Explore the world, explore the self

[DealingWithDistraction] 15mins At the beginning of the session, I felt a mild headache when doing the body scan, but during the session, it felt less and less present. At the end of the meditation, I couldn’t find it any longer.  Today I was able to focus easily during the session. I had the feeling that I was underwater when I was in intense focus. I felt my senses, especially hearing, was covered up or muffled, so that I could hear my thoughts better. Or is that the sense of clarity Andy talked about in his book? Maybe I associate the focus with anything to do with water because in the book, Andy uses the metaphor of ripples in a deep and clear pool to describe thoughts in the mind.  Another thing I noticed today was that every breath I took was kind of different. Although I have been instructed to examine my breath carefully that there should be minute variation about them, I never really found them to be anything but identical. I don’t believe my breath were d...

[DealingWithDistraction] 15mins "When we don’t try too hard, the idea of effortless focus starts to make a lot more sense." Suppressing my eye movement doesn’t seem to work. Maybe that’s ‘trying too hard.’ I should just let it happen. I didn’t have as deep a focus as yesterday. I felt it both on my still moving eye movements and my mind. Still felt relaxed after the session but the difference between focus and letting go of focus wasn’t very obvious. I felt the familiar sense of comfortable pulsing in my head but not as profound. But maybe I shouldn’t seek that experience and just accept what I am feeling from day to day.   I think meditation helps me accept what other people feel. Before this, I know what other people feel about things, but I thought there’s some way to get rid of those unpleasant feeling or emotions. That is denying what and how they feel. Denial is not a good way to go about helping others. I think I am more accepting of her feelings and thin...

It’s a pretty short book with lots of pictures. I flipped through the book looking at the interesting sections. The book is mainly about what kind of behaviors we should have at work. • Not just do things by one’s self. Should think about how to convince others to follow suit. • Be a good employee to my managers. Not just at work but also on a personal level. This I think is mainly for the Japanese culture. I don’t think it’s necessary for the US workforce. It’s still good to bring gifts or snacks for everyone at work, but probably not asking managers to happy hours, especially the ones have families. • Help the people under management improve themselves and promote. Delegation is important for them to learn. • Use the connection of people on the same level in the hierarchy or the people went into the company around the same time. Both in the same company and outside right now. • Need to prioritize tasks and let go of those non-essential tasks. There’s a whole chapter about how t...

I love to have this habit of reading books. It came from my parents and 阿爹. Not only my dad’s curiosity and preaching for books inspired me to follow suit, but my mom’s habit of reading novels to unwind also taught me the fun and relaxing aspect of reading. In the beginning, looking at all those books accumulated in the study of 阿爹, should either intimidate me or awe me. But I remember that’s not what happened. I just viewed it be normal, as the furniture holding that extraordinary collection. I even just nonchalantly added my own kid's books to the shelves. I love it and was lucky to have this kind of environment that I felt reading books are normal and part of life.   There were times, not too long ago, I felt that with all those information easily accessible on the internet, I might not need books. There are all the articles, videos, podcasts, updates on the web that I can get all the knowledge and information I need from them. But I was wrong. Some ideas and stories do ...

[Dealing With Distraction] The action item from this lesson is: • Notice how often I get distracted, by phone or something else? Do that by keeping possible distraction away from reach and see how often I reach for them. • Pause during the day and focus, maybe use the visualization of attention flow learned from the previous course. I noticed at the beginning of my meditation, I had some rapid eye movements. I felt it when my eyes are closed. My eyelids kept fluttering, almost pried open by my eye movements. And during the meditation, I felt the eye quieted down when I got into the focus state. Sometimes when I had some thoughts and wandered off, the eyelid fluttering came back. I might be able to use this as an indication if I am in a focus state. Or maybe I can control my eye movements, calm it down, to get into the focus state faster. Another thing I noticed today is that if I write down the thoughts and action items, I can get back to focus state faster. There...