Morning Meditation Without Orgasm

The view from the balcony

It's 9 am on Shabbat Morning. I got up at 8.30. I'm rested. All is quiet. DD's still asleep. We're not going anywhere today. It's Shabbat so there are no buses and everything is closed in Jerusalem. (We can take taxis, Yes Planet Cinema is open as well as a few restaurants, but I'm trying to create an atmosphere here.)

I made coffee and went to sit outside on the balcony. I read recently that people who meditate can rejuvenate parts of their brain to the brain function of a 25 year old. I can't remember where I read it now.

I assume it meant the brain function of yourself at 25 and not any random 25 year old, or the average intelligence of all the 25 years olds on the planet. That wouldn't be fair because I had to go through years of homework and writing essays to get my particular 25 year old brain.

Anyway, as I said, I tried to meditate but after ten seconds my eyes kept popping open. They say you have to practice and build up to about 40 minutes a day. 40 minutes a day! I wonder if you can play Home Design on your phone whilst meditating. If you think about it, the two activities are compatible. Meditating requires clearing your mind and playing Home Design is pretty mindless.

I had an experience with meditating when I was very young and years later I read something that shattered all my illusions about it. I was at Limmud (a Jewish learning and social experience for adults held in the English countryside, over the Christmas and New Year holidays.) One morning I attended a session of guided meditation.

We were guided by a young American rabbi who suggested we meditate on the first line of the Shema. This is the prayer that we're supposed to say every morning and evening and if we think we're about to die. It starts (although I was saying thinking it in Hebrew): Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Every time I got to the the word 'Elohaynu' (our God) I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. It was like being hugged. I kept saying that word over an over and letting the feeling wash over me. In the room I heard the rabbi telling us to gently finish and open our eyes. I didn't want to stop. But obviously I did, after a couple more 'Elohaynus'.

I opened my eyes and the rabbi was smiling at me. "You had an experience, " he said. I nodded. I was beaming and every time I thought about it during the day as I went to lectures and meals, I had to wipe the smile off my face or look like an idiot. I also wondered if I'd had an actual encounter with God or if you could get the same feeling meditating with "OM".

That had been the last day of guided meditation. I tried doing it myself but I didn't get the same effect. For years, I'd try meditating every so often but I never ever even got close to the experience I'd had that first time. I remember the name of that rabbi and I occasionally thought of contacting him for advice. But I didn't and eventually I gave up meditation.

Fast forward about 30 years and I saw an article about the connection between meditation and orgasms. Turns out, many women experience a kind of orgasm the first time, and only the first time, they meditate. Well that explains everything. So moving OM, I'm not expecting the orgasm. I'm just going for my 25 year old brain. I'll try again next week.

What Time Do Life Coaches Go To Bed?

This is what 5 a.m. looks like in the real world.

This is a serious question because I don't get it. The numbers just don't add up. I've been watching a lot of inspirational videos on You Tube recently, I'm trying to find inspiration to do something. Anything really - doesn't matter what. I'm in a rut, it's not a secret.

Partly it's the physical conditions of one of my work places. It's a school built like a kibbutz (because it is a kibbutz). This means buildings with the rooms opening to the outside, i.e. not onto an internal corridor. So whenever you go anywhere you have to go outside to get there.

Also English is taught in smaller groups (a good thing) and the school population has grown so much over the past few years (it's a popular school) that I don't have a proper classroom to teach in. I'm either in a freezing basement bomb-shelter (the windows have holes in them for ventilation and the heater is on a weird timer) or sitting in the drafty entrance hall by the continuously used front door.

This is lovely for 6 months of the year (actually 4 because two of those months are the summer holiday) and bearable for another 2 months. However, for 4 months of the year I am freezing and spend the whole day in my coat. It's totally miserable and uncomfortable. So I actually hate three days a week from December until April.

Of course, this spills over into everything else because if you're not happy at work you're not happy. Even if you love the other two days at your other place of work - which I do.

So, back to the subject in hand - inspirational videos. Do you know what the secret  to an amazing life is? Apparently it's getting up early and doing a list of morning rituals. These include some or all of the following: meditation, mindfulness, or prayer, exercise, gratitude exercises, affirmations, journal writing, juicing, and reading at least 10 pages of something educational or motivational. It's about an hour's worth of rituals. I pity the slow readers.

Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, fabulous speaker with an amazing life-story (so far), with many You Tube videos and interviews, says that getting up at 5 a.m. is so brilliant and life-enhancing that for the past seven years he's been getting up at 4 a.m. to do his rituals. What I want to know is - what time does he go to bed at night? He has a wife and young children and presumably a social life so how can he realistically expect to be in bed by 9 p.m. in order to get the recommended seven hours sleep? [Update: I did some googling and I just now saw that Hal Elrod is battling cancer. I wish him a full and speedy recovery. In a recent podcast he says that he's bumped up his sleep from six hours to seven hours/night. I acknowledge that he might not be getting up at 4 a.m. at the moment.]

Another guy gave the game away (I couldn't find his name). He went into great detail about how he starts each day and how it sets him up for enjoying every minute of his life. He said, "I don't even need an alarm clock anymore. I naturally wake up around 8 a.m. every morning." That means he doesn't need to start work until 9.30 a.m if he works from home, which he does because he's a lifestyle guru. Translate that for people who commute to work and this wonderful message is actually only for those who can start work at 10 a.m. or later. I have to leave for the bus stop at 7.30 a.m.

Yes I could go to bed at 9 p.m and get up at 5 a.m. (I need 8 hours sleep). Of course I could. If I did that my morning routine would necessarily look like this: toilet, shower, teeth, and dress (15 minutes - 20 if I bother with what my face looks like), wash dirty dishes in the sink from last night (10 minutes), make packed lunch for DD (7 minutes - 10 if it involves hunting for her lunch-box from the previous day and washing it), put on a load of laundry (3 minutes), make coffee (3 minutes), check phone and email for any surprises (up to 10 minutes if anything needs answering or leads to a discussion), do the hour of work, grading and lesson planning that I didn't get done the night before before because I had to be in bed by 9 p.m. (1 hour), wake DD and chivy her along to full school-readiness (10 minutes - not concurrent), hang out the wet washing (12 minutes), pack my bag (3 minutes), and go down three flights of stairs and then up again because we've forgotten something (5 minutes).

I can do my inspirational and motivational reading on the 40 minute bus ride to school. And I can do more inspirational and motivational reading on the way home. This is good because I will need all the inspiration and motivation I can muster after the morning I've had.