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As someone who used to meditate, I don't think you did it wrong. There are many right ways to do it, depending on what you seek.

Maybe it's not what you needed at the moment, especially if you're not an anxious person. But these days most people are anxious or stressed out, and the barest amount of meditation can help tremendously. Or it might do nothing, everyone is different.

Thank you for sharing, I had the very same experience as you and also did some thinking about the why.

My theory: I'm a very non-anxious, relaxed person, hardly affected by stress. So mindfulness did nothing for me, I don't need more calming down.

What I tried next was transcedental meditation (I think it's also called mantra meditation, basically pick a word and kind of focus on it) and this was when meditation got really interesting for me. I fell into different states, and came back from it with intense focus and energy. This was the first time I felt something from meditation and it was way more interesting.

Unfortunately I also stopped that after a few months. Also talking to an experienced friend, wanting more interesting things or trying to achieve different states in meditation is an antipattern, you shouldn't wish for anything, so I guess it's just hard :)

Similar experience for me as well.

I switched to a five minute breathing exercise to encourage deep sleep, and that actually has been profound.

Getting 7 to 8 hours of good / deep sleep every night is quite literally one of the best things you can do for yourself.

Maybe give it go.

In the west we tend to think of meditation as just the specific type of mindfulness practice that happened to catch on here, but there's really a whole plethora of meditative practices and traditions and different practices will resonate with different people. Its like how there's various different exercises and certain people might resonate with weightlifting while others resonate with calisthenics. Different practices are also meant to create a different effect.

Respects to you for being able to stick with meditation for that long without seeing a result, perhaps the plain mindfulness didn't do much for you since you already had a mentality that was capable in the way it would've helped.

If you were mainly focused on that one app though, if you have any remaining curiosity / patience for this what I'd suggest is experimenting with all sorts of practices for a short period of time each and just see if you feel particularly pulled to any of them. They all are "meditative" and involve specific ways of directing your attention/awareness/consciousness, they're all different paths to the same place, and I believe that different people are meant to take different paths.

Here's some areas you can look into and what you might be able to receive from it:

- There's contemplative practices of reflecting inward not to notice thoughts but to notice that which is doing the noticing. It's trying to seek out your true nature by taking the argument of "I can notice my thoughts therefore they are not me" further than that to "I can notice the noticing of thoughts too, so I'm not that either, so what am I?". The app "Waking Up" has some guided stuff in this area. Aside from simply an exercise in curiosity, there's a difference in how you move through the world and feel moved by the world as your understanding of what "you" are changes, just like how understanding that you are not your thoughts can be a radical change for someone. Advaita Vedanta is a whole field of philosophical inquiry around this type of thing if you're more attracted to that logical side.

- There's all sorts of breathing practices that can calm you or energize you or bring about all sorts of subtle changes that are really hard to put into words.

- There's chakra-based practices which rather than having to entertain chakras as a real thing you can interpret as just "this is a practice that is meant to produce a specific type of effect around what the chakra represents". You can think of them as categories of practices like exercising different muscle groups. Whether they work in the way they're described or not who knows, it's something you can just experiment with.

- There's practices that help with restfulness and sleep like Yoga Nidra, where it genuinely (scientifically proven, some people call it NSDR) can bring similar benefits to sleep

- There's the whole space of Yoga and Tai Chi if you want something more physical or flowy

So perhaps "the whole thing is just... nothing" is true for "the whole of what you tried for you", but the _real_ whole is much much more than just that.

Though in your position I'd be far too lazy to try these lol, I'm lucky in that starting off with the app _did_ feel like it produced a notable mental benefit so I had the reinforcement loop to keep exploring.

I find it equally deifficult to be in the moment, mainly manage it if I work on something that I really enjoy.

You do not meditate with an app.

I'll meditate when I'm dead, I think that's the only way you can do it properly

I’m not sure where this idea came from that farming was idle and only industry required constant work. Every hundred-year old book I’ve ever read that features farming includes themes of how the farmer’s work never ends and runs from dawn to dusk.

> task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, [...] or harvest the fields, [...] humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics

The agricultural examples are not representative of the human past that forged our genetic structure.

Hominins are about 5 millions years old. Humans, 2m years. Modern humans, 300k years. Agriculture appeared around 10k years ago in the Middle-East, later in other parts of the world. So most of the human past is about hunting and gathering.

Apart from this detail, I wonder if there are well established scientific argument that make that "genetics of behavior" the main factor in our modern behavior. At first glance it looks like a wild theory, created by a journalist who wrote self-help books and held a psychology column.

The current pace of technological progress means that you cannot just sit and wait for the crops to grow. You need to constantly be learning a new skill on the side, diversifying your income streams, thinking and researching about how to optimize your costs and yields for the following year, etc.

This is because there is no guarantee that you can keep living the same routine till the day you die.

Also, humans are builders. Doing nothing and waiting for the seasons to change like cows in a field might not be in our DNA. Restlessness is our natural state, that's why we have all this stuff.

> In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action

Great book, but I have pinned down my obsession with action to my daily single cup of coffee habit. The idea of relaxation doesn't exist. When I sit down, it takes a minute before my brain desperately tries to find something to do. Guilt soon overcomes me. Even in the extreme anhedonia of the first days of caffeine withdrawal, I am able to glimpse a state of mind where idleness is both natural and restorative. I strongly feel that my creativity suffers because I am unable to allow my mind to drift, daydream, laze around on the couch without immediate goals other than the contemplation of life. Too bad I am too brain-washed (and lazy) to go through the unpleasant mental phase to drop the brew.

It is no wonder that our caffeine-addicted society is all about action, and we are unable to truly relax.

Necessary disclaimers given the topic and the constant disinformation: yes, I have ADHD. No, caffeine does not relax anyone's brain due to its mode of action, and any claim of doing so is misunderstanding the chemical pathways involved. The vast majority of us are too addicted and not self-aware enough to notice the effect coffee has on our lives, yet are ready to claim it's the miracle brew that only has positive side-effects

> 150 years of time controlling your action

   15 years of social distracting your timed   action
    1 years of agents driving     your untimed action

I think it’s way older than that. Evolution is all about adaptation and survival. When thick armour and large sharp teeth get replaced by soft skin and abstract thinking, anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job of every waking hour. Everything else is luxury and almost an act of mini-suicide

It seems that at least for most women in those times every free minute was used to spin yarn, a job that was essentially never finished.

If you enjoyed "4000 Weeks" historical analysis of labor I invite you to check out "Free Time" by Gary Cross. It expands on it greatly, taking it through the industrial age. Relevant to your comment Cross makes the case that another reason work was not done in excess was there were not many luxury goods to purchase. Only the extreme elites could afford what little there were. There was no real return on selling more of your time for money.

It's interesting how this compulsion to work spread even to people that don't need to do it. Just look at how many modern-day billionaires are still flaunting how many hours they work each week. Up to the modern era, work was not seen as an inherent virtue, and even something to be avoided. Even well into the modern era, Teddy Roosevelt went on multi day camping trips completely unconnected from civilization. Just imagine a world leader wanting to do that now.

I like your take. I think I'd personally be in the same boat, if I was a participant in the study. Not sure if that take generalizes beyond us, though.

https://xkcd.com/242/

The closest I get to that is when I am getting a massage actually. If I get a 90 minute one, about halfway through my brain stops racing and I enter this, not quite hypnogogic, state where things are quiet and fluid and peaceful. The closest thing is waking up after a good night's sleep with an empty brain before the weight of the world comes crashing in.

My understanding is this is the default mode network allowing your brain to process things. I think modern life just completely inhibits any amount of this happening and that’s why these things are so important

How do you know whether that's not just you growing as a person? A few decades is quite a long time, a lot of personal growth could happen in that time with or without this practice.

Yes? Like trying hard to get into that state of meditation. Then you notice that you're getting tense and stressed about it not working, realize that this is not helpful, get angry at yourself for doing it wrong, try harder to do it right this time, etc.

It's my favourite puzzle about meditation. You have to approach it sideways, but if you really try that it won't work. So you try hard not to that instead, which won't work either. It's kind of funny how focusing on your breath tends to work, but... don't hold that thought.

It's a contradiction, and that's okay. Get comfortable with it ;-)

This is a great point. This is why I don’t meditate :)

It became clear to me at some point that meditation was another way I was creating some standard for good or bad, and comparing myself to it. Would be annoyed at myself if I weren’t “mindful enough” etc. I think even if you don’t have this tendency, but you’re still meditating with the intent to be in a certain state or arrange things a certain way, you’re still doing a minor version of this - how I was before, not good, how I am now, better.

What I do now instead of meditating is to just sit without doing anything on purpose. I don’t try to prevent myself from thinking or direct my intention in any way. So I just am as I am - maybe my mind wanders, maybe it doesn’t. This way there’s no contradiction. When I’m anxious, I’m anxious. When my mind wanders, it wanders. When I think about cheese, I’m thinking about cheese. If I think “I’m feeling kind of present right now”, then there’s “I’m feeling kind of present right now”. And before I know it, it’s something different

That is called dualistic mindfulness. The feeling of the self (the thought “oh I am trying to meditate”) is just another thought. Pay close enough attention, and that dissipates as well.

One way to look at it is that the act of meditation is just the exercise part; it helps you practice to “be with what is” in the rest of your life’s experience, which translates into “whatever happens within or around me, I always have choices of action and can decide on my actions from a place of silence, the eye of the hurricane, with sufficient space between where I am and my own emotions and feelings, body sensations, and other sensory input”.

A side note: the experience of meditation alone and in groups is very different. There’s a reason why people who are “serious about it” (or seriously interested) do it in community.

The practice described there is close to shamatha (calm abiding). Just sit and when thoughts arrive, simply label it as “thinking” without prejudice or attachment and carry on.

A common occurrence is the thought that oneself is thinking or labeling too much. This is close to the recursion / self-reference you are referring to. The practice thereof is to simply accept that (and your labeling of inner activity and all wrapped up in that) and carry on abiding. The inner chatter that you are not meditating well enough is a funny one.

No. You're allowed to direct your attention. The problem would be in how you approach it. If you strive then you're doing it wrong.

Liken it to brushing your teeth: you can't really judge it. You probably did it good enough. It's more important to keep doing it steadily every day than to evaluate progress.

Zen talks about this frequently. It's not a issue unless you make it one. Don't let it be an excuse not to be mindful.

If you take seriously the notion that enlightenment isn't some separate state or goal to be reached but simply the actualization of things as they are, I find the goal- and outcome-oriented drives tend to subside. Instead one is left with all the minutae of how things unfold, which seems inextricable from the goings-on of mind/perception/whatever. Paying close attention to those goings-on is pretty nice, IME.

Buddha addressed this idea directly. Your instinct that "getting comfortable with nothing" is still doing something turns out to be exactly right, and Buddhism doesn't deny it. Its answer is basically: yes, you use one kind of wanting (the motivation to practice) to loosen a deeper kind of wanting (craving a specific outcome), like using fire to burn down a house, then the fire has nothing left to burn.

Meditation, in the Therevada tradition at least, never claimed to be nothing, it uses doing to undermine it.

I think this makes as dominate other species even more. Society, and especially market capitalism, is like a giant optimization function for productivity. If you step off the treadmill, you will get dominated by those who are on it and have the latest ICBMs, AI models, infrastructure out the wazoo, can produce 10,000 drones a week, etc.

> I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around

do you happen to be the narrator of notes from the underground?

How can one possibly have ‘too much self-awareness?’

under what circumstances is it beneficial to have less awareness of oneself?

I can only do it with instant satisfaction and ease on certain drugs or combinations of drugs, I assume it's a mechanical thing for me rather than spiritual, the brain functions, so could be both environmental and genetic, the body being like the ship for the spirit, though a spirit not at ease can disrupt an otherwise well oiled machine.

Your brain is also self-reflective. It can from the inside change its expectations. Reaching for the metaphor of evolved prediction machine implies you can't train in any other way, but you can. Let's say society collectively decides (or capitalism) that we need liesure living just like Europeans do, then that will be the system. Why are we following on Elon's footsteps of compressing 1000 years of progress into 100 years. No asteriod is coming to destroy us, so no rush.

Sure - no real argument but it's maybe worth examining the assumptions underlying this which you know exist because you say 'maybe' and 'I am afraid ...'. Accounts abound as to why 'doing nothing' is not necessarily a negative activity. If you're in good health, sometimes absolutely passivity after having drunk in the fact that 'For a while I am alive and consciousness in this inexplicably incredible universe and it's a massive privilege' is extraordinarily beneficial for the times you are not predicting.

> Your brain is a prediction machine

It's not.

> I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function

It isn't.

> I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable

Not having an opinion about everything for 3 minutes != vegetable.

The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new. Neither is the polarizing fascination/dismissal it entails.

Seconded. For me "doing nothing" also means "doing nothing without following any rules" as you've stated. My version of doing nothing involves either just sitting outside watching the world go by or walking & wandering around. May poke at plants here or there, pick up a stone or throw it etc., But no, I'm not consciously trying to "calm my mind"

Right, I think commonly "doing nothing"/meditation is approached with the goal of "doing something", i.e. "getting the hell out of here" or changing instead of sitting with how you feel in the present moment. And, just as you say, that basically defeats the entire purpose.

I have this same cactus same thing, but later on I realized even when I do nothing, and even my tinnitus is there I realized it doesn’t bother me anyway. I miss that deep winter / snow silence now and then but kind of learned to live with it I think. I realize this is very different experience for everyone.

I noticed the more I do nothing (and think nothing) the more my tinnitus lessens. I think mine has something to do with permanent neck muscle tension, the result of everyday rush and stress.

The article allows for breathing and blinking, but has an odd constraint of “don’t move”, which AFAIK will make one fight their own neural system trying to autoregulate arousal. I’m not an expert but in my limited understanding, remaining completely still is not “not doing anything”, it’s very active inhibitory action.

As an experiment, just get in a nice running shower, so your sensory system will get external stimulation. YMMV, but for me three minutes pass quick. I just did that and when I decided to check the time it was almost 5 minutes already.

Real “doing nothing” is just leaving things be, just chilling out and observing whatever is happening without actively participating - and three minutes is a pretty low mark for that, unless we’re talking about fellas with ADHD.

Maybe they mean something closer to “do nothing and try not to be miserable”

I think you're equating doing nothing with doing nothing productive. You're usually still ruminating or trying to distract yourself from the source of the pressure.

What is an example? I can only think of a root canal procedure.

"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement! Many people struggle greatly with falling asleep. Personally, while I agree with you, if you are the type of person who struggles with clearing the mind, it's hardest to do when exhausted (hence common advice to practice mediation early in the day)

With all due respect, you might be overanalyzing it.

Obviously it is trivial to merely exist. All of us are doing it with (for the majority of us who are healthy) minimal effort.

The author is taking artistic license with the word as a shorthand for a specific form of existing well which is something that many people struggle with, and that many people would readily associate with this use of the term.

The Author did mention if something is happening that gives you a desire to move on to the next thing might be a state of not being present. I would characterize worry being in the future because something about the present moment is disrupting.

of course you exist regardless of what you are doing. I think the term is just used because it is the most "plain" form of existing? Just being around and doing nothing else at all. I'm not sure the term used carries much weight.

It’s a result of people being less literate. “Existing” is used to describe passing time without meaning. What author should have used is “being”.

Because something titled "How to X" is usually supposed to teach you an optimal way to do X. Like, technically you can also get rid of centipedes by burning down your house, but an article titled "How to get rid of centipedes" is unlikely to tell you that.

I came here to read people's insights into the article, and it's pretty amusing (and a little bit disheartening) to find this complaint at the top of the thread.

It's pretty obvious from context that the author means "do nothing other than exist and experience that feeling" when he says "exist". Why does the author use that specific word? Because he liked it better than other words, and I do think it makes more sense and flows better in the context of the article than something line "stasis."

I don't know if you're actually autistic or using the word as a generic term to describe your personality, but if it's the former, my input is that it's generally beneficial to give people the benefit of the doubt, steelman their position, and just move on when you notice minor things you dislike. Filling the world with negative feedback for minor quibbles doesn't make anyone's life better.

It's a catchy but, yes, inaccurate term. Then again, this is an area which ultimately wants to escape terms (enter infuriatingly meaningless other terms like "ineffable"), so consider letting go of linguistic pedantry part of the exercise. Maybe a better framing for you is to think of your brain as a computer (which it is) and try and let it run the programs it's going to run when the "user" stops launching processes (or practically most of the time when meditating, runs a script which runs ps and then kills threads). The idea is that like clearing your desk or letting your system run some background tasks, you'll end up with a better system if you periodically practice making space in this way.

Well, let's give the author the benefit of the doubt and try not to regard his article or its ideas in a subtractive fashion either; there's more here than the headline.

There's a lot of woo around meditation and mindfulness, but I genuinely believe that one of the most valuable habits I've acquired is just sitting still for a few minutes in the morning with zero distractions and observing where my mind goes.

9 times out of 10 it tells me exactly what it wants/needs to deal with that day, and if I want to stay emotionally balanced and pursue my deepest callings, I need to follow its suggestion.

If I don't do this I become out of touch with my inner state, less focused, less intentional, and over time, emotionally erratic.

The article's caution about doing this exercise if you have a condition like PTSD is very good advice, because eventually, the real shit you need to deal with will rear its head.

Everything you need for self-understanding and balance is there in your mind, speaking to you, all the time. Most of the time instead of listening we pull out our phones and distract ourselves. Or maybe we do what other people have told us to or follow some other drive.

But if you can and do set all that aside and just listen to the mind from time to time, it's almost a superpower. I suspect that many of humanity's greatest works have come about this way. Someone listening to what their mind just wouldn't shut up about, creating the conditions for hundreds or thousands of hours of flow state, and then just following its lead.

To me the title just read like: how to exist skillfully.

I think by pointing out the existing which is always happening they're implying a "merely existing", because otherwise yeah we always exist, but do we always only exist and nothing else?

You are onto something, brother. Nirvana is samsara, samsara is nirvana. Buddha mind is every day mind.

We can all be pedantic, why do you have to be alive to exist?

Depends on the specific definition of the verb existing we are talking about, right?

90% of "I'm too autistic"-insecurities boil down to words being not clearly defined (or them being clearly defined, but either people using them without care or you not being aware of the definition they use). A word isn't magically stuck the the abstract concept it refers to, people can mean different things while using the same word. In philosophy for example it is very apparent that one author's definition of existence (or any other abstract concept, like freedom) may differ fundamentally from another author's.

We can all agree that sometimes the use of an word has unfortunate side effects, like turning something simple like existence into something you can suck at. This often boils down to (A) a use of the concept we are not aware of, e.g. if Paul Satré used the word existence, he has writen thousand page book on his specific meaning of the word and the author having read Satré unbeknownst to us refers to Satré's definition or (B) the author just chose a word that sounded cool and picked somewhat imprecisely.

I think here (as so often) it is the latter, but to cut them some slack: colloquially people will say things like "I feel like I am not even existing/alive". And what they often mean by that is that their life passes in full automation mode, with them barely having any present thought at any moment — wake up, commute, work, rinse, repeat. If that is your problem, doing something that gets you out of that automation state is good.

However I believe that many pasttimes can do that, e.g. playing music, climbing, a walk through an unknown landscape, etc. I am pretty certain there are indigenous people out there who probably don't even know of this problem to begin with, they simply just exist in their present moment. So this isn't generally hard for a human being. But it can be hard to some.

I mean it is hard to take such a blog seriouslt tbh with a title like "how to exist". I feel there is a lot of sprituality mumbo jumbo that gets lumped with meditation which is a fairly mechnical process that you can do to relax your body and mind, like a massage.

But people are not happy with it just being message, they want to espouse it as a religion or something that will fundamentally change your thinking etc. But imo an asshole will still remain as asshole even if they medidate everyday.

If you just look at the mechanics of breathing and thought control, they can be pretty useful to apply especially if you are prone to high anxiety. But there is nothing in it that will make you a better person or help you exists or whatever

Americans do seem to be a rather compulsive and anxious sort.

I think I might. In a past life I was a full time musician and had tons of time to kill. I was able to just go to places and simply exist. It wasn't to read or work or write or meet anyone (everyone was at work after all), it was simply "I want some coffee". I'd people watch and daydream for a bit and then I'd go do something else.

Whether or not that's what they had in mind idk, but it's what it immediately made me think of. I traded near absolute freedom for money, but that's just something you have to do as you get older I guess.

It’s rather “libertarians as cats”. The heroism of being content doing nothing but drink some coffee, stands upon the backs of hundreds of people seeking to better themselves who brought that coffee to your lips.

The more you require to do this - walk to the park, a lawn, no noise - the less you will do it. In reality you could be locked in a prison and still do it.

You can close your eyes. Tricky if it's noisy - but then that's an issue in itself.

Oxygenated air is all you need

as the author points out, even thought in your own mind is a source of distraction and you can't run away from that.

Fundamentally you can be at ease with city noise just like you can be with mental distraction. One of the big misconceptions about meditation for example tends to be that it's about avoiding or actively quieting noise be that internal or external. It's not about changing the content of your conscious experience but your relationship to it.

The wandering sadhus and nath yogis who worshipped Lord Shiva used hashish (what you'd call now finger hash) to aid in this practice of disappearing within one's own mind during meditation.

You can have the experience without it too, just sit there for a long time and follow the instruction you shared. Yes keeping the rule in your head is a thing to fixate on, but there's a little trick.

You see people spin balls or beads in their hands, or sometimes do a little puzzle in their mind, and claim it aids with meditation. Well, sometimes a small repetitive thing to focus on can be just as good as pure silence. This is the basis of mantras. If you do the same thing over and over and over and over it's the same unchanging rhythm as the background silence you're trying to achieve. It's only when we have all these decisions dragging us every which way that it's not possible to fall into the meditative state.

So what is it - the "state" - it's basically when you forget you're there. The longer, the more psychedelic of an experience that is. You've probably already achieved it sitting bored in class, or staring off while tired. That's it.

You can become better at forgetting yourself and "slipping into it" (or rather out of mental thoughts and into the abyss of relaxing nothingness) on demand, and get better at doing it for longer, or you can use inebrients to aid in the process.

Sometimes when you come to - you had basically a dream. That can feel profound enough for some to build a religion around this kind of thing.

I get where you’re coming from but they are listing these things out because those are some of the things you will likely automatically do to distract yourself from the present moment. I once tried to instruct someone on how to meditate and afterward they told me they spent the entire time working out solutions to problems in their head. I tried explaining that actively doing something, like solving problems in your head, means you are not meditating - you are thinking. They couldn’t bring themselves to sit there without getting their mind involved in something.

Not everything must be stats and numbers. You either try it and find out if it works for you or you don‘t. As simple as that.

Maybe they’re happier that way

My experience is that if you try to sit still for 5 minutes, the opposite happens. The thoughts and feelings that you weren't aware of start mobbing you, and you have to at least acknowledge them to get your peace. It's also one of the hardest ways to waste time, getting busy with any distraction is much easier.

Same lmao. Similarly, I don't want to be rude or assume things but I'm really annoyed with 20-something-year-olds giving out life advice. (I don't know if the author is in 20s)

No, he’s discovered a temporary way out of it.

It is, after all, the cloud.

A limitation Descartes did not overcome!

Maybe "not unusual" is enough.

> I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.

You assume others have had your experience and learnings from it. That’s clearly not possible so how else would you put it for them? Maybe you should contribute your own experience. But don’t expect everybody will allign to it 100%.

If you are stuck in vim, it's :q. If you are stuck in life, stay with us, we want you to stay.

Don't give up, friend. People care for you. If no one else, this person online does! I hope you are able to find help.

I'm pretty sensitive to slop and didn't get it from this one. This blog's existed since 2009.