I wonder if remembering dreams is correlated with how settled your conscious mind is. The only two times I consistently remember my dreams are when I'm at a Vipassana course and when I'm backpacking. When I'm at home I get wrapped up in my thoughts which might be distracting me from my sensations. When I'm on a course …
Category: Personal Experiences
Risky Business
Taking risks has been a source of excitement for my life. When life gets to boring or stagnant I would create change in a spontaneous fashion. I once quit my job in Tennessee and while couch surfing up the east coast I convinced my friend to quit his job. We met in Cincinnati, drove cross-country to …
Speaking Out
I was taught not to be drowned out in a crowd. Sometimes you need to yell for your voice to be heard. If you don't speak up people are going to walk all over you. Having a voice ensures that you're not taken advantage of, taken for granted, or forgotten completely. I was taught to …
Selfish Service
Before Vipassana I looked at giving service as a selfless contribution. We live in a world of finite resources so in order to get something I needed to give up something else. In order to help the community I'm going to sacrifice some time and energy to work on this project. I'm going to work for a non-profit or …
Quality Of Life
What is my quality of life? How should I measure it? What choices should I make to improve it? These question have always been directly connected to my job choice. I want to make the most money I can while working as few hours as possible. But a job is more than just a financial exchange system. It …
Behave Yourself Mind!
One of the first observations at a 10 day retreat is that you're not in control of your own mind. It wanders in and out of thoughts and fantasies without a single concern for what you want it to do. It's so easy to talk about the analogies of training a puppy, horse, or elephant but …
Insight And Mindfulness Meditation Communities
I've been sitting with a group of Vipassana meditators that have been trained by other teachers or who haven't been trained at all to help motivating me to sit twice a day. I wasn't sure if our goals were the same and I was pretty sure the techniques were slightly different but it didn't matter …
Continue reading Insight And Mindfulness Meditation Communities
Contributing To All My Communities
I've rambled in several posts about self-confidence issues, feeling disconnected and isolated with my practice, a desire to connect with people, and confusion about why things seem different since learning to meditate but I haven't been able to clearly pinpoint the core agitation. I'm not sure I've reached the core yet but I think I've taken …
Tell Me About Yourself…
First impressions our important. They can be the difference between making a new best friend and looking like a weirdo so when someone says to me, "Tell me about yourself," I want to have a good answer. I want to be open, honest, and interesting without appearing too strange, different, or disconnected. Being too equanimous can …
Controlling The Adrenaline
10 days ago when I hosted my first group meditation I noticed that some new distractions entered my mind. Instead of concentrating on my own practice I started worrying about whether I was being a good host. I wondered if it was too hot for people. I was concerned that the Goenka recording might malfunction. …
Living Vipassana 