The drugs were fine today.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean, I felt like shit, but it was okay.\u00c2\u00a0 I am not going to let it keep me down.\u00c2\u00a0 I had headache and chills and fever when I got home.\u00c2\u00a0 Not as much of a spike as the first day restarting, but I felt worse longer.<\/p>\n
Last night I had a meditation conundrum.\u00c2\u00a0 I realized I might be doing it wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 I was using music to block out the sound.<\/p>\n
so I asked three meditation-minded friends a question:<\/p>\n
can you listen to music?\u00c2\u00a0 what do you do when your environment is really loud<\/em>?<\/p>\n i know you are supposed to do it silently.\u00c2\u00a0 and i had just listened to one guided meditation by gil fronsdal<\/a> where he says explicitly that it is not allowed, and that it is a crutch.\u00c2\u00a0 his reasons make sense.\u00c2\u00a0 but he lives somewhere in marin county.\u00c2\u00a0 you could hear cars driving by every three or four minutes, but that was the only sound.\u00c2\u00a0 plus he’s an expert, and i’m a beginner, and I need<\/em> this for my health.\u00c2\u00a0 it may be a crutch, but people with broken legs use a crutch until their leg is strong enough, no?<\/p>\n when I do it at the infusion center at the hospital i use early ambient brian eno to block out the noise.\u00c2\u00a0 which is about as close as you can come to listening to white noise.\u00c2\u00a0 the center is loud, with phones ringing and machines beeping, and all kinds of old folks gabbing away and trading war stories about their chemo?<\/p>\n or also thinking about when i go back to nyc, and the apartment is so loud.\u00c2\u00a0 just the apartment.\u00c2\u00a0 people upstairs, people in hallway, friggin loud refridgerator.\u00c2\u00a0 i dont expect that will be anywhere near as bad as the hospital, and yet being able to do it at the hospital is crucial for my calm.<\/p>\n I asked three people.\u00c2\u00a0 My massage\/healer\/counselor person, HT who is a verifiable Tibettan Buddist (proving her street cred by flying across the country to hear one of the holy men speak<\/a>), and SL who whispered something about learning to meditate across the studio table very early after my diagnosis (with his trademark crafty one-sided raised eyebrow.)<\/p>\n My massage person said that yes, it was a crutch, but because I was not using the music for entertainment, but for more of a white noise effect, it was okay for now.\u00c2\u00a0 The most important thing was that I was getting what I needed from the meditation.\u00c2\u00a0 That the music is familiar to me, and therefore comforting; part of the problem with the the infusion center is that it is scary, so the comforting effect may help me be more mindful.\u00c2\u00a0 (we spent more time talking today, than we did massaging.\u00c2\u00a0 that is def what i needed today.)<\/p>\n SL is hardcore (as usual), while acknoweldging that rules are always meant to be broken (also as usual).\u00c2\u00a0 He wrote:<\/p>\n I use earplugs sometimes.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s also something called sound meditation where you try to hear every sound but not focus on any of them.\u00c2\u00a0 Or something like that.\u00c2\u00a0 I have only *heard* about it. har har.<\/p>\n This might be helpful?\u00c2\u00a0 I haven’t heard it myself… <\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.buddhanet.net\/audio-meditation.htm<\/a><\/p>\n Mindfulness of sound and thought, firstly instructs on how to use sound as an object of meditation then asks the listener to shift attention to thoughts. The second part of this track is more instruction on how to manage difficult thoughts when they arise rather than a guided meditation.<\/p>\n But the thing to remember is that the noise out there is just like the noise of your thoughts. They’re just gonna be there. Always. And what you’re learning is how to get past the noise (noisy thoughts or audio noise) and let it go. A busy room is tricky, but it’s a great place to practice!<\/p>\n Also, do what you gotta do.\u00c2\u00a0 The rules aren’t rules.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n HT is a softy, though wise. She wrote:<\/p>\n of course.<\/p>\n and no, you are not supposed to do it silently. at least, it’s not the only way. that’s only a part of it. and there are totally all kinds of different ways to meditate.<\/p>\n yes, the music is a crutch, but i think it is important to identify what it is aiding. it’s aiding you to stay calm, which at this time i imagine is very important in getting through your treatments.<\/p>\n in the future, when you have a little bit more ‘space’ (the japanese word is ‘yoyuu’…can’t quite describe it but maybe S would have a better word), when you’re back in nyc etc. i imagine that would be a situation in which you could develop your ‘meditation’ further- which from what i have learned so far is about trying to be in the present, looking at oneself, and it is a way in which we can develop our mind as a muscle- our mind to stay calm amidst all the chatter of thoughts, desires, insecurities, the sound of cars, apartments etc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So I went halfway.\u00c2\u00a0 I listened to the guided meditation tape, but I turned up the volume so that the hiss of the recording noise and the MP3 compression noise was loud enough to just dull the sounds around me.\u00c2\u00a0 I could hear talking, but I couldn’t understand the words.\u00c2\u00a0 That was enough.\u00c2\u00a0 I just need to get through these next two weeks.<\/p>\n I did get a chance this evening to meditate “in silence.”\u00c2\u00a0 Right before dark I walked up the Marquam trail to Fairmount, a steep uphill 15 minute hike.\u00c2\u00a0 When I got to the top I sat on a rock and waited for my dad to come pick me up and take me back down.<\/p>\n It was dark by then, and not many cars were driving by.\u00c2\u00a0 It is true, what SL said.\u00c2\u00a0 Its all noise.\u00c2\u00a0 Even the swishing of the branches of the trees, the rustling of the leaves, and the scurring of the squirrels are noise that you have to block out to concentrate.\u00c2\u00a0 I could see the lights of each car through my eyelds, and I spent most of my time resisting the urge to look and see if the car that was approaching was going to stop for me.\u00c2\u00a0 As it turns out I was distracted by most of the cars that passed, but not my father’s car when he arrived.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe he turned out his lights?\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe he was just going slow enough that the engine was mostly silent.\u00c2\u00a0 His arrival and my opening my eyes was very peaceful.<\/p>\n Then I got rather feverish on the ride back down(!)<\/p>\n UPDATE: SL points out that I got my facts wrong, and that it is easy to be a hater:<\/p>\n Also, Gil Fronsdal is in Redwood City – which is why you hear the cars going by in his talks.\u00c2\u00a0 Kornfield is in this totally remote part of Marin County or Fairfax or something.\u00c2\u00a0 Where it is almost totally silent except for the trees and everything else.<\/p>\n What’s funny is when I’ve been to Spirit Rock (the remote location) people will come in late and they make noise and you just *hate* them.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though you’re not supposed to.\u00c2\u00a0 “what the fuck just sit down already”\u00c2\u00a0 Then you gotta work with the noise AND the fact that you’ve turned this person you’ve never even seen into the worst person in the world.<\/p>\n I’ve heard about long retreats where people fall asleep and start snoring.\u00c2\u00a0 Or my friend Annie was on a silent retreat (no speaking for days) where someone’s watch alarm went off every hour or something and they never thought to turn it off.\u00c2\u00a0 When you’re not speaking to anyone it’s really easy to turn that person into the worst person in the world in your mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The drugs were fine today.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean, I felt like shit, but it was okay.\u00c2\u00a0 I am not going to let it keep me down.\u00c2\u00a0 I had headache and chills and fever when I got home.\u00c2\u00a0 Not as much of a spike as the first day restarting, but I felt worse longer. Last night I … Continue reading day 12, a meditation question<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,32,11,8],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-update","tag-comfort","tag-decisions","tag-interferon","tag-meditation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}