My Experiment: Part 8

You can read Part 7 here: Enjoying the Journey

I might be getting the hang of the tides at the surf break across the road from me. It’s a tricky balance: if the tide is too high, it washes out the break. But if the tide is too low, the rocks appear– no bueno. The sweet spot is found somewhere in between.

The other day, I timed it just right. High tide was around 6:30am, when the sun chases me off the beach after my dawn meditation. The surf looked pretty flat as I left, so I meandered back to my porch and wrote for a while, enjoying the cool morning calm. When I checked the waves an hour later again, they still didn’t look promising, but I felt like getting in the water, so I went for it.

Conditions were ideal. A whisper of wind gave the sea a smooth, silky texture that was irresistibly inviting. Desultory clouds lazily wafted across the sky, providing relief from the blazing glare and relentless heat of the sun.

Despite initial appearances, the waves turned out beautiful as well. Small, only about three feet, but perfectly shaped and breaking consistently. Plush shoulders peeled off the point, delivering glossy faces, perfect for effortless, gliding rides.

No one else was out that day, I had the break all to myself. In between sets, floating out in the dazzling blue, breathing in the rejuvenating sea air, looking back at jungle-covered hills, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, existing in harmony with the universe, fitting right in.

A quote from Joseph Campbell crystalized in my head: “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” I felt my heart thumping in time with the cosmic pulse. Sublime joy suffused my being, accompanied by a sense of relief and profound gratitude. Relief for escaping my soul-sucking, 9-5 office job; and gratitude for finding a life I want to live. After so much time living a life that felt wrong to me, it’s marvelous to feel like I finally fit in.

Since moving to Costa Rica, moments like these have been occurring more frequently. When I get out of my head and start feelingwhat I should do instead of thinkingwhat I should do, it’s much easier to go with the flow of life, to find the path of least resistance and fit right into the world.  When I let go of my all my schemes for future happiness and open myself to the opportunities presented in the moment, things tend to work out just right and life doesn’t seem like such a struggle. If I had listened to my intellect, which didn’t see promising waves that morning, I might have skipped surfing. But I just felt like going, so I did, and wound up in the perfect place at the perfect time.

My Experiment: Part 7

(You can read Part 6 here: Slowing Down)

My apartment in Costa Rica is about two miles outside of town, which takes me roughly forty minutes to walk. There’s a bus that runs past three times a day, but the schedule isn’t always convenient and it doesn’t run at night. Consequently, I end up walking quite a bit. I noticed myself getting annoyed with the trek, especially at night if I’m trying to catch a ride but the hitchhiking gods aren’t smiling. It started to become a thing, when deciding whether or not to go into town at night, I was factoring in the hassle of getting there and back. The hike had become solely a means to an end, the way to get to civilization. I was focusing only on the destination, impatiently trying to get there as fast as possible.

Then I had an experience that transformed my appreciation of the journey. I was heading home at night, after the weekly open mic. It was a fun evening, I’m getting more comfortable playing in front of people and overall it was a good vibe. So I was in good spirits as I started the jaunt back. The moon was high in the sky, one day shy of full. At first, on the way out of town, I was trying catch a ride, with no luck. However, once I reached a long stretch of road with no lights, the magic unfolded.

Walking under a bright moon, in utter darkness, is an experience like no other. Lights completely negate the effect; when I was walking in town, it was a night like any other. In total blackness, moonlight shrouds the world in a velvety, silvery glow. I could see my surroundings clearly, but everything looked ethereal and other-worldly in the subtle glimmer of moonshine. The road was a ghostly ribbon carving through the gossamer jungle. Shimmering waves sparkled fleetingly before crashing on the scabrous rocks. Scenes of Tolkien flashed through my mind, hints of elven-song danced on the breeze as I meandered through the trees. The night felt more alive than ever before.

The shadows cast by moonlight are equally enthralling, made of soft, misty lines, not the sharp demarcations of sunshade. The border between light and dark isn’t distinct, the line between is and is not blurs into a sumptuous in-between.

Since that night, it’s been much easier to embrace the trek into town as its own separate adventure. The goal is no longer to get there as quickly as possible, the goal is to relish the travel itself. What was once an obstacle to overcome before having fun is now fun itself. Of course, it’s easy to enjoy a walk here, the road is either ringed by jungle or skirting the ocean. In San Francisco, I used to drive to destinations in order to enjoy an environment like this. But even in this setting, I was turning the experience into a hurdle by focusing on the destination instead of the journey itself. Ironically, when I immerse myself in the sensations of the hike, it goes by much quicker than when I was just trying to get through it.

It’s a metaphor for life. Often, I’m too focused on getting through whatever task I’m working on in order to get to the fun stuff. Since blowing up my life and moving to Costa Rica, it’s been much easier to enjoy the present moment, but I still notice myself sometimes rushing through something in order to experience what’s next. Slowing down and fully embracing whatever is happening now leads to a much fuller appreciation of my life. My existence used to consist of moments of happiness followed by hours of boredom. Now the ratio is reversed, and it’s an overwhelming relief.

The journey continues!

You can read Part 8 here: Fitting Right In

My Experiment: Part 6 (You can read part 5 here Finding Balance)

The pace of my life continues to slow down, and the effect is transformational.

Every morning begins with a sunrise meditation on the beach. The rich amber tones of the dawn sky gradually lighten to blue. Venus and Jupiter have been visible before daybreak since I’ve been here, adding to the allure. Sometimes my mind is unsettled at first, but as the sun crests the horizon, gradually brightening the darkness behind my closed eyes and warming my skin, it grabs me like a tractor beam, wresting my being out of the grip of my intellect. The next half hour, before the heat becomes uncomfortable, is pure bliss, absorbed in the magnificence of the growing luminescence.

Many days conclude at the beach as well, a marvelous means to unwind with the transition from day to night, light to dark, active to subdued. The actual sunset is hidden on the other side of the peninsula, but splendidly lit clouds are often visible. Facing east allows me to witness the arrival of the stars, and I’m beginning to recognize the order of the procession. Sirius appears first, followed by Rigel, in the Orion Constellation. Then they pop out rapidly: Betelguese, Canopus, Procyon, Capella, like old friends arriving at a party. The whole performance unfolds to the soundtrack of crashing waves and that indescribable feeling of dusk. It’s been nearly a month, and the magic still consumes me every time.

Slowing down enables me to delight in simple joys like sunrise and sunset. Sitting on my porch, enjoying the shade and the cool ocean breeze. Watching an iguana climb a tree to eat the tender new shoots at the crown. The art of perfectly cooked rice. Hanging my laundry to dry in the sun. Sweeping sand out of my apartment. The daring acrobatics of capuchin monkeys cavorting in the trees. Settling in to moments like these fills me with a profound sense of contentment. Much different from the hectic, harried existence of my former life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I’m even coming to appreciate my part-time, remote job as a biological database curator. Several years ago I did this work as a fulltime employee, and I was always rushing through the tasks, finishing everything as quickly as possible. Now that I’m slowing down and only working a couple hours per day, I’m learning to derive a sense of fulfillment from meticulously caring for the data. In my entire professional career, I never had employment that I really liked. I think that’s mostly because there’s no single profession I would like to do all day, every day. Working part-time enables me to pursue my other interests, which allows me to actually enjoy work.

However my brain is still finding things to get wound up about. It wants to slip back into the habit of feeling irritated by minor annoyances. Sometimes considerable effort is required to let go of the little inconveniences that arise. I discussed plans in my last post. I’m still required to create plans, around the tides, the bus schedule, yoga classes, etc., and I often notice myself living in the plan instead of the moment. But I’m catching it sooner, and each time it’s a tiny bit easier to release expectations, unwind, and surrender to the present.

You can read Part 7 here: Enjoying the Journey

My Experiment: Part 5

(You can read Part 4 here: My Experiment: Part 4 – Breaking Patterns)

It’s astounding how insidiously my mind continues attempting to create programs and slip into autopilot. I’m not sure why that happens. Perhaps because coasting on autopilot requires less mental energy than staying fully aware and responsive to the environment?

Again, I found myself getting really busy and all wound-up in my head, but for completely different reasons this time. My friend Chris was in town for the past two and half weeks (he arrived the same day I did). The last couple days, we were celebrating his birthday and send-off. It was a lot of fun, but a tad hectic… very active, lots of doing, not as much time for being. After he left, I was feeling a bit muddled, a little hung-over and coming down from the rush of all the activity. I don’t regret the adventures, it was a great time, but it left me wanting more, desiring the next fix of excitement.

Fortunately, the stillness and magic of Costa Rica’s natural beauty rescued me once more. At sunset, I went for a walk along the beach. I decided to search for shells and rocks to decorate my apartment, so I started playing close attention to the beach. It was spectacular. The diversity of color in the shells and rocks is absolutely astonishing. The more I looked, the more marvels I found. I felt like a child in wonderland, amazed by everything around me. Soon my hands and pockets were full and I forced myself to stop looking, because everywhere I glanced, another gorgeous piece called out to me.

Then I stopped and sat on a log, immersed in the melody of crashing waves and the dimming light of the gloaming. No other souls around, except for a pair of dogs who cruised past on their evening jaunt. I started playing with my treasures, not really trying to do much, just tinkering with them, examining them, experimenting with their positioning relative to each other. It’s remarkably freeing, to just play in an unstructured manner like that. No plan, no agenda, just letting my creative instincts wander, interacting with the beauty surrounding me. The elegance of the results surprised me.

When I have lots of fun, it makes me want to keep having fun, to seek out ways to recreate the great experiences I just had. My brain starts scheming, plotting, planning ways to fabricate another great adventure, instead of simply experiencing the circumstances at hand. My intellect devises a plan for some future peak event, and then starts judging the situations that unfold according to the plan instead of fully living in the moment as it occurs.

Often, it’s not a fully conscious program, there’s just a loop spinning in the background, comparing the current environment to the last one, deciding if it’s as much fun or not. I think that’s why alcohol and drugs are popular, they help shutdown those algorithms running in the background.

Balance, finding the right balance is a constant struggle. I heard somewhere that you’ll never be balanced, you’ll always be balancing. There will never be a time when everything is perfectly balanced, you continually need to seek balance. Spending all my time alone on the beach is not the answer, neither is spending all my time in town, around people. The trick is finding the harmony between the two, and between all the other circumstances of my life.

I think the key is to let go of all schemes to create the “perfect” experience. When I stop comparing my surroundings to the plan and fully observe them as they are, it’s easier to see the perfection and grace already present in every situation. By releasing my expectations of how things should be, I’m free to live in the moment as it is.

It’s a work in progress, but I feel like I’m making progress🤗.

You can read Part 6 here: Slowing Down.

You can read part 3 here: My Experiment: Part 3 – Always Wanting More

Costa Rica is perfect for slowing down and breaking patterns.

The other day, I felt myself slipping into old patterns of thought. I rode the bus over to the next town to run errands, and I encountered several struggles that prevented me from completing my tasks. Then the bus back to my village was over an hour late. Sitting there, at the crowded bus stop, I felt my mind getting all wound up, irritated and annoyed, which led my body to become tense and stressed. These are the feelings I came to Costa Rica to escape.

Luckily, I started feeling better once I got back home. Being back closer to the ocean, in my smaller town helped. Then around sunset, I went for a walk on the beach. Ahh, the feeling of dusk, the earth winding down from the day. The ocean takes on the hue of blue steel, the darkening sky tinged by hints of fire. The beach was practically deserted, no sounds or sights of humanity to mar the peace. The tension melted away and my mind unwound, dissolved in the glory of nature.

After dinner I sat on my porch, in the dark, just listening to the ocean and a sonorous orchestra of insects, punctuated by the occasional rumble of a car trundling down the dirt road out front. The neighbor’s light provided just enough contrast to barely discern the outlines of the jungle. Soaking in the sounds and the feeling of nature, I was immersed in a deep feeling of contentment.

Slowing down, breaking old patterns, deprograming my mind. I used to get so wound up, and the tension would just stick with me, winding up tighter and tighter until I felt I would crack. I can see how I could get back to that, even here, if I’m not careful. Between working my part-time job and dealing with the idiosyncrasies of Costa Rican life, I could easily find minor annoyances to get bent out of shape about.

My meditation teacher once said, “Wherever you go, there you are.” She was talking about people doing exactly what I’m doing, running away to a new location in hopes of running away from unhappiness. The problem is, if you’re creating the unhappiness in your mind, you’ll take it with you. I’m beginning to see how that could happen, if I’m not vigilant.

But being here, in this new environment, provides opportunities to help me break out of these old patterns, if I can be aware enough of what’s happening in my mind to take advantage of those gifts. Taking the time to slow down and walk on the beach at sunset; not trying to do too much and fill my time with distractions; surrendering to the astounding beauty of the surrounding nature and the relaxed pace of life; these are all advantages of living here that were lacking in my previous home in the states.

Now I need to work on not getting wound up in the first place. Not reacting according to my conditioned programs when things don’t go exactly my way. Breaking patterns is tough, deprogramming is challenging. But it’s better than the alternative of my old life 😊.

Read Part 5 here: Finding Balance

You can read Part 2 here: My Experiment: Part 2 – The Return

Now that I’m away from all the situations that trigger my automatic responses, and slowing down my life, I’m becoming aware of the baseline programs running in my brain. I’m noticing my brain spends a lot of time planning for the future, thinking what I should do next, both in the short-term and long-term. This seems to be a common program that starts spinning up in my brain, thinking about the future, what I need to do to maximize happiness. It’s easy to spend so much time scheming for the future that I miss out on the present.

I read an interesting passage in Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment that touches on this topic. “One of the Buddha’s main messages was that the pleasures we seek evaporate quickly and leave us thirsting for more. We spend our time looking for the next gratifying thing, the next powdered sugar donut, the next sexual encounter, the next status-enhancing promotion, the next online purchase. But the thrill always fades, and it always leaves us wanting more.”

I’m noticing this happening to me. When all my schemes finally come to fruition, I often rarely get to enjoy the rewards, because my brain starts up again with new schemes.

Examining this dilemma through the lens of evolutionary psychology provides some insight. According to Wright, “We were ‘designed’ by natural selection to do certain things that helped our ancestors get their genes into the next generation…. Pleasure is designed by natural selection to evaporate, so that the ensuing dissatisfaction will get us to pursue more pleasure. Natural selection doesn’t want us to be happy after all, it just wants us to be productive… and the way to make us productive is to make the anticipation of pleasure very strong, but the pleasure itself not very long lasting.”

We’re programed to always want more, because cavemen who always wanted more passed on more genes than those who were content with life. But now that we’re not facing the same selective pressures our cavemen ancestors faced, that drive to always want more is making us crazy and destroying the environment.

I kept experiencing the other night, listening to the phenomenal musicians performing at the local open mic. Sometimes they get into a groove, and it’s like the world disappears, and the only thing that exists is the music. A moment of peak experience, when I’m totally present in the moment, absorbed in the music. Then the moment would pass, and my brain would start coming up for ideas of what I need to do, what circumstances I need to change in order to get back into that peak experience.

I began to realize that instead of doing anything, changing anything, if I just relax, and open my senses back up to the present, I could get back into the feeling of peak experience, sink back down into that total absorption in the moment. Throughout the night, whenever I noticed that dissatisfaction growing, I’d try to just let go of it, drop down out my mind and into my senses, fully experience whatever was going on around. It wasn’t always successful, sometimes I did need to move of change something. But overall, by continually focusing on experiencing my environment instead of judging it, I kept settling into a state of contentment. It was a pretty cool experience, and it made for a great night.

The next morning, when I had to work, it was much harder to stay totally focused in the moment, so I still have work to do. In theory, if my mind is really quiet, I should be able to be content in any environment. But I’m not there yet. In the meantime, moving to Costa Rica, to this totally new environment, is facilitating my efforts to be present. There is so much natural beauty around, and so many happy, content people, that it takes less effort to fully experience the environment. There’s lots there that I want to experience fully. The constant crashing of waves, the ocean sparkling in the sun, insect and bird calls, fascinating stories from people’s lives. It’s easier to get absorbed in the wonder surrounding me.

You can read Part 4 here: My Experiment: Part 4 – Breaking Patterns

Photo above: my new home office

You can read Part 1 here: My Experiment: Part 1 – Introduction

My month-long experiment in Costa Rica yielded promising results. To recap, the goal of the trip was to deprogram my mind, to determine if being in a different environment would facilitate breaking the patterns in my mind that keep me unhappy. The small town of Montezuma was everything I hoped for and more. While researching my trip, every time I encountered references to Montezuma, I felt it calling to me. Prior to arrival, I had a loose idea of traveling throughout the Nicoya peninsula, looking for the right environment to conduct my experiment. But Montezuma had everything I wanted, so I wound up staying there for three weeks. After returning to San Francisco, I rid myself of most of my possessions and spent a month with my family in Milwaukee. Now I’ve returned to Montezuma, intending to stay for at least six months and continue the experiment.

People say Costa Rica has a slower pace of life, and I can feel that here. As soon as I arrived, I felt different. All my self-destructive urges started to disappear. In SF, I used food as a coping mechanism, often over-eating because my brain wanted to indulge its whims in seeking pleasure after spending so much time trapped in work, forced to do things I didn’t want to do. Especially sugar, I was constantly battling an addiction to sugar, because of the rush of pleasure it unleashes in the brain. (The only reason I wasn’t overweight is because my other go-to stress relief was exercise, especially 10-15 mile trail runs on weekends.)

Almost immediately upon arrival in Montezuma, I started eating less food in general, and almost no sugar. I just stopped craving it like I did before. As a result, my body started feeling much healthier. A reoccurring pain in my left side disappeared. I started sleeping better (which was also helped by the soothing lull of the ocean). My body started craving a really simple diet, lots of amazingly delicious fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, rice and beans. Some cheese and eggs for protein, with occasional meat dishes. My body started to feel like it was living harmoniously, instead of constantly presenting aches and pains that caused an incessant fear of dying of cancer or heart disease. It’s much easier to be present and still when your body isn’t in a state of discomfort.

The social environment in Montezuma is much less stressful than the US. This is one of the few places where I feel like I can just be myself and no one will judge me. In SF, I felt this constant pressure to conform, to fit it, buy into the great big shared illusion that everyone believes in. I constantly hid my real self, because I often felt judged when I expressed my true self, with all its glorious weirdness. Montezuma feels liberating, like there is no status quo to which everyone must conform. Or maybe that’s just my perspective, coming into this totally different environment. In any case, when I am out in social situations here, I feel like I can express myself here, without worrying about being judged. It feels like a judgement free zone, with no rules and no expectations.

In SF, I spent a lot of time alone, because being out in the world felt harsh and abrasive. Here in Montezuma, I feel like I can just wander into town and start talking to people, and it’s all ok. Again, maybe it’s just from being in an environment that is so different from what I’m used to. But the effect on me is a feeling of liberation, I can finally be myself.

As soon as I returned to San Francisco after my trip, I felt the pressure again, it felt suffocating. I could feel it as the plane was descending to the airport. I arrived at night, and seeing the vast expanse of lights that make up the Bay Area was a visual metaphor for the overwhelming web of oppressive human attention. I even felt some of that while visiting my family in Milwaukee. It’s not as intense there, but it’s still there, this pressure to conform, to fit into to this whole society thing. The whole time I was back in the US, in that pressure, I really struggled writing this post, because the pressure makes it hard to think clearly. Only after returning to Montezuma and unwinding for a bit do I feel able to put these thoughts into words.

Stay tuned for more insights from the experiment!

Read Part 3 here: My Experiment: Part 3 – Always Wanting More