RETROACTIVE MEDITATION ~Shinzen Young
OK, well, sometimes People ask.
OK, when I do intellectual work I can't meditate.
Because I've got to do the intellectual work, So what or is there a way I can meditate etc.
I'll just share my experience I think different People will have different experiences. But my experience is that when I do intellectual work on. I do writing, I'm trying to figure stuff out. I can't implement uh any kind of formal technique.
But.
What I can do is I can pepper that experience with little moments of practice in life So what that involves is I call stop on a dime. It's like OK. I'm doing this. I'm doing this. I've been doing this for an hour and I really like to keep doing this, but
Stop on a dime.
Now, what's gonna happen.
Well, maybe everything will be peaceful and formless.
After 50 years of practice just getting but probably there will be of a SUV IAS called the eruption of past and future.
And that will erupt in the CN here in feeling probably.
So.
You implemented technique.
Even if it's only for 30 seconds.
Um.
You open up completely to that.
In those 30 seconds if you bring the totality of your intention aliti to do a quality period of practice.
With whatever earcups.
Then you can actually.
Do retroactive meditation now retroactive meditation is by definition. Oxymoronic isn't it because it's mindfulness, particularly is always in the moment right now? How can you possibly retroactively be mindful?
But you see while you were bumping around doing this doing that doing this doing that all those energies were getting agitated activated.
When you stop on a dime.
You only have a couple minutes.
But if you really bring your AAA game.
During those couple minutes.
Everything that gets stirred up in that hour or 2 hours of just ordinary unconscious frenetic activity. It's right there in those couple minutes.
And if you can have a complete experience of that it effectively is the same.
It has the same effect on your overall growth pattern as having meditated for those 2 hours.
You do it retroactively, but you have to really bring your A game to whenever got stimulated so when I do things that.
I just have to do things.
Where I can't keep a technique going during the thing 'cause I'm just doing the thing?
Then I pepper it with this stop on a dime star Dama die.
So stop on a dime is you stop the activity, no matter how much you want to keep doing it OK. The mindfulness Bell Rang. I remember OK going to pepper the day stop on a dime and then you start Monodia Feelin gone see out.
See out.
Ln gone.
Cirez.
Rest.
See in gone.
No hesitation.
Not up I gotta sit here for 15 minutes and focus on my breath, and then I can note. What's going on. No see out God Seattle Garfield in call just start under dial. No hesitation because as?
Uh, who was up and said that.
Call.
Can't remember right now.
It will come to our Viktor Frankel.
Viktor Frankel said between
Between the stimulus and response.
There is a gap therein lies your freedom.
In daily life.
Stuff comes up.
And about 3 seconds later, a reaction occurs from you.
The degree to which there is mindfulness in that 3 seconds.
Or 2 seconds.
Therein is measured your freedom, so we want to be able to implement.
These techniques instantly 'cause in daily life.
2 or 3 seconds.
If you're not Johnny on the spot with mindfulness. The terrorists are in the cockpit. Follow my metaphor. The Lizard Brain is going to run the show and then you look back. It's like? Why did I do that?
When I could have done this other thing so.
If you have to do actions where you just have to do the action and you can't keep a technique going that's OK, but then pepper it.
Stop on a dime.
Stop the action occasionally start on it, I'm just bring your Tripoli game.
Even if it's only for 2 minutes to whatever got stirred up in my ex. But I don't know what your experience will be, but my experience is that?
The.
The the forces of past and future.
Are what I have to face? When I stop on a dime?
It's like this is I mean, this title force that says look back at what just happened.
Look forward as to what needs to happen next.
So there's this powerful pole of past and future.
Time before and time after TS Eliot has a whole poem about this.
Maybe I'll read it next time lamenting how everyone lives in time before and time after almost everyone very few People live in?
The present.