Tag Archives: desire

Review: Vipassana Center silent meditation retreat

On my pleasure practice nature walk, I formed the hypothesis that excessive attachment was preventing me from noticing my preferences, desires, and feelings, and that meditation might help with this. I signed up for a free 10-day Vipassana center meditation retreat.

When I decided to go on the retreat, I had two main benefits in mind:

  • Learn to perceive my desires, preferences, and emotions more reliably, by means of being more aware of bodily sensations.
  • Learn to be able to look at these and fully perceive them without feeling compelled to act on them.

I got these, and more. Continue reading

Nature and Nature's Bod: Attachment, Desire, Empathy Overload, and Embodiment

I’ve been working on increasing my sensitivity to my own desires and preferences. As part of this, I’ve been working through the exercises in a book my friend Sarah recommended, called Pleasurable Weight Loss

One recent exercise was to go somewhere with great natural beauty and connect with nature. I have never in my life felt connected with growing things - cities feel vibrant, alive, and purposeful to me, plants just feel like passive items of scenery - but I had decided to try every exercise in the book, no matter how hard it seemed, and make a genuine effort to engage with the spirit of the exercise. At worst, I’d get a better sense of what made the exercise hard. So I went out to Tilden Park and attempted to find a nature trail. I almost failed, but eventually found the botanical garden, where I wandered around, and noticed a few things. Continue reading

Model-building about desire - a worked example

A few weeks ago, I spent a few days doing little other work than sitting and thinking about my problems. In 2012, I wouldn’t have dared do that. It would have felt like spinning my wheels. It would have felt lazy and self-indulgent. I would have expected to fail - and I would have been right. But now I can do it.

The difference is that I’ve practiced structured thinking, or model-building. Rather than talk a lot about what that is, I’m going to work through an example. Continue reading