start time: 2:00 p.m. Finish time: 2:20 p.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: Today I really felt uncomfortable, since I decided to meditate outside, but it is a really hot day, so I started sweating, and I wanted to change my position, but just at the right moment, Leo talked about letting even the unpleasant sensations be, and also our resistance towards them. I could not let go of my desire to move and get rid of the itching of my sweat, but at the same time, it was ok for that resistance to be there. My ego started looking for something that wasn't right, but everything was ok, just the way it was.

Day 56 Days in a row: 10 Start time: 10:50 a.m. Finish time: 11:00 a.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: For some moments, the world actually disappeared for me. The only things that existed were the barking of a dog (not the dog, just the barking), the sound of a truck (again, not the truck itself), the feeling of my body (without my body) and the sensation of the wind. Thoughts also existed, and stopped for somewhat longer periods of time than in the past occasions. Maybe I'll start meditating again without the guided meditation to be able to savor that even more.

@Nervewracking Glad it helped you. I don't have a regular contemplation habit installed yet, but you can come by and visit my meditation journal where I register my progress on meditating every day! I didn't thought about the relationship with my signature, but you're right! By all means, read Herman Hesse's work... if you're into contemplation, you'll absolutely love them!

Day 55 Days in a row: 9 Start time: 7:35 p.m. Finish time: 7:55 p.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: Today when I woke up I didn't feel like doing yoga and meditation, as I usually do, but I didn't want not to do it, so I just stayed lying on my bed for a long time, reading tweets. It got really late, and then I already had things to do instead of doing yoga and meditating, so I just skipped it. When my house finally calmed down (some workers were here repairing the floor) I decided to meditate already. I went out to the balcony, and closed my eyes. During the guided meditation the mosquitos (of which we have PLENTY in here) ate me alive. I could feel them biting me deeply, but I didn't move, I managed to just accept it as part of reality. It was funny how more or less at the end my arm suddenly moved the way the muscles of some animals move unconsciously, precisely to avoid insects biting them. Well the same happened to my left arm when I felt a mosquito starting to bite me again, I felt like a horse. At a short moment I forgot exactly where I had sat down, so I felt as if I was floating in nothingness. I may start looking for meditation spots that I don't identify very well to recreate that feeling of the world outside disappearing.

Listen, yesterday I went to a kindergarten to do volunteering work, and although until now I had always loved playing with children and teaching them kids, now that I have learned to put value into not-knowing, it was a cruel activity to do. From the moment we arrived, we were bombing those clean minds with rules of drawing inside the lines, letters and their specific sounds, with colors and their names, with emotions and their names. It was so magical to see the teacher putting lots of pictures on the floor with faces expressing different emotions, then she asked a child to give her the picture of the sad boy, the child goes and picks a laughing girl and gives it to her, and the teacher goes "no, no, no, wrong Owen! put it back on the floor and go back to your place". I had to think, damn! that boy is so much wiser than the teacher, and yet he is getting absolutely discouraged for what he just did! We work so hard to get to a point where a sad face means exactly the same as a happy one, or better yet, I have the feeling that that kid didn't even identify the images as faces expressing emotions. One last example was when they asked the girls to sit on one side and the boys on the other, and they sat all mixed up, so the teacher goes to the boys on the "girls" side and asks "why are you here? are you a girl?" those kids don't distinguish genders yet, we are all the same for them... genuinely! And that is exactly where we're trying to get with hard core contemplation. Those kids know nothing (yet), they know so little, that they are miles ahead of us in terms of contemplation. If you, for whatever reason, feel like you don't have sufficient intellectual/conceptual understanding, be glad you don't! That will make things easier for you. If you have little understanding of the world, that means you'll have less garbage to put out of your mind. I actually think what you'll discover is that you have more intellectual & conceptual understanding than you'd want to have. Everything you know is already too much.

Day 55 Days in a row: 8 Start time: 7:35 a.m. Finish time: 7:55 a.m. Location: Room at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: I was so distracted that at moments I was completely absorbed in my thoughts, and then suddenly I would remember that I was doing the guided meditation, then do an effort to try to follow Leo's words, but soon enough, I'd be absorbed in thought again. It was until the very end that I realized, no matter how distracted I am, I can't avoid awareness. No matter how hard I try, and how many things my ego invents as distractions, awareness can never be avoided, it is always there.

I've been following Leo's videos in chronological order, but that can take you a lot of time, instead I recommend you to check this out: https://www.actualized.org/start

Day 54 Days in a row: 7 Start time: 9:50 a.m. Finish time: 10:10 a.m. Location: Room at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: Extremely distracted, superficial meditation with lots of monkey mind jumping from worries to ideas, to things I got to do, to fantasies and so on. I let the monkey mind be, but I guess I had a background desire for it to get still already, and that desire remained there for the entire time. No new insights, and a strong ego discourse saying this practice won't bring me anywhere.

Day 53 Days in a row: 6 Start time: 7:55 a.m. Finish time: 8:15 a.m. Location: Room at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: I am space of awareness, and of course I am everything, because everything exists in the space of awareness. Today I was really really curious about what is outside that space of awareness that is me, today it didn't feel endless, it felt as a bubble with clear limits, where everything in my awareness exists, but... what is out of that space of awareness? Then Leo said: "notice that there is nowhere to go... there is nowhere else for you to be than right here... where can reality run to from itself? nowhere. Reality is everything that is occurring, there is nowhere to run". I could understand that for some moments, realizing that whatever isn't in awareness doesn't exist, but then I questioned it again, I understood it again, and then I questioned it again. It felt as a healing process, it needs to be questioned and understood a couple more times. I had some moments of intense distracting monkey-mind, but that too, felt as part of reality, and then I started questioning how is the barking of the dogs outside, the singing of the birds and the voices of the children playing more real than the sound of that spoon moving in a pot that I just imagined? What is the difference? Both are just as real, exactly equally real.

Day 52 Days in a row: 5 Start time: 9:05 a.m. Finish time: 9:25 a.m. Location: Room at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: "Awareness is always aware". During the last moments of the meditation, I realized awareness is always aware and there is no way to change that, awareness is aware, and that is what is. We may or may not ignore that, but that doesn't change anything. I felt as if I was navigating a black space where all external feelings where flying by around me, but in a sense, I was the black space including all those things, because, (again) what else could I be?

Day 51 Days in a row: 4 Start time: 7:15 a.m. Finish time: 7:35 a.m. Location: Room at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: Today I had many mental images flowing, some of which didn't make sense at all, but I realized those images are myself too, and I also noticed I couldn't do anything else but allow them to be there. Again, the source of all external sensations where myself. The birds, the cars, the bells of the church, (and Leo's voice) none of that was far away, it was coming out of me. Same for the light through my eyelids, it wasn't far away, it was my very self. Briefly I understood why we're all the same. We are all the source of everything, for a moment I could notice that very clearly: reality is coming out of everyone of us (because where else could it come from?), and that's why we're all the same, we're all reality.

Day 50 Days in a row: 3 Start time: 7:10 a.m. Finish time: 7:30 a.m. Location: Room at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: Today I could perfectly understand Leo's words during the guided meditation, not theoretically, but literally, I wasn't understanding it in my mind, but I was simultaneously proving to myself that it was true. Every single thing I was perceiving was me: my body, the beating of my heart, the birds singing, the sound of the cars passing by and Leo's voice. The phrase "you are everything, because what else could you be?" came suddenly to me as a spontaneous insight. I understood I am the body as well as all of what is perceived by it, and I am those things as much as I am the body. At some point my head felt as a huge sphere of space where all of reality fit in. The sound of the birds where in there, the sound of the cars, Leo's voice and the itching in my foot. It all fits in there, it is huge, it can expand with no limits.

Day 49 Days in a row: 2 Start time: 7:50 a.m. Finish time: 8:10 a.m. Location: Room at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: Today I felt my ego much more present than yesterday with a bigger resistance to surrendering. I felt worry because I somehow wasn't doing the practice right and I felt as if I needed a lot of effort to "get it right". When I got in touch with the external sensations, those didn't feel like part of me but like very clear separated things out there. At short moments they started integrating, but I lost touch with it again. When the part came where Leo said that if we can't let go of resistance, we should allow that resistance to be, then I felt my ego subtly disagreeing with that as a possibility, and creating the sensation that it couldn't allow the resistance to be there (as if it could do otherwise). This was really a very hidden thing, but valuable to see how the ego operates. Also when Leo said that there is nothing to care about, my mind kind of shout internally "I don't care about anything" but that felt so vividly like an ironic meme, saying you don't care about anything, when actually you care way too much. That was also an insight from this session, because I could see how that happens recurrently in my life. My mind lies to itself to survive in its web of stories and beliefs. I didn't feel as relaxed and connected with reality as I did yesterday, but somehow I have the feeling that I got more insight from today's session than yesterday.

Day 48 Days in a row: 1 Start time: 6:30 a.m. Finish time: 7:00 a.m. Location: Room at my parent's house Technique: Eyes: closed Highlights: I very clearly recognized how I am reality, but I returned to my body again and again, losing awareness of the external reality. Because I let my mind free, it did start wandering around monkey-mind-world quite frenetically at times. In any case, I was extremely relaxed through this meditation, and I didn't even notice my left leg numbing, not because I wasn't aware of the sensation, but because it wasn't uncomfortable in any way. I am going to repeat this meditation during the next days to report any changes in the experience.

Day 47 Days in a row: 4 Start time: 8:05 a.m. Finish time: 8:20 a.m. Location: Room at my old flat Technique: Do nothing Eyes: closed Highlights: Nonstopping monkey-mind, again. Thoughts about, sex, friendships and an interest moment of observation of my emotions, which at the moment include some minor worries and stress, but I felt them as if they were 100% part of me, of the body, and as if they were something impossible to separate from.

Day 46 Days in a row: 3 Start time: 9:15 a.m. Finish time: 9:30 a.m. Location: Room at my old flat Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open Highlights: Nonstopping monkey-mind. Thoughts about career, sex, past relationships and strategic plan on when to try psychedelics for the first time.

Day 45 Days in a row: 2 Start time: 12:20 a.m. Finish time: 12:35 a.m. Location: Room at my old flat Technique: Do nothing Eyes: closed Highlights: Slow pace of thoughts. Had many insights on ideas for presents and also a profound feeling of appreciation for a friend of mine who had never seemed so valuable to me.

Hey @Lynnel , thanks for your comment! See... the only two techniques I actually use are mindfulness meditation and do nothing. Personally I would like to be able to do a mindfulness meditation every day and work towards raising my awareness more "actively", but there are days in which a do nothing meditation just feels more natural to me. I don't decide what technique I'm going to practice until I'm sitting and I've taken some deep breaths and recognized the direction in which my mind naturally wants to go. What is the technique you use? It sounds like you are a bit more advanced, how did you get to that point? I'd be interested in your experience!

Day 43 (Report from Monday the 28th) Days in a row: 1 Start time: around 4 p.m. (maybe) Finish time: around half an hour later Location: Garden at J.G.'s house Technique: Do nothing + mindfulness meditation Eyes: open, closed at the end Highlights: Maybe the most beautiful meditation I've had. I sat down next to a friend of mine under a tree in the garden and melted into nature. I picked a yellow flower as a focus point and let my mind free, and it started labelling some of the external stimuli (hear, feel, see). I had no major distractions, and reached an amazing state that felt as if I had reached a perfect balance. At some point I thought I could stay there forever, but my friend finished his meditation and told me some words, so I decided to stop there too and give him my attention. Finishing that way felt very organic (compared to waiting for an alarm to ring) and everything appeared more "real" or more "alive" after it. Day 44 Days in a row: 1 Start time: 9:25 a.m. Finish time: 9:40 a.m. Location: Room at my old flat Technique: Do nothing Eyes: closed Highlights: Monkey mind all the way through. I could feel tension in some parts of my body. I thought about things that I have to do, about things that I should have done and how my peers are accomplishing more in their lives than I am. Deep down I could feel myself observing those thoughts and knowing they don't mean anything, but on the surface they felt very real. Towards the end I wanted the meditation to end to be able to stand up and go and do something.

Day 42 Days in a row: 4 Start time: 12:30 p.m. Finish time: 01:10 p.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: closed Highlights: Super comfy meditation considering the length of it. At some point I thought that I could stay like that all day long, but if I wasn't going to do it was because "I had other things to do", and I kept repeating that same phrase several times as a mantra, kind of savoring the lack of meaning of it. At some point I disappeared, I was still thinking stuff, but I wasn't aware of absolutely anything, I wasn't observing my thoughts, nor was I conscious that I was sitting there meditating. It was almost as if I had fallen asleep during the meditation, although I wasn't sleeping. I reminded myself to raise awareness more after that. Also, at some point, the shape of my hands became very very confusing, it was as if I couldn't remember the position of the fingers in my hands, and I couldn't know in which position I had them. During all that time I didn't move them, I just realized that I genuinely couldn't understand the shape of my hands at some point, as if they were things I had never seen before.

Day 41 Days in a row: 3 Start time: 11:00 a.m. Finish time: 11:35 a.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open most of the time, closed for short moments Highlights: Extremely interrupted meditation session. I had to take a phone call from my father at the middle of it, and towards the end my mother started looking for me all over the place, until she found me meditating and told me "we are leaving in 15 min!". The rest of the time I had random thoughts and was able to maintain an awareness state of the fact that I was thinking stuff