This is part of my Intensive Meditation Journal Experience – See Day 1 here.
May 2009 Intensive Meditation | Day 9
It rained all last night – intense rain. I don’t know if this is from the Cyclone that killed all those people in Burma or not. Someone said 600,000 died. Is that unreal? In Florida, before I left we had 3 hurricanes come through that season. No more than 10 people died in all of them I’d guess.
Is Burma that backward? That’s completely amazing that in this time – 2008, even 100,000 could die from a natural disaster that the world KNEW was coming. There was lots of advance warning. How does that happen?
Anyway, Southern Thailand gets its share of rain without cyclones too.
I am planning to do some exercise and walking meditation today. My mood is very calm – nothing stressing me out. No, I don’t have everything taken care of in my life – but, little has the power to affect me anymore. Meditation does that – gives one a good perspective on things.
It’s very cloudy right now – but I’ll try to go out for a bit and see what happens. I’ll write more when I return. Assuming I return… One cannot cling to the idea that there’s a future at all really – yes?
Sawasdee krup…..
Ok, I’m back. I went up the mountain twice today – thinking I had lots of energy. The 2nd time was pretty rough. It was hot – the sun was still shining on that side of the hill and there was zero wind and 95-100% humidity. It was so tough! One of the toughest times I’ve ever climbed once.
But, once rested at the top and cooled off by the wind I decided to try again. Halfway up the second time, the realization hit me – wow, my heart’s beating way too fast. Much faster than usual. I took it slow from that point on – but suffered the whole way up and down.
Backing up…
From the time I started up the steps the first time – I was in complete mindfulness. That amazing thoughtless state where it’s just experiencing… very few thoughts came to mind the whole way up. I met a few people – so that helped me maintain the state.
Maybe the entire way up – I had thoughts just 2-3 times. They were quick one-sentence thoughts that were just mind comments about whether there was pain behind my left knee or not… and another thing I can’t recall now.
Once at the top there were a few people. The wind was cool a couple of places around the rim of the top and while taking photos and videos I discovered a new function of my camera. I’ve had it for about 2 years. More than that. I discovered multi-burst mode.
I played with that a while. Here are some images from it below… What it appears to do is fire off 16 photos in a very short time – It said 1/7.5″ So – is that 75 hundreds of a second? Not sure at all. Anyway, here are some photos from it.
Ok, on second thought – it’s not so cool. It takes 16 photos – very small and puts them in a timeline sort of format – almost like still frames from a movie clip – but the photos are so closely spaced in time that they aren’t very unique.
I must not have moved the camera enough. Oh well, never mind that. Take a look at the video below instead.
More people came up the steps as the rain looked like it was going to stay away for a while. I didn’t sit at the top like I thought I might. Instead, I took photos and talked to a young couple from Dublin, Ireland. I meet people from all over the world on these trips up the hill – that’s half the reason I do them.
So, as I said – I went down and up and down again and then back home to eat some French bread from the big market which really isn’t half bad. Or maybe I don’t have a taste for bread anymore after 42 months of rice daily. I ate it plain as usual.
Tonight I was going to just eat another few bananas and call it a night – but, I realized I have some spaghetti pasta leftover in the bag. Hmm… I have some butter in the cooler… Might just be a pasta & butter night. Will sit for a while first since there is some feeling that the state is still with me, and has been all day.
It’s funny – I keep ignoring the state when it comes, and when I don’t have it – I think – hmm, wonder where it’s been. Now it’s been here since I woke up 12 hours ago and I ignore sitting and do other things… Strange how/why I do that.
Oh, before I forget – I did do a quick run around the entire top of the mountain so I could get a 360 view on video. Not sure how it turned out – but I’ll put it below once I get fast internet access. Right now I have none from home as the service must be down with all the rain.
Oh, I haven’t mentioned yet – I’m working on another site. Did I mention it? Hmm.
It’s called, GuruGone.com. Have a look if you like, it’s not finished by any means -but the basic idea is there. Might move this blog /journal over to that domain after a while or may keep it separate. Not at all sure at this point.
This blog (seemlessness) has moved and even changed names over the last year. I have the seemlessness.com domain or seamlessness.com domain – can’t remember which. I could move it back there too.
Attention Deficit Disorder is NOT fun… man, if I could just be happy with it as it is…
(update 27 Feb 2019 – I haven’t had any significant ADD/ADHD since day 28 of this intensive meditation. It seems to have wiped it away. Just another massive benefit of meditation.)
This is part of my Intensive Meditation Journal Experience
See the next day here – Day 10.
This is part of my Meditation Journal where you can find dozens of more posts like this.