Not really any pressing news here. For a homebody like myself, COVID hasn't changed the routine all that much.
Have been on kick of getting my habits in order. For 49 days I kept a couple of index cards of habits I wanted to work on (exercise, only eating sweets once a week, sleeping without any devices around me) and I would cross them off every day. Half of them fell to the wayside (sweets got me early on, haha), but the other half (exercise, flossing, meditating, etc.) show numerous X's...showing I was committed.
Now I floss out of habit. Pretty amazing, huh?
I've started another set of index cards to continue building these routines. The intention is that they'll become so ingrained in my life, I won't have to think twice about doing them.
Meditation has been interesting. Have been doing an array of different types every day--this patchwork quilt of practices would probably be frowned on by any teacher, haha.
I had, at some point, an experience that has been the whole object of meditation for a while now, where one sees "the self", or what is thought of, at least conventionally, as the self, as an illusion. Some people call this the awakening experience (an unnecessarily fanciful term!), or stream entry, though it's tough to say for sure since it's something that can only be verified over time. Regardless, just having the glimpse was so interesting. And funny. It was realizing one has carried around "the self" on one's back one's entire life, when it is entirely not needed to live life. I could not stop laughing the night of that particular "glimpse".
After that, everything began unfolding like people said it would. Life just happens. And without the "I" saying "what about me, me, me, me" incessantly in the background. There was more stuff that happened but I can't quite describe it without sounding like a maniac.
One of the meditation practices that pointed the way has been a method called "direct inquiry", where one is asked a specific question. The meditation follows from there. Loch Kelly is an instructor who teaches one type of inquiry. This is one of his guided meditations, which has helped some people experience a "glimpse" of the nature of what some call the "true self", without the problem-solving "I" constantly in the way. https://insighttimer.com/lochkelly/guided-meditations/no-problem-to-solve.
