04-12-2015, 05:36 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-12-2015, 05:43 AM by APeacefulWarrior.)
My practice is... nebulous. Haha. Basically, it boils down to "Take what opportunities I can when they present themselves."
Personally, I spent a decade or more wrestling with a problem of being too introspective, to the point of self-analyzing even during action\work, which is also a very self-defeating process at the end of the day. You can DO or you can ANALYZE, but you really can't do both at once. At least not without doing both poorly.
(Do or do not, there is no try.
)
And this isn't even necessarily a call to abandon distraction but, perhaps, to be more careful in choosing the form of distraction. It's known to be common among high level / creative / philosophical people to engage in hobbies specifically because they help free the mind. A person knitting or whittling, for example, can often achieve a very good level of "active meditation" that allows them to think clearly while their hands are busy doing something relatively menial\repetitive.
And yeah, the voyage of self-discovery can be painful at times. That's the unfortunate part, and another reason it's easy to turn towards unhelpful distractions. Looking for helpful distractions also helps ease that pain, at least in my experience, by channeling the energies into something productive. Plus, taking up a hobby of some sort provides a concrete externalized illustration of self-improvement: You demonstrably get better at that hobby alongside your less-tangible mental improvements.
Oh, and just as a tip: I found myself that ideas like "the deepest and fullest answer" can be self-defeating because there's no such thing. The answers are boundless. I suggest focusing instead on simply finding NEW answers, or further revisions to those answers, and then mediating on how those discoveries alter your self-perception.
That way you're not chasing an unobtainable goal, but instead looking at it as a step-by-step-by-step evolutionary process.
Personally, I spent a decade or more wrestling with a problem of being too introspective, to the point of self-analyzing even during action\work, which is also a very self-defeating process at the end of the day. You can DO or you can ANALYZE, but you really can't do both at once. At least not without doing both poorly.
(Do or do not, there is no try.
) And this isn't even necessarily a call to abandon distraction but, perhaps, to be more careful in choosing the form of distraction. It's known to be common among high level / creative / philosophical people to engage in hobbies specifically because they help free the mind. A person knitting or whittling, for example, can often achieve a very good level of "active meditation" that allows them to think clearly while their hands are busy doing something relatively menial\repetitive.
And yeah, the voyage of self-discovery can be painful at times. That's the unfortunate part, and another reason it's easy to turn towards unhelpful distractions. Looking for helpful distractions also helps ease that pain, at least in my experience, by channeling the energies into something productive. Plus, taking up a hobby of some sort provides a concrete externalized illustration of self-improvement: You demonstrably get better at that hobby alongside your less-tangible mental improvements.
Oh, and just as a tip: I found myself that ideas like "the deepest and fullest answer" can be self-defeating because there's no such thing. The answers are boundless. I suggest focusing instead on simply finding NEW answers, or further revisions to those answers, and then mediating on how those discoveries alter your self-perception.
That way you're not chasing an unobtainable goal, but instead looking at it as a step-by-step-by-step evolutionary process.
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