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Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Reflections on a month of meditation

I've been meditating for a month.

I started this at the beginning of the month, as you may remember.  Every day, for anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes a day, I've been meditating.  I missed 5 days last week, due to me being on a business trip, but other than that, I didn't miss a day.

After a month, I can say that meditation helped me.  To note one example, I made a mistake at work, resulting in someone getting mad at both me and my boss.  I felt pretty bad about it.  Ordinarily, that emotional reaction would cause me a lot of stress, and I'd end up making further sub-optimal decisions.  Instead, I was able to keep my cool thanks to the meditation.  I corrected the problem without much fuss, and didn't let it bother me too much, and I don't believe there was any lasting harm done.

That was the most striking example, but throughout this month, I've felt that I've been more calm and more rational overall.  It really struck home how good a practice meditation is to the practicing Stoic.  Increasing tranquility and tranquility is what it's all about, Stoically speaking.  In a sense, though, meditation reverses the Stoic cause & effect.  The Stoics would encourage us to be rational, which will lead to tranquility.  Meditation increases tranquility directly, which leads to rationality.

This next month I have another practice I'm going to try, which I'll write up shortly.  I intend to keep up the meditation.

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