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Luke_Grecki comments on Vipassana Meditation Open Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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Awesome. Thanks for sharing.
It seems to me that you're practicing skillfully. A few comments:
While I'm not sure about this, I think mettā might be a form of P.J. Eby's Mmm Test, which aims specifically at reinforcing positive patterns of feeling about other people.
So were these thoughts in the background as you kept centered on your breath?
Interesting. This is more evidence for LWers having abnormally powerful reflection abilities, and possibly experiencing faster progress in meditation as a result. (See my comment here)
I don't think it's so important to do now. Later on you might experiment with longer sittings and see what observing pain can teach you.
Yeah, I agree. It's sort of priming yourself to feel positively about people. That gives me a good idea: on days when I don't find time for a full vipassana session, I think I will try to still spend a few minutes on mettā just to reinforce those neural pathways.
Also, I just started cleaning my desk. XD I'd been meaning to do that for a while ...
After seeing that mettā and P.J. Eby's Mmm Test could be connected, I crafted my own little practice that kind of melds aspects of both of them. After meditating for an hour in the morning I spend 2-4 minutes imagining an awesome far future, and then imagine doing awesome things to realize it.
For the far future I imagine a fun-theoretic posthuman civilization, with all sorts of exotic amazingness. I then imagine myself taking near future actions toward reducing existential risk.
I don't know how much this affects my behavior (if at all). The level of abstraction (even in the case of near future actions) might well be too great for this kind of thing to work. In any case, I get a kick out of trying to imagine new kinds of posthuman fun.
Thanks for the link to pjeby's video--I don't have time to check it out right now, but I will when I can. I forgot to mention that in my fourth sitting, I found that part easier (calling up mettā deliberately). I enjoy that part.
Sometimes. I would anchor on the breath and try to keep it there while thinking about other things. When I noticed that I was only thinking about the other things and had lost the breath, I would re-anchor, etc.
From your comment quoting Oshaberi:
Ha, I've almost done this. I remember trying a new kind of cheese some time in elementary school (I remember where I was physically), and noticing that it had a strong and different flavor. I recall thinking consciously, "I could either like this or hate this--may as well like it!" and liked it. But that's the only time I've been able to do it, and I think it's because I was on the cusp. I haven't been able to choose to like other foods on purpose when I didn't before. (I also seem to be a fairly strong taster, though, which gives me strong preferences against certain kinds of taste.)
Sounds good. That was more or less my default plan: Keep doing the simple stuff while it's challenging, then try something harder when the simple stuff gets less challenging. There are a couple of regular group sittings in my area, and I think my short-term goal is to get comfy enough to try joining one of them, so I can get more feedback/discussion.