Well, I just had my version of a perfect day. Full work day, half standing, half at desk, with no fatigue. Instead of collapsing into a stupor at the end, took a walk, made a high-utility friend, and then resumed productivity at home.
I’ve only exposed one hole in the meditation. While social performance is great, it seems somewhat poorly adapted for expressing and experiencing positive emotion. (Ha ha, wonder why.) The result is either underexpression of positive affect or succumbing to the temptation to go “off-script” and interrupt meditation. This only applies to happy – I do relaxed and neutral-positive fine.
I’ve always thought of “chains” in a negative, limiting sense, but the concept is easy to adapt to positivity. On one side of the coin is limitation and pain; on the other, surprise, spontaneity, savory briefness, poignancy, thrills etc. This teaches one to savor and anticipate happiness without resisting or regretting its inevitable passing.
I admit the end of today left me feeling somewhat baffled, to the point where I wondered whether I might be more fatigued than I felt. Actually, I just hadn’t figured out how to congruently be happy while meditating, and the two were fighting for mental position. What a hilarious conflict to have. Anyhow, now I know how to incorporate the damn sunbeams.
I always assumed that achieving discipline required sacrificing some measure of joy. How odd should that turn out not to be the case. There ought to be a price for such things. What exactly am I sacrificing? It’s unclear.
Losing the ability to obsess over reams of reheated l-mode garbage doesn’t seem like a loss. It all came from r-mode anyway, so why am I putting it into words? And then, heaven forbid a decision gets made, r-mode has to execute. So outside communication, l-mode is just a complete waste of time.
Am I wrong? Does anyone actually believe using the above massively inefficient process to generate an inner monologue can ever IMPROVE the quality of thinking, pace LessWrong?
Anyhow, the new meditation weighs so lightly on me after the point-inhale chains-exhale modification, that “Follow me” is too heavy a trigger. “My yoke is light” works better – Jesus again. I’m more floating than following, but yes the yoke is light.