Comments on: Do Twitter and meditation mix? Ramblings of a twittering mind.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:36:17 +0000

Chris, sounds like you made it through this very difficult situation able to maintain balance, and I’m sure it helped your father! I’m glad he pulled through.

By: chris

chris — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:45:45 +0000

Thank you, Mary. Just hours after I asked my balancing question, I had a week that challenged me to keep my balance. My father was hospitalized, could have lost his life, but with lots of prayers, and loving doctors, he made it through.

I spent a lot of time last week/weekend using your gratitude podcast – appreciating my dad, those helping him and loving him. He actually is home now much to the surprise of the medical staff….and his family. No way to prove it, but I do believe the appreciating and prayers (from around the country) increased his will to live, and sped up his healing.

By: Mary

Mary — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:42:37 +0000

Chris, I like to think of balance as a dynamic thing. I like the image of someone on a balance board. There’s constant movement with the feet tilting the board back and forth as balance is maintained.

In life, we go back and forth between outgoing and ingoing attention — outgoing when we’re busy with tasks, ingoing when we meditate and our attention can go inward. It’s natural to have both movements happening — in and out — but I think the problem in our culture is too much time spent with the outward attention. We become scattered, lose our center and it drains our energy. I think with regular meditation, one becomes much more self-aware and able to recognize when the sense of connection and centeredness is lost. With that recognition, the mind can shift. In fact, meditation can culture the habit of shifting the attention back to center.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:21:20 +0000

This goes to a question I have been asking: How do you balance the meditation life with the Twitter (real) life? In meditation I feel connected. Once out, I am back to Tweeting.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:39:44 +0000

patti — sounds familiar! Glad you “regained some space in (your) head”!

AH — Twitter does seem like the ADD brain! Sometimes I think our whole culture has ADD — everything moves so fast and multi-tasking is the norm. Movies and TV shows jump around more and more. I’m so glad you’ve found ways to re-focus and that the meditations are helping. You are welcome!

By: AH

AH — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:01:35 +0000

I think Twitter is the equivalent of an ADD brain for “normal” people. Twitter for me is a nightmare as I have an ADD brain and I work really hard to keep on task. I even have a watch that vibrates every hour to help me re-focus. I love your meditations because you emphasize letting go of the thoughts – not following them, and if we do, to gently let go. By using your meditations I am able to feel in control of my thoughts for a while and it is very empowering. Thank you!

By: patti

patti — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:38:42 +0000

i fell into twitter last year and was instantly besotted!
i couldn’t stop tweeting, following tweets and talking about twitter.
the energy was crazy, the people were fun, the ideas were prodigious and constantly fresh and changing.
and the information overload began to fry my brains and i was losing sleep just trying to keep up with it all. and more freakily, i was starting to feel a bit spaced out as i went about my daily life, because my mind was on twitter.
oooo tooo much!

in january, i closed my facebook account.
in march i closed my twitter account.
i found hours extra in each day and regained some space in my head.

i blog. i post on some forums of interest to me. i read the odd blog (odd as in occasional, not as in peculiar). i get lost with google for hours at a time and discover new things at my leisure. it’s enough…. for me….right now.

twitter really fed my busy chattering monkey mind and the danger of twitter (for me) is that it was bottomless and endless and infinite and i had no built-in “enough’ button.