people are like "can't just sit for 20mins, real magic happens if you meditate for an hour" but um by the time I've been sitting for 20mins I'm not meditating anymore I'm just thinking about stuff
5 tweets · October 2023 · 66 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
people are like "can't just sit for 20mins, real magic happens if you meditate for an hour" but um by the time I've been sitting for 20mins I'm not meditating anymore I'm just thinking about stuff
to be clear, by ~20mins, it's not like I'm thinking, then noticing I'm thinking, then returning to the breath or whatever. that = meditating I'm thinking, then notici—then thinking my mind gets too chaotic to successfully return my attention to anything
I suppose I could explore doing this anyway, without any deeper intent, and see what happens (I guess that's kind of like shikantaza / "just sit" meditation? but I feel unmotivated to do do things when I don't sense a feedback loop, which seems likely)
just did a 1h sit where I had no intent other than "move as little as I can manage" and I had a lot of back pain but way less overwhelm and I was neither particularly bored nor particularly distracted maybe my overwhelm = cascade of failure then self-judgment then distraction?
like if I think there's something I'm supposed to be doing, & I'm failing to do it, that builds up some sort of aversive thing which makes my mind spin out of control thinking about stuff and refusing to engage with instructions? that's not all of it, but might be part of it 🤔