I think I'm getting to a new understanding of meditation, or a new understanding through meditation. I'm not doing it that often, maybe 3-5x weekly. and especially if i do it in the morning, there's no way i'm not ultra aware of the time, and all the shit i gotta do when i get to la hospital. but, sometimes, and more often as i do this more often, i get a real useful vibe out of it, a vibe i wouldn'tve be able to appreciate until after appreciating it... which sort of supports the idea, that i'd long assumed, that clarity of consciousness is not something that is easy to describe to someone, or something that can be directly taught.

but sometimes after i sit and breath and try to feel awareness of the inside of my body, like my pulse, in different parts of my body, and if i find my mind wandering i try to think about why, and take it for what it's worth, and maybe redirect my thoughts to a more basic and honest element of whatever my thoughts were (like, if i'm thinking about work, i think about why, and i might meditate on the meaning of fear (if i interpret my mind as being afraid of the next day) or the meaning of healing (if i interpret my mind as trying to sort out my role in the machine that is the hospital), etc), and meditate on that, or even try to simplify by focusing on ideas i like, like the idea of emotional generosity, or the idea that when you die all of your pasts and futures become instantaneous.... sometimes after i do that for awhile with pretty good focus (which is hard because, let's be honest, you can't really rationalize your way through the idea that in death all time becomes instantaneous, but i think (not sure tho') that that's the point), and i get up and get on with my normal business, like getting ready for work or getting ready for bed, i realize what a robot i've been, so out of touch with my experience, sort of picking and choosing what i feel, or not feeling anything cause i have to move so fast. and i'm not criticizing myself over it, because mostly it seems that to be effective in life you have to be efficient, and efficiency means you cannot over-contemplate every mundane moment (though it is pretty easy to argue that even (or especially) the most mundane of moments illustrates the depth and breadth of experience, etc etc)... in medicine, even though the newness of one's intern year is probably unparalleled, i can see myself slowly becoming more efficient, whether it's in clinical reasoning, or biomedical knowledge, or social interactions with patients/nurses/colleagues, or responding to hunger/sleep/loneliness/lust... and being more efficient means being more robotic, thinking less about each decision, becoming more automatic and faster, getting things done on time and often better than before, with more skill, less hippocampus and more basal ganglia, less consciousness and more muscle memory... this is really necessary, in my opinion, because it often means less mistakes, but more importantly, theres just too much work to do, or too much stimuli, to take in and process every feeling, every experience.

but when i sit and listen to my own breath, and do the unexplainable (though the rambling and parentheses in parentheses are my shitty attempt at explaining it anyway), i wake up realizing that i have been a robot, and i feel human in such a refreshing, humbling way... and i don't know what to say after that. thanks to the influences in my life that helped me discover this small piece!