Dream

Had a very vivid dream that I almost remembered whilst waking up but it absconded.

Meditation (Day 38)

Today went really well! Increased the meditation time from 40 minutes to 45, but didn't feel the need to look at my timer near the end. I did look at it halfway through, but that was to decide to switch positions at the halfway mark instead of the 25-minute mark. My legs are still falling asleep, and whilst I'm clearly still gaining flexibility, I'll have each leg do half of the session.

Though, I have looked up stretches and exercise for the lotus position and I'll start doing this before meditation I think. Turns out my flexibility is pretty far along, but there is a ways to go, still. Possibly months.

So I'll also play with my form regularly to find a compromise between pushing it towards ideal, and making absolutely sure that I'm not hurting myself. Better to go too slow than hurt myself, as well, so I'll try to err on the side of not hurting myself.

Anyways, I really got into a solid focus by the end of the meditation. Could really feel it. It was intense, and I think I was solidly in stage 4, where gross distraction and strong dullness were kept at bay via continuous introspective awareness. Stage 3 wasn't in full mastery mode today, as I think I forgot the breath once or twice, but it was in solid form for most of the session.

I'm also really starting to appreciate the random noises I hear whilst meditating. They're reminders to verify I'm practicing, and I thank them when I notice them. Gives me a bit of meditative joy.

Blog Guidance for the Day

Ooh, new section. Instead of just reporting on what happened, let's make a bit of guidance for myself (avoiding calling it a goal). I'd like to edit and get my "Introduction to Meditation by a Beginner" in a "publishable" state today. It's not going to be good, because I don't do this. But I've been told that quantity is more important than quality, because experience will bring quality, and quantity is experience. I'd like to go for 1 thing of writing a week (won't necessarily be a blogpost each week, as there's writing to do for, say, the work wiki and stuff like that).

In any case, I'm pretty sure there's enough content in the post now, and I just need to heavily edit it. The goal today is to work on it until it's in a state that makes sense. I can do this multiple times, but the idea is that the state it's in at the end of the day is its final state. If I don't touch it today, its raw state is how I'll publish it. Which should be... understandably readable, but very rough.

No Blog Writing Today

Ended up playing a bunch of SSBM, and watching a fair amount of TV. Didn't even look at the blog.

....

I guess stick with what I said? I'll give what I've written so far a proof-read and post it. I might not have much time tomorrow, and I'm planning on devoting time I was going to devote to blog to work writing, so....

We'll see what I do, I guess. I'll probably just post it as a blog here, even.

Hmmmm....

Maybe I'll make some time tomorrow to copy it into a post here.

Welp, Went Ahead and Did the Above Right Away

Cleaned it up a tiny bit. I wanted to basically rewrite it entirely. Not happy with some bits. Maybe I'll come back to it later. Though at what point am I not a beginner anymore? Eh, figure if I haven't been practicing for a year I'm still that.

Heh, maybe my next post will be an analysis of this post.

At some point the proper blog posts should live somewhere, though.