I’ve been waking up at 4:30am as usual. It’s dark, and my bungalow has the usual mix of rumpled clothing and electronics strewn about. I cough up a lung from the air conditioning, which has dried the entire inside of my body. It’s freezing. I thought 29 degrees celsius was supposed to be close to sweltering. Too lazy to look at the conversion to fahrenheit.

My current routine involves staring up at the ceiling until the dawn light starts to creep in and then running next door to Samma Karuna for 7:15am vipassana meditation. A guy robed in white sort of leads this class in a sort of pagoda-like structure right off the beach. By leads, I mean he sits there and hits two bells together three times at the end of the hour. A barely audible recording plays in the background where an oldish sounding Indian guy utters a few words every 20 minutes. It adds an air of authenticity about the whole situation, but otherwise, it feels somewhat unnecessary…except perhaps to bring you closer to the present.

The first day of meditation was trying. My right knee was aching, and I also got an involuntary urge to kick stuff or steal other peoples’ pillows. Today was much more humane. I found my mind wandering from time to time, but I could bring it back on command. One indicator of my mind opening was that I started to see very vivid shifting colors with a dark bullseye in the center. Were these auras or some other kind of woowoo thing?! I’d like to think yes, but I’m dubious.

Meditation flows into yoga flows into qi gong.

A few of my meditation fueled insights are:

• I no longer want to work on my current slate of consulting (lol, I accidentally typed conslutting) projects.
• I think too much.
• I may need to go home soon.
• The mind loves to grasp at memories, interpretations, and possible futures.
• Thinking doesn’t make things happen.

The other major insight is that I love green smoothie bowls! Karma Cafe, here I come.

OM.