29 October 2018 link meditation
Mike Powell:
New information produces rewards, so we come to seek it habitually, even if it interferes with whatever goal we have at hand. What emerges is a kind of frictionless state, where you end up spending 12 minutes looking for keys that are already in your hand or typing “nytimes.com” into your URL bar only to discover you are already on the website for The New York Times. In other words, we are, on some level, evolutionarily geared against meditation.
I have an up-and-down relationship with mediation. I try to do it, and always feel better for it, but finding the right time to do it can feel tricky sometime. It tends to be the times I need it the most where I feel I don’t have the time. When it comes to all the claimed benefits, I can’t really say much, other than I just think it’s extremely beneficial to just do nothing for 10-20 minutes. Close your eyes, breathe, relax. There’s not much more to it.