Enjoying the Journey

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,Continue reading “Enjoying the Journey”

Slowing Down

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 daybreakContinue reading “Slowing Down”

Finding Balance

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?Continue reading “Finding Balance”

My Experiment: Part 4 – Breaking Patterns

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 meContinue reading “My Experiment: Part 4 – Breaking Patterns”

My Experiment: Part 3 – Always Wanting More

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, thinkingContinue reading “My Experiment: Part 3 – Always Wanting More”

My Experiment: Part 2 – The Return

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 thatContinue reading “My Experiment: Part 2 – The Return”

My Experiment: Part 1 – Introduction

I want to deprogram my mind. I feel like I have all these programs running through my head that have developed in response to my environment. I needed to develop these programs, because we all have to figure out how to fit in to our environment. But often, the programs get out of control, theyContinue reading “My Experiment: Part 1 – Introduction”

Killing Time

“Killing time”, that’s an interesting choice of words. When you’re bored, you have time to kill, you’re waiting for something better to happen. The way this phrase is worded, we tend to think “killing” is used as an action: we’re killing time, reducing the amount of time between now and some future event. But whatContinue reading “Killing Time”

The Light Inside

The Light InsideBy Reaction Mass I can feel it    the light inside of meShining through     from Eternity I am light     light is me http://www.reactionmassmusic.com This is a song about meditation, about the experiences I have when my mind goes quiet, my thoughts drop away, and I can feel my connection to theContinue reading “The Light Inside”