Meditation is something that I have flirting with for years. It took me at least ten years from the time that I decided that meditation might be a good thing to making an honest attempt at developing a practice. It wasn't until a friend sent me an invite to a free month using Sam Harris's Waking Up app that I made a real go at it. I completed the introductory course in 50 days (it is now a 28 day course), and keep going until I hit over 100 consecutive days. There was a little streak counter on the app which I apparently found motivating, because when Sam Harris made a principled decision to remove that feature from the app, I almost immediately stopped meditating daily and eventually went months and months without sitting.
When I had the idea for the Discomfort Blog, I had already been tracking almost 40 different behaviors each day. Meditation was one of those habits, but I was simply leaving the boxes unchecked each day. When the cold shower challenge started, I also began doing a 10 minute guided meditation every day. It isn't much, but it is something, and has started to give me a taste for meditation again, even if that ten minutes can sometimes feel like an eternity.
I wavered between a meditation challenge and another idea, but when I woke up this morning, the choice was clear. I have decided to structure the challenge as follows... For the first week of February, I will sit for one 20 minute session each day. For the second week, I will sit for a 40 minute session. The duration will increase another 20 minutes in week three and another 20 minutes in week four. So the final week, I will be sitting for 80 minutes, which seems patently insane from where I am sitting, but I'm going to give it a go.
Instead of a playlist, I thought this time I might post some favorite quotes I discover from various spiritual meditation guru types.
Here goes nothing!
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