It has been almost a year since the last time I meditated on a regular basis, or frankly, at all. In my last year of teaching, in the same school I taught at for 32 years, in the first year back to in-person learning after the COVID-19 shut down, a group of teachers and administratorsContinue reading “How I Know I Need To Start Meditating Again”
Tag Archives: meditation
Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: More Songs about Buildings, Food, Flora, Courses, Lectures, Panels, Endings
This is the campus bookstore here at Dominican University. Just kidding. It is the building in which the bookstore is housed. It is an incredible building, don’t you think? Look at this beautiful thing. I don’t know what happens in this building, but I took a picture of it. And then I went upContinue reading “Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: More Songs about Buildings, Food, Flora, Courses, Lectures, Panels, Endings”
#308: An Attempted Explanation
As soon as I decided not to go shopping for music the second day in a row, my car horn alarm went off and I couldn’t get it to stop. I sat there in the car, parked, engine running, horn blasting, poking and pushing every conceivable control surface, even the ones I knew wouldn’t work,Continue reading “#308: An Attempted Explanation”
#285: A Poem Against Nothing
During meditation practice today I wrote some words and phrases on two notecards in response to the following three meditative prompts: Nothing, Form, and Intention. As a writer, I live in the world of specificity, concrete detail, or in ideas expressed explicitly and with clarity. Sometimes I struggle with some of the more esoteric aspectsContinue reading “#285: A Poem Against Nothing”
If I Am Not My Body and I Am Not My Mind, Who Am I?
Sometimes I have difficulty with the more woo woo aspects of mindfulness practice. I tend to think about my meditation, for example, in pretty straight forward terms. I sit. I close my eyes. I breathe. I pay attention to the breath. If my mind wanders, I notice that, and then I try to bring myContinue reading “If I Am Not My Body and I Am Not My Mind, Who Am I?”
100 Consecutive Days of Meditation Practice; 31 Days Without Sugar, Dairy, Grains, Legumes, Alcohol, and Soy; It’s Spring!
Today my Insight Timer, an iphone app that keeps track of how many consecutive days and how many minutes and hours one spends in meditation practice, confirmed for me the 100th consecutive day of sitting for at least 10 minutes, every other Sunday as much as an hour, on a cushion. Today I have setContinue reading “100 Consecutive Days of Meditation Practice; 31 Days Without Sugar, Dairy, Grains, Legumes, Alcohol, and Soy; It’s Spring!”
#268: The Middle Way (a prose poem)
Somewhere between asceticism and an orgy of consumerism and excess lies the middle way. I must confess I have not found it yet. I tend to waffle in my struggle to find the center. Against my better judgment I tend to err toward excess. Here I am camping in comparative luxury with my new trailerContinue reading “#268: The Middle Way (a prose poem)”
#208: Lord Capulet Cleans Out His Chakra House
Down there in the red Root the ground is slipping. That navel orange Sacral space is pretty much on fire and my Solar Plexis spins like a drunken dervish on a yellow sun. All the Heart Stuff bubbles and boils dangerously toward destruction, comes up green in my throat and I find myself shouting all the time. Finally,Continue reading “#208: Lord Capulet Cleans Out His Chakra House”
#206: The Actor Attempts to Meditate in the House During Fight Call
and is successful in his way. The swords clash and clang and the combatants exclaim their shouts of excruciating pain and the crowds riot in the streets. The actor meditating in the house allows the clamour to disguise itself as a kind of tumultuous silence. The bell chimes inaudibly underneath his theater seat just in timeContinue reading “#206: The Actor Attempts to Meditate in the House During Fight Call”
Mindfulness in 2016: A Silver Bullet Resolution?
On this New Year’s Eve morning I spent some time reading the blog entry I wrote exactly one year ago today, “Mindfulness in 2015: A Silver Bullet Resolution.” I liked what I read. That’s a nice blog post, I said to myself. I was proud of it, proud of the writing and of the sentimentContinue reading “Mindfulness in 2016: A Silver Bullet Resolution?”
michael jarmer 