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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3315 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 29, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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For a lot of reasons.

  • “Awareness” meditation is alien to Western culture, and I like Western culture. There are few people who meditated a lot and accomplished great things, but Bach and Mozart prayed and this is enough for me. I would rather be a loud and passionate Christian monk than a quiet, ineffectual Buddhist monk.

  • The science of meditation is confused, because (1) longterm meditation selects for a certain character, and (2) the true control is “wakeful rest” rather than a lack of any quiet low-stimuli period.

  • Strong emotions are good and glorious if they are directed to a good and glorious cause, which prayer arguably attempts.

  • Prayer can be construed as a mental practice, where one (1) elaborates on the vision of God, (2) fleshes out one’s sins and wants, (3) focuses on the path forward.

  • I have some thoughts on prayer and psychological reinforcement that I’m interested in personally testing

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