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elfsI had a strange meditation this morning. I woke up before my alarm went off, and good thing too as I'd forgotten to set it correctly. So I sat down with my Muse headband and decided to try a repeat experiment.
I've become suspicious of what the Muse considers "calm." When I'm particularly stressed, I can hear the tension in my left ear; the muscles in my jaw clench and twitch, creating a strange, deep basso rumble. This morning I heard that all throughout my meditation session, which didn't translate to me as "calm" at all.
Worse, I've discovered that the easiest way to cheat the Muse is to set up a dialogue in my imagination between two characters from my stories. Not even a particularly interesting dialogue, just a humdrum, domestic conversation. Imagining the setting, the characters who have been with me for thirty-five years, the ongoing reassurance that they've always been there for me and will always be there for me, drops the Muse's responses down to the "very calm" setting.
It was a twelve minute session with the rumbling going on in my left ear, and in my head my characters have a mundane, domestic chat, with no focus at all on my breathing, or my body, or my surroundings– and yet Muse insists I was "very calm" for almost the entire session.
I'm always suspicious of a computer-mediated anything. I'll try the Muse for a little while longer and see if it gets me anywhere, but I'm starting to suspect that, as I wrote earlier, it's going in a different direction from where my meditations were taking me when I started. Not necessarily headed to a bad place, but still, a different place.
I've become suspicious of what the Muse considers "calm." When I'm particularly stressed, I can hear the tension in my left ear; the muscles in my jaw clench and twitch, creating a strange, deep basso rumble. This morning I heard that all throughout my meditation session, which didn't translate to me as "calm" at all.
Worse, I've discovered that the easiest way to cheat the Muse is to set up a dialogue in my imagination between two characters from my stories. Not even a particularly interesting dialogue, just a humdrum, domestic conversation. Imagining the setting, the characters who have been with me for thirty-five years, the ongoing reassurance that they've always been there for me and will always be there for me, drops the Muse's responses down to the "very calm" setting.
It was a twelve minute session with the rumbling going on in my left ear, and in my head my characters have a mundane, domestic chat, with no focus at all on my breathing, or my body, or my surroundings– and yet Muse insists I was "very calm" for almost the entire session.
I'm always suspicious of a computer-mediated anything. I'll try the Muse for a little while longer and see if it gets me anywhere, but I'm starting to suspect that, as I wrote earlier, it's going in a different direction from where my meditations were taking me when I started. Not necessarily headed to a bad place, but still, a different place.
