Adventures in Enlightenment: Tai Chi (status report)

[update on]

I hate when something that appears so simple is too hard for me. Anyway I have not mastered Tai Chi in one month. Apparently some people spend their whole life perfecting it so perhaps I shouldn't have expected to master it in one month. Even if I *am* better than almost everyone else who has ever lived.

Any way I'm going to stick with this and see how far I can get. My goal it to be able to do the Yang Short Form from beginning to end. It doesn't have to be pretty or graceful or even entirely correct but it does have to be complete and at least in the ball park of correct. A halfway solid base to build upon if I should so choose. So I'll just keep working on this for at least another month. I guess sometimes enlightenment takes more than one month.

Adventures in Enlightenment: Tai Chi

OK, this month my enlightenment adventure will be a continuation of last months. I'm going to dominate the dojo with respect to this whole Tao thing. I searched google for "tai chi enlightenment" and sure enough tai chi is promoted as a way to achieve enlightenment. That's all I need to know.

I have a VHS tape tutorial of the "yang short form". For those new to tai chi there are approximately 256 million variations of tai chi. The yang short form appears to be one of the more common ones. The main advantage of this is that I'll be able to easily find different instructions that I can cross reference. This form has 24 basic moves. So that's less than 1 a day. How hard could it be?

If you want to have a rough idea of where I'll be at the end of the month check out this video.

See you on the other end of enlightenment.

Adventures in Enlightenment: The Sleepy Taoist (conclusion)

[follow up on]

So I got much more sleep this month and definitely feel better rested than I have in a while. Which sucks, because if you get used to not being well rested you don't really miss it. Now I'm probably going to have to stick with my new schedule. Truth be told I'm still probably not sleeping enough, but I did average about 6 to 6 1/2 hours of sleep a night which believe it or not is almost decadent compared to what I'd rather do which is closer to 5 hours. (Of course I'd rather do 0 hours - I hate sleep - but that has never worked out too well for me).

The strangest part was waking up at 5:45 am on the weekend. It actually wasn't nearly as painful as I would have thought and some how morning time by myself seems much more enjoyable than evening time by myself. There is something about sitting around in the morning as the sun is rising and the house is almost alive with the anticipation of a new day starting. It's certainly more invigorating than fighting off sleep at the end of the day.

Anyway, did I learn anything about Taoism? I've read much of Alan Watts and even the Tao of Pooh but my favorite author on the topic is Raymond Smullyan. I've read his Tao is Silent many, many times. His interpretation is by far my favorite idea of a religion. If some religion had to be true and I got to pick I would pick out the philosophy laid out in his book. Strangely I can't even begin to describe what his take is. It seems somehow essentially Taoist that I can't put it into words. But honestly that's just probably just laziness on my part. Or maybe he doesn't actually *say* anything and I just like reading his nonsense.

Interestingly in the last year I read Karen Armstrong's "The Great Transformation". She has a great discussion of Taoism in there. Unfortunately I've loaned it out so I can't refresh my memory on it now. From what I recall Taoism was much younger than is usually suggested (it was actually about the last great Chinese religio-philosophical system to be created) and strangely was aligned with obedience with the government and other seemingly un-Taoistic ideas.

But in any case I'm not sure I learned to much about Taoism with my sleep experiment. Of course it's impossible to fight the Tao so in a sense I'm already a Taoist. Blah, blah, blah.

Tomorrow starts my next adventure in enlightenment. I wish there was a path to enlightenment that was based on eating chocolate. I would so kick the ass out of that one.

Adventures in Enlightenment: The Sleepy Taoist

When hungry, eat, when tired, sleep.

So this month I'll be a Taoist. Specifically my challenge will be to sleep when tired. This is actually a big challenge for me. I've actually spent enormous time and energy fighting the natural sleep cycle. At the height of my disciplined sleep reduction program I had gotten down to about 5 hours a night. I'm currently averaging about 5 and 1/2 during the work week and eagerly catching up as much as I can on the weekend. If prayer worked I'd use it to get my kids to sleep in on Saturday and Sunday. But alas if it works at all it is only ironically.

As someone who has to hold a job, I need to be in a certain location at a certain time most days so the rules of engagement for this month will be to fix one end of my sleep cycle and let the other be controlled by the Tao. So I will wake up at 5:45 am every day (including the weekend) and just let my natural urge to sleep happen at the other end.

I am very curious to see what happens. I actually think I naturally tend to need less sleep than average but I'm not really sure anymore since I've been fighting sleep for so long. I don't know if I know what natural is with respect to my sleep habits.

I can tell you that waking up at that time on the weekend will require an iron will (not very Taoist I reckon) but if I'm truly getting enough sleep then it really shouldn't be a big deal. I'm very interested to see what it's like to have an hour of two to my self in the morning on the weekend. Sounds almost decadent.

I'll assume when I nod off the first time in an evening that this is the Tao telling me to go to sleep and I will respect it, no matter how many interesting things I can think of that I'd rather do than sleep (which is a lot).

Adventures in Enlightenment: Lent (thoughts)

[follow up to this]

First a summary of how I did. As a general statement I'll say that I wasn't a perfect stickler for staying away from the things that I gave up. In fact, I have a semi-good reason for planned lapses of a sort. I think the key to giving up something is being able to engage in the bad habit (or what have you) and not fall completely off the wagon. In fact I'd say getting back on the wagon is the most important skill to have. But you can't practice getting on unless you fall off at least a little.

- cokes (sodas): this was actually pretty easy. I've been slowly weaning myself off these for the last year or two and it was time to just be done with it. I'll allow myself an occasional can or two but I'm not planning on buying these to have around the house or work anymore.

- chocolate: I eat exclusively dark chocolate anyway so I'm not so sure giving this up was a net health gain. I'm still not sure what baseline I want to return to with this. The most humorous aspect of this goal for the month is that my wife's family paid for a cruise as a sort of family reunion. For anyone who has been on a cruise I'm sure you'll agree that avoiding chocolate on a cruise is a fairly daunting thing to do. But I did pretty good all things considered.

- religion/atheism: so here's the really critical item of this month's experiment. Would I miss reading about and writing about religion and disbelief for a month and how would I otherwise fill my time? Turns our I didn't miss it too much. It's sort of like going on a TV fast. At first you miss it, but then you are thankful that you've cut yourself off and are amazed at all the fun things you all of a sudden have time to do (in my case computer science reading / programming projects). Even something as simple as simply sleeping instead of reading about or writing about religion/disbelief is so much healthier on so many levels. Anyway we'll see where this leads me. Tentatively I'm thinking of setting a timer and limiting my time with all things religious to a small fraction of my week. Interestingly, I'm not very tempted to open up my new feed reader and start catching up and so far haven't. I sort of like the extra time. *sigh*

As far as lent as a concept goes I'll have to file this under clever mind control techniques. On the one hand it seems like practicing discipline is just a good thing no matter what. On the other hand giving up pleasure to prove yourself to god is sort of warped. The point it to think about how much more important god is than your own enjoyment and how you are failing to serve him enough. So you spend a month or so of deprivation thinking about how much you suck. So now you are in a position to realize how unworthy you are and how much help you need from higher powers. Well done religion engineers. Well done.

Anyway, I'm still pondering my next enlightenment adventure, hopefully something by tomorrow.

Adventures in Enlightenment: Lent

Let's try a little deprivation this month. Is it ever a bad time of year for lent? From a website on lent:

Q: Why is giving up something for Lent such a salutary custom?

A: By denying ourselves something we enjoy, we discipline our wills so that we are not slaves to our pleasures. Just as indulging the pleasure of eating leads to physical flabbiness and, if this is great enough, an inability to perform in physically demanding situations, indulging in pleasure in general leads to spiritual flabbiness and, if this is great enough, an inability to perform in spiritual demanding situations, we when the demands of morality require us to sacrifice something pleasurable (such as sex before marriage or not within the confines of marriage) or endure hardship (such as being scorned or persecuted for the faith). By disciplining the will to refuse pleasures when they are not sinful, a habit is developed which allows the will to refuse pleasures when they are sinful. There are few better ways to keep one's priorities straight than by periodically denying ourselves things of lesser priority to show us that they are not necessary and focus our attention on what is necessary.

So let's give up some things that are enjoyable, but to be practical let's also throw in some things that I probably should be doing less of anyways (e.g. for health reasons). Here is my list of things to give up for the month:

- no cokes (or any other soft drinks)
- no chocolate (I eat an insane amount of this actually)
- no religion/atheism blogging or checking my blog stats or checking religion/atheism blogs

As usual I suspect that if this enlightenment exercise has any value it will be in the practice of discipline. Discipline is the key to everything. (And I don't even believe in free will, a paradox!). Giving up the food components will be a little challenging but I think the hardest part will be giving up the reading of religion/atheism blogs. I've just hidden all the relevant feeds from my self. *sigh*.

So in keeping with my promise you won't hear from me this month (except for this entry). See you on the other side of August. With any luck I'll be a little thinner and a little more enlightened....

Adventures in Enlightenment: Mindfulness (final thoughts)

(the mindfulness adventure)

So that was pretty interesting experiment. I stayed pretty disciplined at it. Even though I didn't put in a lot of time, I did do it pretty much every day (both sitting meditation and random moments of "mindfulness" throughout the day). I find meditating to be one of the weirdest experiences. You don't really realize what a chatter box your brain is until you just sit there and watch it and try to get it to just shut up for a second.

It occurs to me that in a way mindfulness and meditation are a way of running your brain in a "debugger". Debuggers are certainly an interesting way to learn how a complex system works. But the funny thing about debuggers is that some problems go away while you are running the debugger and some problems only occur while you are running a debugger. In any case it's nice to have the option to run in debug mode on occasion so you can try to understand the root cause of how a certain system works. It's just not clear if the effort of getting the mindfulness/meditation debugger working is worth it in the long run. But if nothing else it is entertaining to try.

One thing I thought about a lot is why I should think mindfulness/meditation is necessarily a good thing. About the only thing good you can say unequivocally about it is that it tends to reduce stress in the practitioners. But other than that does it demonstrably improve my life in some way? Does it make one more enlightened? I certainly don't associate proficiency in meditation with success in the world. It may be that the acceptance and peace of mind of meditation actually makes you less likely to have the partial insanity required to do great things. Certainly you need focus to do great things but I'm not sure why I would think that mindfulness/meditation is a necessary or sufficient condition for this sort of thing. Do I really need any more peace/relaxation in my life? Maybe the thing I really need is to create more chaos and hunger for greatness. Meh. Sitting is easier. :)

In any case I'm going to try to stick with the minimal mindfulness plan for a while and see how it goes.

Tune in tomorrow for next month's adventure in enlightenment.

Adventures in Enlightenment: Mindfulness

OK, experiment for this month will be an old, old, old school technique: mindfulness. I've thought about this topic and even tried it in a casual way off and on for years. Most recently I've seen it discussed by Sam Harris and Susan Blackmore among others. If nothing else mindfulness is the ultimate pragmatic spiritual practice. "Don't take my word for it, just try it".

As usual I'll play around with what is interesting to try and what is "working", but as a first pass I'll try the following:

- Read this mindfulness description and suggestions.
- Try 6 minutes of sitting in as close to a lotus position as I can and try the various mindfulness exercises. Why 6 minutes, because time is money my friend. Why the lotus position? Hopefully the discomfort will prevent me from falling asleep. If I happen to have more time or the practice is interesting this time slot will go up.
- Try to remember at least three times per day to do an "in the moment" awareness exercise.
- If I'm feeling ambitious, crack open my copy of "Where ever you go, there you are" and read an occasional chapter.

OK, let's try my first micro-zazen and see how that goes.

... 6 minutes later ...

Well, I'm not *quite* enlightened yet and ouch!

So it goes...

Adventures in Enlightenment: Hunger (final thoughts)

So this month's experiment has come to an end. And this was a good one. In fact I think it would be hard for me to stop doing this now. I think any time you add a little discipline to your life and go off autopilot in some small way, you are better for it.

Am I more enlightened? Hell ya. Isn't it obvious? But I didn't lose any weight. This doesn't surprise me much since I think I'm already at the natural level that I can get down to without serious effort and deprivation. (Something that I will probably experiment with in a future installment of Adventures in Enlightenment).

So what does the average religious person expect they will find in hunger? I imagine it's an identification with those who are hungry involuntarily and perhaps a metaphysical experience of the spiritual hunger.

For me the most interesting thing was observing that hunger is something that is not very scary or powerful. It just comes. Sniffs around and then goes away for a while. That surprised me since I think I had somehow acquired a *very* low grade fear of hunger. As if being hungry meant my blood sugar levels had gone down too far and I wouldn't be able to think straight if I was too hungry for too long. (I had a firend who was hypoglycemic and used to get really moody and generally unpleasant if he skipped a meal so I may have been worried about becoming that persona). Furthermore I found that it cleared out my mind. Knowing that I just wasn't going to eat anything between breakfast and lunch just freed my mind from worrying about it and not focusing on what snacks I could be eating and worrying if I'm eating too many snacks. Etc. Instead I just had one less thing to distract me, and strangely I didn't find hunger distracting at all. Surprisingly so.

OK, new experiment starts tomorrow and it's related to the one just finishing up. I'm that much closer to enlightenment now.

Adventures in Enlightenment: Hunger (thoughts)

I just noticed that my site is the number one entry on google for "adventures in enlightenment". There is probably a way to make a million dollars off of that, but I'm too lazy. Of course I used to also have the top entry for toxic flatulence and where did that get me? Looking down the page on google for "adventures in enlightenment" is this strangely apropos youtube video.

I have high hopes for this hunger project. I don't have an eating disorder or anything and I don't think I'm over weight (but I'm certainly not skinny), but I *do* like food way too much, so this will be quite a challenge. Especially after watching that video. I *really* have an unwholesome love for chocolate.

I've heard that dieting is in many ways more difficult than breaking an addiction to drugs since with drugs you can go cold turkey and be physically separated from the addictive substance. With food you have to continue to face the beast everyday.

If you were wondering, I'm pretty hungry right now, but it's not too bad... And look at how enlightened I am already.

Adventures in Enlightenment: Hunger

After the disappointment that was gratefulness we turn to an old school enlightenment technique: hunger.

Truth be told if I didn't have to hold a job and be a productive member of my family, I think I would like to try some good old fashioned fasting just to see what that is like. But as it is, I'm skeptical traditional fasting would go over so well with my employer, let alone my wife. The kids probably would find it pretty funny, no doubt.

From the purely pragmatic side hunger is interesting for several reasons. Apparently being hungry makes you smarter. In addition, restricting your calories makes you live longer. As it happens I both want to be smarter and live longer, so, yeah for that.

But honestly what I think this really comes down to, as will all the actually beneficial enlightenment experiments, is discipline.

I'll probably work out the rules as I go, but to start my idea is to experience genuine hunger at least once a day for some period of time. I don't need to restrict my diet in any special way, I just need to eat a little less at meal time and skip some snacks. But at least once a day I have to be hungry without being light headed or seriously uncomfortable. Just be hungry and let myself be hungry for awhile.

Anyway, I am hungry for enlightenment. Damn, all this blogging is making me hungry. I could really use a snack about now...

(If hunger were thirst and I was a dinosaur, then this might be relevant.)

Adventures in Enlightenment: Gratefulness

Well my ethical experiment of controlling my flatulence has come to a conclusion. It was a tremendous success if I do say so my self. I'm now a more ethical person. My wife was thrilled with the noise reduction and improvement in environmental conditions. Her main criticism is that I saw this as a limited experiment and not a permanent life long behavior change. All I can say is, "that's science for ya". Some how she's not buying that explanation.

As you can see I've upgraded this project from merely improving my ethical state to one of increased enlightenment. If you can't achieve enlightenment through improved ethics, then what's the point? As if being ethical was a noble end in itself. Puh-lease! My next phase for May will be a month of gratitude. This was inspired by reading some John Horgan essays (highly recommended). One of these essays pointed me to this site. If an enlightened mystical monk recommends gratefulness as a practice, who am I to disagree?

Now one possible problem with this phase will be that I don't technically believe there is anything to be thankful to in some big cosmic sense. Perhaps surprisingly I don't think this matters. If it works to be thankful to a figment of your imagination then why not just be thankful to a non-figmentary nothing. Not much of a tweak really. Anyway my thought is that religion is a big evolutionary meme experiment. If they've hit on some successful techniques the point is "do they work" not their possibly mistaken interpretation of why it works. In any case, gratefulness it is.

My plan is to be grateful for one thing a day. There won't be any implied order of importance in this day to day ordering of gratefulness subjects but I will start with the thing that I truly am most grateful for and that is my wife and kids.

I am grateful for my wife and kids! They are awesome. They make it a pleasure to work my little programmer fingers to the bone.