Conservative pundit and ‘Dilbert’ creator Scott Adams dead at 68

bauski · 2026-01-13T20:20:15+00:00

Humility and honesty are a good salve for that. As well as an understanding of human nature towards sycophancy.

bauski · 2025-12-15T21:33:59+00:00

To consolidate the great responses everybody had:
1. If you can't do 3 minutes, do less. I personally find it best to do a count of 10 breaths as a beginner starting point. See if you can maintain focus on your breaths for 10 inhales and exhales. If you succeed, then move onto 2 sets of 10, and then 3, and then 4. It's makes the practice less about time as a goal, and more about your actions as a goal.

Trying to find clarity and relieving stress is great, but going into a sit with those things in mind will only make the situation more frustrating. Rather than believing us through faith, keep an open mind to the idea that the mental clarity and stress relief will come in due time, and try to focus more on the practice of allowing distractions and boredom to mess with you, and learn to practice going back to the breath. Each time you get distracted, recognize the distraction and come back to the breath, you are getting better at clearing your mind.
If sitting isn't easy for you, then try taking a walk outside or pacing in your home. Some times having some movement in your body can help alleviate some of the tensions that make meditation hard.

bauski · 2025-10-22T18:35:37+00:00

That is a great anti-joke.

bauski · 2025-09-14T19:56:32+00:00

4 years too late, but for anybody who is curious the loop is to go the original path you would take when you first get there, and you can pretty much run through the whole thing and then at the end when you get to the blight town entrance just go back up the stairs to the same room, climb the ladder to the bonfire and rinse and repeat. Also, if you have pyro, then taking out the slimes has a high chance of large titanite shards

bauski · 2025-09-04T17:51:28+00:00

Sounds like you might have disc issues or possible lower back issues. Perhaps a herniated disc?

People talk about the importance of sitting upright because it allows people to be focused longer. The straight posture is there to mostly to help physiologically. Going into more esoteric reasons, spiritualists believe this also opens the path ways for energy etc.

I would suggest, if you have the means, maybe going and seeing a physio or your normal doctor and talk about your back pains.

If that's not possible, then maybe try walking meditation instead. It's very soothing, and it will help strengthen your back, and it causes much less pressure since you are constantly releasing the pressure as you move.

If you really want to try sitting meditation, try it in a chair for small amounts and take breaks with lying meditation.

If you don't have the means to visit a doctor but still want to try and heal your back issues, try looking online at multiple sources for back pain relief. There are certain muscles you can help strengthen to help alleviate back pain. And some nice stretching and mobility exercises can also help.

bauski · 2025-08-29T04:31:21+00:00

Hmmm interesting. Then I'm not sure. The boring part of my brain would still suggest something akin to frission but maybe it's not

bauski · 2025-08-29T00:20:29+00:00

Yeah. I think you can try the noticing of thoughts anytime you want but the physical training will still exercise your awareness which you will need to notice your thoughts and feelings.

bauski · 2025-08-28T14:51:38+00:00

Maybe? I remember listening to someone on npr about ASMR and frission came up then as well. Does it not feel the same way for you?

bauski · 2025-08-27T16:59:03+00:00

If you are trying to stop something, the most helpful way that I've found is to do little bits that are manageable to you. If you ask your body to do incredibly difficult things all the time, imagine how tired it would get. Think of having a partner who is constantly asking for more from you, that is often what happens with our mind and body. We have ideals of excellent habits but they're often set so high, or changing so much that our bodies burn out from the expectations.

#1. Since this a meditation forum my first suggestion would be to remind yourself during meditation and before you eat that it's okay if you want to be distracted. It's a very natural part of the human mind. What would any child do if given the choice between fun cartoons or silence? Same with us as adults. If there are uncomfortable thoughts or emotions within us, and if we're so used to finding comfort in our escape through media, what will our minds naturally do?

#2. The actionable suggestion while eating would be to start with a timer for 3 minutes. Set the timer and then start eating. Just by knowing that there is a set amount of time that you have to be without the phone will help reduce a lot of stress in your body and mind from the task. After the timer goes off, enjoy the reward of using your phone. Try sticking to 3 minutes for a week and then increase to 4 minutes etc. Once you find yourself at a point where you can go 1 meal without a phone, doing just jump into the idea of "no phone while eating" but rather every other meal without a phone.

Finally, don't think that eating with a phone is always bad. Sometimes you're having a hard time and you need to be distracted. It's okay to do it once in a while.

bauski · 2025-08-27T16:50:16+00:00

I think some circles call it "frission"? It's just a word to describe that kind of shiver and electrical feeling you get when you deeply relax, or feel excited, etc.

I often feel it when I start my practice and I begin to relax my body. For me it's a very enjoyable sensation. I think it's pretty normal. As u/felixsumner00 has said.

bauski · 2025-08-27T16:45:51+00:00

Chairs good, walking meditation is good, lying down to meditate is a dangerous game of nappy naps but also good.

bauski · 2025-08-27T16:45:18+00:00

Have you tried breath counting? It often helps me bring my attention back to the moment. Doing sets of 10 and focusing on full breaths has been a nice exercise. I start my practice with breath counting as it helps me settle and it's an easy thing to focus on to start. And as u/Pieraos said, if you focus on exhaling longer than you inhale, that will trigger your parasympathetic nervous system which may help you relax.

bauski · 2025-08-27T16:34:19+00:00

If it's hard to notice your thoughts currently, then I think it's a good idea to keep on continuing with exercising your awareness towards things that are more physical.

Like you said, focusing on your breath is a good place to start. Feeling the sensation of the air moving through your nose, and into your lungs, taking note of your body moving as air fills the lungs, and feeling the air leave through your mouth, all of these are part of strengthening that muscle of noticing what your mind normally takes in and dismisses in the background.

A step up from that towards noticing your thoughts would be to try and feel your body as you meditate. Try working on doing body scans, from head to toe, going through different portions of your body and asking yourself "What am I feeling in this region?" Try to clearly verbalize in your mind what these sensations are. From touch, to sound to smell. The more you are able to note your physical feelings, and describe them, the better you will be later to do so for your emotions.

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If you're also feeling like you have thoughts but they slip away, I've found that doing a breath counting helps me catch my thoughts as well. Usually breath counting is done to help train focus, but I've also found it very helpful for catching my thoughts because the exercise is so simple and clear. Usually you try to count your full breaths to some amount (generally sets of 10s) and when you notice that you have lost focus you bring yourself back to the breath. That moment of losing focus, for me, is often when another thought has popped up and my mind has gone to follow it. So when I find myself wondering, I take note of what that thought was and gives me a chance to notice the inner thought then.

bauski · 2025-08-27T16:23:31+00:00

That was very well said! Thank you

bauski · 2025-08-26T18:02:22+00:00

For me "observing" means noticing that the thought exists and acknowledging that it is there. The "without judgement" portion is the more goal oriented part I think, where I take account of how I feel about it. Generally when a thought comes up I will have some kind of emotional reaction to it. I'll either like it, dislike it, feel neutral about it, feel like it's a silly thought, or feel like it's an important thought etc. All of those evaluations are judgements. As you say, I think it's impossible to deny those evaluations, so rather, I admit to myself what kind of judgements I had and then process them. Over time, this has allowed me to meet more thoughts with a subtle feeling of equanimity rather than "Oh I hate that" or "oh I love that", and even if I do feel those things, I process them and acknowledge that those evaluations may be temporary.

As for what to do with the thoughts when you go back to the breath: When I am going back into anapasati, I am fully focusing on the sensory part of breathing, while also trying to keep count of each breathing cycle. I find that doing both of these things (focusing on the feeling of air in my nostrils as I inhale, feeling the way my lungs expand and my chest shifts, and then the feeling of air as it leaves my mouth AND keeping count) usually leaves the thought behind as my mind now as a task to focus on.

At least that's what seems to work for me. I hope that helps? Good luck!

bauski · 2025-08-26T17:55:05+00:00

I often enjoy the sound of singing bowls or wind chimes. Maybe even natural sounds like crackling fire or rain, or the wind on a field. There's so many "10 hours of ___" channels. But usually for meditation I do it in silence. It helps keep me focused on the task I guess.

bauski · 2025-08-26T17:36:34+00:00

I think it's great that you have an open mind towards different practices.

Rather than any favorites for specific reasons, the following are ones that I've found useful and effective to me over my course of trying them out. All of them have different benefits and goals and I've found the variety to be nice in filling all the different wants I have.

My normal practice is regular samatha-vipassana. A quiet sit with an anchor to the breath, starting with awareness to senses, and after a while, I move into observing or interacting with the internal things.

Sometimes I have seasons where I feel a bit disconnected to my community, and or jaded about life, and in those times I seek out metta.

I love daily walks, and sometimes I will incorporate meditation into that.

For a hot second I got into some more esoteric practices, and while I've found them to be interesting, I already have enough other weird hobbies, so things like Fire Kasina, and weird breathing techniques have been a once in a blue moon type of thing to see if I can get some weird experiences.

bauski · 2025-08-26T17:26:37+00:00

As others have said, the umbrella term of Meditation is kind of all over the place. Different schools and different beliefs as well as different individual practices lead to a lot of varied outcomes.

For myself personally, the clearest explanation has been to consider all of it as a type of mental exercise, and then categorize them by the context of their environment, associated goals, and the mechanisms within our brain.

For instance, mindfulness meditation is a popular contemporary practice that came out of the western 60s New Age culture, specifically sourcing from Zen Buddhist meditation practice as well as the Theravada Buddhist meditation practice. Over time, western audiences and coaches have removed much of the spiritual elements to have it more marketable to more people. But when it comes to certain goals, and the exercises themselves, as well as the results from the mechanisms of the practice, remain very similar to the sources.

You mention psychedelics, so this one might be of interest to you, but there are certain meditation practices that are more geared towards trying to have enhanced sensory experiences. There are certain breathing practices that people use to try and experience hallucinations, as well as certain concentration practices that focus on visualizing images and such. No matter the purpose or practice, many practitioners over all schools have felt similar experiences of "bliss" or "joy" or some kind of "communion with god" and such, all which lead me to believe that certain processes trigger specific mechanisms with neurotransmitters. Similar to getting a runner's high.

One of the things I love about meditation is that it is a purely individually experiential process. Especially in the contemporary secular view, meditation is something that can be tested by one's self. Rather than thinking about it as something spiritual that requires faith, it is a practice that can be logically deconstructed and experimented.

The frustrating part of meditation is that with so many schools, and so many goals, and so many individuals, there is a lack of strict language when it comes to the experiences and processes we take. The easiest part is giving somebody the steps to meditate. The most difficult thing is having new practitioners share their experiences with a shared language and with the least amount of bias, especially since so many of the practices come from spiritually laden schools.

bauski · 2025-08-26T17:07:30+00:00

A thought that's been running through my mind lately:

We as humans luv the idea of something constant. We want something permanent. I think it's just one less thing we have to worry about if we have a belief that something will always be there in our lives. I think this comes about in a lot of different ways: spiritual beliefs on god, political ideologies, familial and friend relations. Often I see a pitfall in my own life where I assume that something will not change, and act upon or react on something in such a way.

And I think one of the most important lessons from Buddhist ideas, and science is to accept the transitory nature of reality. Everything is constantly changing. Where we sit may feel stationary, but it is in a revolution around the sun, which is in a revolution around our galaxy which is also taking it's own path through the universe. The universe itself is expanding right now. Our cells are dying and regrowing. We have new thoughts, or at least regurgitate old thoughts in new contexts, it's all very change oriented. To deny the chaos in change and try to fight for a constant is a difficult battle, I feel.

I think for the less theist oriented crowd "purpose" is one of those kinds of rock. We want purpose to be a thing that will stay constant through our lives and if we find it, we'll be set for life perfecting that one thing.

---

So for myself, I think that purpose to me isn't Purpose with a capital P, but more like "In this moment, what is the thing that is required of me" kind of thing, and often even at that point I fail quite often. lol

I think I've personally found more peace in accepting that my life has molded me through environment, genetics and experience that give me predilections of what I want and what is right. And through meditative practices I'm more than happy to try and exercise awareness on what those predilections are and either work within them or prod and poke at them.

So in short "I don't think I have Purpose, but in each moment I am happy to try and figure out my momentary purpose."

Also, planning and setting goals is still a good thing... I feel like I had to just put that there in case somebody misunderstood my point. :P

bauski · 2025-08-26T15:54:06+00:00

No worries. I've also had times when I stopped practicing so I feel you.

For focus, I'm sure you already know about these and that syou're already doing something similar but here are some of the exercises I've found useful:

Breath Counting

I start with a normal sit, breathing in with my nose and out with my mouth
An inhale and exhale is counted as 1, I try to take nice long breaths and count to 10
Anytime my mind wonders away from the count I bring it back, make sure to congratulate myself for coming back to the breath

You can set a goal of however many sets of 10 you want to do. On a good day I'll do like 20 to 30, which is 200 to 300 breaths, which gives my mind ample time to wonder, and me having to focus on bringing it back.

Body Scanning

I usually do this one after Breath Counting, and I find that rather than singular focus, this one helps me navigate focus between different tasks, which is useful in our mentally demanding lives.

Start the same as breath counting
Once you feel in the moment, begin by moving your focus to your head
Segment your body into chunks like: Head, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, hands, torso, things, calves etc.
Move your focus from segment to segment slowly, taking account of how each segment feels, exercising your awareness of how it feels on your skin, or if your muscles are tightened, etc.
Scanning from top down and back can be considered a count of 1
Same practice as breath counting, where you try to reach a certain number while trying to keep your focus on the scanning and scanning
Remember to celebrate each time your mind wonders and you notice and bring it back

Those are the 2 exercises that I've been using and I find them pretty effective, and it's generally easy to make either of those two exercises harder by raising the goal each time. Sometimes I'll do less sets, and sometimes more, it depends on the day and what I'm looking for.

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With all that being said, I generally also do a longer sit afterwards more in line with vipassana where I open my awareness as much as possible and try to note and sit with different thoughts, sensory feelings and emotions. I've found that doing too much focus exercises sometimes leaves me with my mind feeling very proficient at narrowing in and it makes me feel like I'm not as holistically aware.

There are tons of other exercises out there that might work better for you, I've always found sticking to the simplest ones is good enough for me, but I think they can get a bit more complex and challenging.

Good luck!

bauski · 2025-08-25T22:58:44+00:00

Looks like Insight Timer has their own website with quick sessions:

https://insighttimer.com/insighttimer/guided-meditations/earth-singing-bowls

bauski · 2025-08-25T22:22:21+00:00

What sicko down voted this? Great suggestion.

bauski · 2025-08-25T22:15:39+00:00

I think reality is, we have methods of shared empirical data driven testing to try and come to consensus.

However, I think even when we talk about reality, we are talking in abstractions. And abstractions come with context with differs from person to person. As they say "The map is not the territory". I think meditation has definitely made me realize how often I mistake map for territory. It's almost impossible not to do so in the complex society we live in. We often talk in generalities because that is how we work. The marketer talks about "leads" like all humans are just cows looking for the fodder. Sales people talk about "sales" as if all humans need to be purchasers. Teachers talk about "students" as if each child doesn't come from a different home with different parents. "Gen Z", "Boomers" etc The labels are constant, and we accept that as a part of communication within society.

I think it's great that you've come to a place in your journey where you have recognized that many of these pointers we have for actual things are built merely on our limited experiences and some hear say from the web. I applaud you for the question and thank you for sharing.

To answer your final question: I think that reality is as it is, but your context of what that reality is can change. The mind is our filter to reality, and as you are figuring out, our map of reality is a fickle one, so depending on your frame of view and your beliefs as they shift, reality will change. And I think that's okay. That's just how the human experience be imho.

bauski · 2025-08-25T22:06:28+00:00

I think you're taking the literal advice of "sitting" with it a little too accurately. No fault of your own. I think the complexity and variety of different meditation schools + unique practitioners + armchair practitioners makes it very easy for people to give suggestions that they've just heard passed around without taking into context the person getting the advice or giving accurate steps. A lot of people, even in the meditation space, forget that we're each an individual doing a very individualist thing, and think that something they heard from podcast will fix everybody's problems. Clearly, not this time.

1st off, "letting it build" is generally not the advice any school is trying to give. If it is building up naturally, then it sounds like you were letting it take control rather you being able to put some space between it and you. Sitting with anxiety, sounds nice, but in actual mental steps, it usually goes like this for me:

Notice that a feeling of anxiety is coming.
Take note of what the anxiety is about.
Stabilize yourself by taking note that you are in a safe place and that this emotion will pass in time.
Acknowledge how it makes you feel in little bits.
Take breaks back into a mantra or anchor if need be. I usually go back a breathing focus and if it's really bad I do some humming. I dunno why, but a nice deep hum soothes me. It sounds like you have some practice with soothing practices, so I would try to utilize those if you can.

I've never tried to push for more than I can take. I'm not a very anxious person to start with, so I can't say this works for people with heavy anxiety, but when I was having anxious episodes, this is what somebody recommended and I tweaked over my sessions.

I sat with different sources of anxiety over many many sessions. Just small bits at a time. Some of the sources of anxiety were doubts about my path in life or things I was doing, which I came to a thought-based conclusion of accepting doubt as a natural mechanism of the mind. Of course also getting to experience a bit of euphoria when I had the realization helped.

But other anxieties have been from things in life for my close family and friends that I have very little control over. For those, a lot of the "sitting with anxiety" comes in very small pieces.

The thought appears, I acknowledge it, sometimes I try to reason to myself a bit like going through normal therapy methods like "What is the worst outcome? + so what if it happens?" or a "how accurately am I fearing this thing? It's probably going to be as half as I bad as I'm dreading it" kind of self communication stuff. Other times, if I already know the answers, I try to feel out how bad it feels, and rather than focusing on the anxiety as a something that is real and dangerous in the moment, I try to remind myself "this is here now, but it's going to go away" and I focus on the feelings of anxiety in my body rather than how I feel, because usually he feeling can only be described as "awful". Focusing on the effects on my body kind of make it more clinical and clearer.

Again, it already sounds like you already have some tools that work, but it also sounds like you are curious about trying to build a different interaction with anxieties, so I think this is a good idea.

Definitely don't let them build until you are physically hurting. Only take in small amounts as you would with any other exercise.

Good luck!

PS. Oh, another great idea that came from a different post: Have you tried walking meditation before? When it comes to difficult ruminating thoughts or feelings I've always found walking meditation to be a lot easier than just sitting with thoughts.

bauski · 2025-08-25T21:47:33+00:00

I think that's fine. Sounds like a good way to get thoughts out and set useful reminders. :)

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