Spry

Day 5 Definitely having a big upswing in libido. My guess is it's mostly because of the no fap. I haven't had really any desire to look at porn but the urge to masturbate has been pretty strong at times.

Day 4 Still having a pretty easy time and learning some things which I'll write about at length later. Been reading a few psych books about addiction too, which have been really interesting.

Day 3 I had sex with my girlfriend last night. So far there haven't been any positive physical changes (I wouldn't expected there to be this early) but I was more aware of some of the mental habits mentioned in YBOP. I actually had a little more trouble getting hard than usual, but it wasn't too bad. Mostly I just noticed my need to project different scenarios and mentally turn myself on rather than simply being turned on by the act itself. One thing that I particularly remember from the accounts in the book are people who appreciated just getting really turned on laying next to a naked girl or getting hard for no reason. I remember that happening a lot more to me 5 or 6 years ago. I think I just wrote it off as getting older or sex becoming "not such a big deal anymore" but now that I see it differently, it would be cool to get that back. ================== Overall it's been pretty easy so far. At the start I wasn't sure if I was gonna do nofap or just no porn. I think I'm gonna try to continue nofap for at least the first 30 days. That should give me enough time to see if it's worthwhile or if I should just do no porn. i'm kind of excited about this experiment. I'm hoping it'll inform future experiments in personal development as well.

Day 2 Been pretty easy so far since I've been motivated. Thoughts come up maybe half a dozen times in a day and then I quickly remember "oh yeah, I can't do that". It'll be interesting to see how this unfolds in the next 3 or 4 days.

Day 41 10 minutes. I think what I've been encountering the past week or two is simply that, even though I've tasted the fruits of meditation, it's really difficult to convince my subconscious mind that it's worth doing. Honestly, I've probably meditated about 1000 hours over the past 6 or 7 years, and really don't have much to show for it other than reduced reactivity + more equanimity in difficult situations. This is nice, but it's like a 20% quality of life improvement. From temporarily reaching clearer, stiller states, it's obvious that it's possible to improve one's quality of life by 500% or 1000%, but it's difficult to sit down and meditate with energy and motivation day after day when progress seems so slow and there's a little bit of a catch-22 with doubt.

My goal is to post here every day for 365 days, noting the meditation I did and any notable experiences. The framework I'll be using is from The Mind Illuminated, which essentially breaks the process into 10 stages. I'll be starting over in Stage 1, which is establishing a daily practice. My goal for the first month is simply to sit down and meditate at least 10 minutes a day. Often this will go much longer, but 10 minutes is the baseline. No specific goals or expectations. As for now, I don't have a specific goal for the whole year yet, other meditating every day. Ultimately though I'd like to experience something along the lines of these posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/67i0cp/one_year_of_practice_with_the_mind_illuminated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/comments/8sscab/my_summary_of_one_year_meditating_following_the/ Wish me luck 12/30/18 - Day 1 Today I meditated for 10 minutes using Sam Harris's app. Just using whatever I feel like right now with the emphasis being on actually doing it. Also practiced mindful breathing in the car today for half an hour or so.

Day 40 About 10 minutes.

Day 39 About 10 minutes.

Day 38 15 minutes. Kinda uninspired.

Day 36 10 minutes in the evening. Day 37 An hour this morning. The meditation today felt really nice, but I've been dealing with a bit of doubt the past week or two. Perhaps my expectations are too high, but at times it feels like I'm filling a leaky bucket.

Day 35 About 15 minutes this morning.

Day 34 About 50 minutes.

Day 33 About 20 minutes early this morning. I did several of the exercises from the book Shift Into Freedom and they were pretty good.

Day 32 10 minutes this morning. Haven't felt as motivated lately as I mentioned. Hopefully I can just use this time to further ingrain the habit and make more progress when motivation returns.

Day 31 35 minutes this morning.

Day 30 10 minutes. Haven't felt super inspired the last few days. It's interesting that this often happens after I have one or two really great meditations. On the bright side, 30 days straight!! Giving myself a gold star.

Day 29 50 minutes this morning. Took a really long time for my mind to settle and I felt a bit unfocused. Such is meditation though; everything ebbs and flows.

Day 28 10 minutes this evening.

Day 27 About 20 minutes today. Felt a little less motivated. Friday and Saturday are a little tougher for me because I have appointments in the morning. I still really want to work on my sleep schedule, but it's one of those things that's hard to change because I *like* staying up late and sleeping in. I definitely feel more energetic when I sleep at better hours + it's easier to get morning meditations in every day, but it's hard to change something you have a habit of doing and enjoy. Happy with how things are going though. 27 days in a row is pretty good!

Day 26 About an hour today but I got just about as deep as yesterday. Just for reference when I check back in a month or two, today it took about 26 minutes for my mind to settle to the point where I didn't feel like I needed to count my breaths. Today it happened sort of all at once -- I got lost in thought, and when I came back I was there. I did the body scan for the next half hour or so, then focused on the very subtle sensations of the breath at the nose for the last 5 minutes. It's hard to explain why, but this feels "right" right now. Kind of like it's just what I'm supposed to be doing to progress. I'm still a bit unclear about exactly what stages I'm in, what level of distraction (if any) is present and the difference between subtle distractions and awareness, but I think the solution is just to keep practicing and keep going deeper until those things become more clear. I'd like to keep learning as much as I can from my experience, but I don't want to try to gain insights from experiences that aren't actually there yet.

Day 25 Almost an hour and a half today. Definitely the best/deepest meditation I've had this month. After getting to the point where my mind stops jumping around after 20 or 30 minutes, I did a long body scan to deepen my concentration and increase the detail of my perceptions. The result was much more intense and vivid concentration and much more stillness in my mind. At some point I had a pretty intense body jolt and the mini-insight that appeared immediately after was simply: "I just need to go deeper rather than looking for clues on the surface". While it's nice to learn from watch my mind when I'm semi-concentrated, there's I think I've already picked most of the low-hanging fruit. I need to go deeper and see what else there is to learn there. There's a tendency (of mine, and that I see in other people all the time) to try to recognize the truths of meditation from states of concentration that aren't profound enough to actually recognize them. For instance, I can see "impermanence" or "no self" in really superficial ways, but it's clearly not the profound insight that people talk about. Going forward, I'm going to use the body scan and other concentration practices to bring me deeper (like today) rather than just hanging out or doing psuedo-insight practices when my mind first settles down.

Day 24 Half an hour this morning. Felt a little tired and unfocused so I stopped early.

Day 23 An hour this morning. Felt like I was dealing with a little dullness once I got focused. Bodyscanning helped at that point -- want to keep doing that. Also really want to keep emphasizing getting to bed at 12 or so. Would really help with getting morning meditations in.

Day 22 10 minutes this morning and some meditation while I was driving. Still wanna get back to longer ones in the mornings.

Day 21 Missed the morning meditation but got one in in the evening. Only about 10 minutes. Even right now it's getting late and I should go to sleep so I can get a long meditation in in the morning... just don't want to On the bright side, that's 21 days in a row