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Day 3

Like yesterday, it’s another tie-together today.  Two experiments which I decide to make into one because they both, incidentally, entail doing nothing. Actually, to be precise, one says do nothing (Week 2 exercise from The Creativity Book by Eric Maisel) and the other, which is part of the self-designed Joy Intensive Programme, is to do something wholly without an end goal in mind.

The exercise today is to sit for forty minutes without doing anything.  Twice longer than yesterday.  I wasn’t apprehensive, because I allowed myself to take that time to meditate, or at least, observe my thoughts.  Yesterday, I didn’t even give myself that, and the twenty minutes felt long.  The longest I have meditated have been half an hour so far, so this is a push for me.

It’s amazing that our minds keep on dialoguing even when we are busy doing so many other things, and this shows up nowhere more apparently than when I sit down in meditation.  It didn’t take long for the mind to wander, to wonder, to think wishfully, attempt to solve one issue or another, enact a future of some kind.  One thought after another in an endless stream, broken only by a few moments when I catch myself and bring the attention back to the breath or the body.

I’ve learned not to force a meditative experience, and not to judge when the bell rings at the end of a session the quality of that session.  It is what it is.

Hours afterwards I was taking a break (okay, a nap) and as I was waking up, I started to think about the relationship I fancy having with a man I am getting to know.  He is handsome, interesting and passionate about what he’s doing.  I imagined myself happy in that relationship, and him as well.

I’ve only had a handful of serious relationships, but encountered many great guys.  Whenever I am starting to like someone, and the possibility of us having a relationship is there, I indulge in these daydreams frequently.  Obviously, not all of them blossom into a relationship.  As I was laying there, I recognised this pattern.  Suddenly, I had this awareness that it wasn’t being in a relationship that was making me smile.  It was that in my fantasy, I was a kind, loving, giving and allowing version of me.  What a revelation!  All this while, all those fantasies of me being part of a happy couple, masked the truth that I enjoy imagining myself being a nice person.

This may have something to do with the forty minute meditation slash doing-nothingness.  It may not.  Either way, a new door has opened.  Why wait till I am in a relationship to be the kind of person I aspire to be?  I’m stepping out, and up.