Spiritual practice/meditation

My wife and I have been without electricity for 11 days during the aftermath of the worst ice storm to hit Oregon in a long time. In fact, it might have been the worst ice storm ever to hit the state. Today, while I was on a dog walk around our rural south Salem neighborhood, I heard someone scream in delight. Then I noticed lights on in houses.  For the rest of my walk home I visualized coming back to a house with electricity. I pictured myself taking a hot bath for the first time in over a week and…

Someone sent me a link to an interesting BBC story, "How too much mindfulness can spike anxiety." It describes research about the downside of mindfulness and meditation in general.  In any discussion of mindfulness, it’s important to remember that there are many different techniques that train particular types of thinking and being. The best-known strategies are mindful breathing, in which you focus on the feelings of respiration, and the body scan, in which you pass your attention from head to toe, noting any physical sensations that arise in the course of the session. These kinds of practices are meant to…

This morning I listened to a guided meditation by Jeff Warren on my iPhone's Calm app that I liked so much, I wanted to describe what he said before it slips my mind. Phantom Energy is a real thing. It's the energy consumed by electronic devices when they are off, but still using power, such as the clock on a microwave oven that displays even when the oven isn't being used. Within our mind, Phantom Energy Vampires are those worries, anxieties, frettings, and such that are running in the background of our consciousness even when there is no real purpose…

After writing a few days ago about what a great resource the Zen Studies Podcast is, every morning I've been reading one of the 131 episodes in the order they were published.  Today I tried to also read a book I have about Shikantaza, the Zen approach to meditation that involves not doing anything special. I did my best to absorb a chapter consisting of the words of an 8th or 9th century Zen teacher, but they didn't make much sense to me. Too poetic, too meandering, too unclear. So I closed that book and happily read another podcast by…

Here's part of what Sam Harris said yesterday in a guided meditation on his Waking Up app that I listen to most mornings, along with a guided meditation by Tamara Levitt on my Calm iPhone app. What would this moment be like if there truly was nothing missing, and nothing to do? Nothing to improve. Nothing to wait for. What if this is it? Is there any sign that it is insufficient? Is there any sign of its imperfection? Is there something you’re trying to accomplish? Simply relinquish all effort to try to improve experience in this moment. Let everything…

Here's ten minutes of inspiration from Judson Brewer. This is an excerpt of the video description. Scroll down for the video. We have all experienced moments in our lives where everything just comes together in some almost magical way --whether playing music, participating in a sport, or just getting totally absorbed in a project. These moments are timeless, effortless, completely free of worry and delicious! As described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, this is "flow" and is often a hallmark of exemplary performance --whether it is Michael Jordan scoring 50 points in a basketball game, or someone rising to a challenge that…

Mooka, our Husky mix dog, has a lot of talents. One of them that struck me on our daily two-mile dog walk this afternoon reflected how I feel about religion and spirituality. In short, prove it.  Mooka does a lot of sniffing as we walk along. More accurately, she both sniffs as we walk, and also stops to sniff when I'd prefer to keep walking. Here she'd just sniff-inspected a small branch that had fallen from a large oak tree in-between our walk yesterday and today. I'm fine with her doing this because I recognize that a dog's sense of…