On Meditating

It had to happen, I've started doing meditation, or as the kids say, mInDfUlNeSs.

Here's the thing, lately my mental CPU has been overloaded by countless threads of thoughts, and mindfulness is supposed to help you shave off some of them. Specifically, the ones that are not important for basic sustenance and which belong to the following categories:

1. Rumination

This is when you obsess over things of the past. Even if they no longer affect your current self, they linger, they pull your sleeve with a continuous and unproductive questioning...

• What happened was unfair, why didn't I react accordingly?
• What I did was a mistake, why didn't I catch it in time?
• Season 8 was terrible, why did I even watch it?

2. Projection

This is when you try to live events that have not happened yet and that might as well never happen. You do this as a form of rehearsal, for fear of not being up to the task in case that specific something occurs, which is ridiculous because at any rate this would be a problem for future you, and that person is an idiot.

3. Paradoxication

I came up with this word. This is when your brain goes on a tangent and spits up the weirdest shit, usually in the form of inconsequential hypotheticals that are submitted at a high frequency...

What's the best movie of the past 10 years and why is it Paddington 2? Can I survive an entire week eating kale and most importantly how would my poop look like? After how many hours a walk becomes a hike? What if wearing panties is a mistake? Is self-help bullshit? Did Jesus work out? What's at the edge of the universe and why do I have the feeling it's bathroom tiles?

Why Meditate

Now, the first two categories are anxiety-inducing and ultimately a waste of resources, since the past and future are not where shit is at. I mean we've all watched Kung Fu Panda.

The final category is just annoying for its sheer computational volume. I might be at a funeral and suddenly have to fight my giggles because I'm visualizing an oily ripped Jesus on the cover of Men's Health.

So, back to meditation. As for all things these days, I decided that the best approach is to use an app. After careful consideration and a coin toss, I installed Dan Harris' app called 10% Happier.

Turns out, meditating is extremely easy and hard at the same time. You follow the app's voice that tells you to sit on a chair and only focus on your breathing.

Whenever a thought crosses your mind, you fight it away and get back to the breathing. Then the app's voice reminds you that the trial period is over, and you have to pay 90 dollars for sitting on a chair and breathing, which is something that I do almost daily, so fuck Dan Harris I will meditate analogically from now on.

Third act crisis

But let's introduce a third act crisis.

I have been experiencing issues during my latest mindfulness sessions, which might preclude any future in the whole meditation enterprise for me.

What happens is that I usually start cocky and manage to throw in a solid 5 puffs with absolutely no thoughts about naked Jesus. Things start to click, and I find myself in the zone, levitating 10 centimeters above sea level; my body vibrating like a hummingbird.

Then a very noisy word materializes in my brain...

HADOUKEN!

And so I'm screwed. The vibration stops, I emit a sound like that of a lit cigarette thrown in the toilet, and I fall back to the chair.

I try to reset, inhale some air, free my mind, but... HADOUKEN!

Ok, again... inhale... exhale... HADOUKEN!

Shit, back to square one. HADOUKEN! Rinse and repeat. HADOUKEN!

Sometimes it's a squealy HADOUuuuuKEeeN as if shouted by Bruce Lee. Sometimes it's a fatigued HAGH-DOUGH-KENH, coughed at the end of an ultra-marathon. Some other times it's a RAWDOHUUKKEEHN growled by a satanic beast like a Golden Retriever.

So that's it. This ruined mindfulness for me. Am I the only one with this issue or is it a common bug? Maybe it's a HODOR thing, and HADOUKEN is just the contraption for "I have my head broken".