Author: Phil

The case for meditation as a physical practice is a prescription. Slow down, focus on your breathing.

The case for meditation as a mental practice is a cure.

I just finished a $44 meditation where I arrived at a nondescript building in Chelsea and joined a group of Burners talking about feelings. Let’s be clear, there is a cult around meditation, religions built on it, and entire schools of thought which can be neatly described as “breathwork”

The meditation today was led by a nice young lady who lead us into a dome (which was inside of an apartment with 25 ft ceilings where she provided us with Tazo tea light-up headphones – like the type they use in those silent discos. There were blankets and pillows neatly positioned to suggest where each of us will sit. The dome’s interior is a projector screen with astral projections (literally) playing on it. Like a nice big screen saver.

The headphones, it turns out, allowed us to be fully immersed in her voice and the music. The meditation consisted of a lot of breathing exercises which started out rapid-fire and ended with something more deep and natural.

My arm fell asleep, and I’m 73% certain I did as well.

When the meditation ended (after waking up) I felt like I was observing myself from a 3rd person. Not disassociative in an uncomfortable way but in an accepting way. Like whatever might come out of my mouth next is exactly what’s supposed to come out of mouths and walking felt a bit “floatier” than usual. 

I think this is what one looks for in meditation – not the sleeping – but to come out refreshed and at peace.

This brings me back to my reason for writing this post. Nobody has really democratized meditation. There are no real “wellness” gyms, even though the term wellness is a nice gentrification-level euphemism for a group of treadmills and a set of hand weights in the basement of some condo building.

But one could argue that having an astral dome with a nice lady speaking into your ears to settle your soul is just as important for your overall health as throwing around some barbells.

Someone’s going to do this right and make a lot of money. Throw in some napping pods and take my money.

Tracking tools are underrated. From project management software to simple spreadsheets, the power of having the “other”. It’s a living, breathing, thing that you can blame when it’s convenient. And the best part? It doesn’t have feelings.

Think of it as a scapegoat, allowing you to always reference its mediocre presence as reason enough to do great things. The irony of its mere existence is a paradigm. You no longer have to be the opinionated asshole who is micromanaging or asking Steve why he can’t seem to get shit done. You can blame the tracking tool. It’s not me; the tracker requires it.

God I love technology

I ruthlessly unsubscribe. I generally don’t care about your newsletter, your announcement, your Big News, and yes, fuck your Christmas Card too.

It’s not because I think you’re boring or that you have poor writing skills, which are both true, however, I’ve become numb. In the quest for inbox 0 anything and everything is a distraction. We’re constantly being accosted by advertisers. Social media, TV, Youtube, the radio, etc. – why would your baby registry be of interest if we haven’t talked in 5 years? And TBH if you’re expecting me to buy you something, you had no business having babies.

The issue boils down to relevancy. Imagine if the advertisement was tailored to me, specifically. I get that if I say Cat food out loud, I’ll be inundated by cat products for the next 6 months. But adding in some nuance might be helpful – Am I asking a question to a friend with a cat? Do I plan to become a cat lady? Do I want to set up a trap for my 65 lb Akita, Smokey?

These types of nuance matter. Stop giving alcohol as a gift to your Muslim friends without asking if they drink you tone-deaf bitch.

Sorry, got a little triggered there.

Go back to first principles on this one – who is my audience? How can I ensure this is actually relevant to them? Perhaps pick up the phone and ask them if they’d be interested in seeing your face in their inbox three times a week.

Do your research. Then Spam the fuck out of them

I don’t own one.. yet.

I just witnessed one get delivered, though. And without a doubt this thing is sexy.

But what makes it valuable? The experience.

At its core, it’s just a stationary bike. Like Casper, like Apple, like Tesla – they took an industry that wasn’t glamorous and found a way to make it cool, hip, sleek – they found a way to make your personal status go up.

And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You want to FEEL good about it.

The classes are cool, the fact that they have good programming and a clean interface is good, and the materials they chose for the hardware are good, but what you bought is the experience. Even the delivery guys looked cool.

Crack that code, and you have a billion-dollar company

This is the age that made entrepreneurship hot.

But any entrepreneur will tell you how un-hot the lifestyle really is – long lonely nights, lack of a work-life balance, no positive feedback loop (sometimes for years) etc etc

The fact that so many of us strive to start our own thing, or even get to choose, is in fact a privilege. Generations before us, and in manyparts of the world today, the ability to choose doesnt exist. We all have a friend whose family would only accept them being a doctor or a lawyer (and maybe it’s you?).

And, truly, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Wasting that opportunity, the ability to choose, and then never seeing it materialize is a waste. So many of us get into a job and stick with it long enough to become an authority on the subject or become lucky enough to have others who come to us for advice, or report to us. The very nature of the management structure is fulfilling to us at a biological level. Societies were built upon everyone doing their part and doing it pridefully – many of them without the freedom of choice. The fact that in this day and age you get some satisfaction out of what you’re doing, even though it’s not what you thought you’d be doing is perfectly fine.

Though, for those of us who either a) knew what we wanted all along (the lucky ones) or b) want to wake up excited to go to work, and have that all too cliche – “I can’t believe I get paid to do this” – settling isn’t an option.

Cheers to them. Keep striving.

I’d like to say that I did that as a publicity stunt, but A) it was unplanned, B) there was no publicity. Once again, I put in the first 10-15 hours of getting excited about something only to let it fall by the wayside within a week (or two posts later).

But I’m back bitches.

Procrastination is a tricky thing. Sometimes we procrastinate because we’re avoiding something we dread and probably should take the hint that we might want to avoid doing it in the future (taxes) — or it’s an indication of something we really care about and in our quest for perfection, overthink it or avoid it.

In this case, it’s the latter, along with a mismanagement of priorities. Oh well. I would say back to the drawing board at this point, but that’s precisely what got us here in the first place.

Welcome.

I don’t want this to only be a stream of consciousness, I want this to be a stream of unconsciousness. This is based on nothing in particular and is meant to spark intelligent ruminations based off of what I assume to be true.

Here’s the thing:

The future is built from one random instance based on trillions of interactions and decisions happening simultaneously. Each ‘happening’ ultimately effects all the previous and all the future happenings, and creation is born in some lovely chaos.

And, as much as I’d like to say it all matters and give credence to current facts and figures, let’s not forget that if you had asked society what it needed before Henry Ford they would’ve said ‘faster horses’

This is that thing.

Welcome to this thing. I hope you find yourself here.