Explore the world, explore the self

"Sometimes life cannot be explained, and that’s ok. We might feel frustrated by this, and that’s ok too." I have the mentality for the first part of this lesson. I accept a lot of things can and will happen. But I need to learn about the second half of this. It’s ok to feel not ok with those unexpected things, especially the feelings of other people.  

[TransformingAnger] 15mins "We tend to notice anger as soon as it happens, but we often don’t notice the end of it." I think my annoyance is similar to anger. It might be just a milder version of anger to me. So next time when I feel annoyed, I will notice my out-breath and relax. It’ll be even better if I can catch the end of my feeling. See how my emotion changes. I felt a good posture today. Maybe it’s in the latter half of the session. I felt all my spine lined up and my thigh muscle relaxed. I noticed I tend to lean forward and that causes my leg muscles to tense up. When I opened my eyes in my good posture, I was looking straight instead of looking down like I have been doing for working and reading.  I finally get a hand on soft-focus today. I visualized in my session that I leaned back from my breath and only reach out one of my arms to ‘touch’ on the breath. Previously I was full head into the breath, the full focus on the breath. However, there w...

[Unguided 15mins] It went pretty well at the beginning. I was able to get into counting my breath well and go through several 10 counts in and out. However, I kind of dozing off fishing during the breathing. I don’t think I fell asleep but I suddenly had to catch myself from falling forward. It happened more than three times I think. I seemed to have some trouble maintaining the focus.  

[ ManagingAnxietyLvl1] 15mins "Let your thoughts and feelings come and go without trying to control them. Bring your mind back to the moment." Andy said it’s like talking to friends and families. You never think about how you talk to them but just talk to them. Observing thoughts and emotions should be similar to that, just observe and not thinking.   I didn’t have the satisfactory feeling when letting go because my concentration on the breath wasn’t as deep as yesterday. No pain no gain. Need to do the work in order to feel the reward.

[ManagingAnxietyLvl1] 15mins "It’s about building a strong foundation for acknowledging how you think and feel, with both the body and the mind." Build the foundation opposed to what? Oppose to just doing the motion? It should be talking about the everyday practice, Andy says the foundation is creating a space for the thinking and feeling to be noted. The space for them to exist but not occupying all of me. That’s how I interpret it. Because of the morning phone call with outside vendor, I did the meditation at the office this morning. There were a lot of distractions around but I was doing well during this session. I noted pretty strong emotion of anxiety on top of my stomach, all the way to the top of my lung. There was something else at the lower end of my stomach. I think it’s also anxiety/nervousness but it’s different than the one on top. The top one was more suffocating and the bottom one being a sharper pain. It could be the difference between anxiety...

[ManagingAnxietyLvl1] 15mins "If you tend to be anxious in everyday life, try to simply note it and return to the moment." Andy told me to distinguish thinking and feeling. I found that I was thinking the most of the time and didn’t have the feeling moment often. Or maybe that’s what I thought. Maybe I have miscategorized my feelings into thinking. As the event of talking to her, I thought I was thinking about the ways she behaved and what I plan to do, but in fact, I was feeling some anger toward her. I was feeling that she was being unfair. That was the feeling. Maybe I have been doing that, categorizing my feeling into me thinking about the event and thinking about what I should be doing. Maybe planning is part of “thinking”, but I should recognize my feeling toward the events as that, feelings.   So that means I finally am taking the first step toward my goal. After 251 days, I finally am recognizing my feelings and dealing with it. It’s later than I have tho...

[ProLevel6] 15mins "Identity is the feeling of me, myself, and I as separate from the world." A new and final course on the practice of meditation! I view ‘me’ as the gateway to the world. The world is filtered through ‘me’ before forming the existence in my mind. It will be amazing if I can see the world in its true form without my filter. Or Andy is just saying not to get too hung on the filter but see what’s passed through. He says we will go into more depth tomorrow. Looking forward to it.