"What are you, a two-thirds kind of guy?"
These are the words that echoed in my mind this morning as I thought about how I've been slacking the past few days on these emails.
As a refresher, and in case you're tuning into these later than others, I started writing daily emails and committed to writing 100 days in a 57 days ago, after the tragic, untimely death of an acquaintance and fellow internet kid, Ben Bader.
This morning I woke up in snowy Massachusetts.
About a couple inches of snow left on the ground from the storm we had a couple days ago.
And I went out for a walk in the morning with my dad.
And as we were walking, I was thinking about how I've been totally absent from this newsletter the past two days.
And then I thought about Ben.
Ben came into my mind and I could hear him just saying:
"What are you, Arlin? The type of guy that gets two-thirds of the way through something and doesn't finish? Don't be a two-thirds type of guy."
I could hear that message loud and clear. I’m not sure he ever said anything like that, but that’s what I heard and saw him saying in my head.
So, with that, I had to come back.
I think Ben might have continued to say something like, "Fuck your excuses."
And excuses were what I had for the reason I wasn't writing.
I've been pretty busy working on the 8AM World Uluwatu experience.
Talking to lots of people in my network about it, collecting deposits so that we can get the next payment in on time.
And it's honestly been a little bit stressful just with all that's going on.
And I'm also trying to be present and spend time with my mom and dad while we're here visiting them.
But nonetheless, I was just thinking: There really are no excuses not to put one of these out a day.
In fact, they’d even be useful if I wasn’t posting them publicly.
But I find that even a lot of my close friends read these and find them enjoyable.
Now, the main topic I wanted to discuss today was a meditation that my dad and I invented this morning on our walk.
We were on this walk and we were talking about Eckhart Tolle.
I had recently watched this video from Eckhart Tolle about irritation and how to overcome irritation. I’ll link that at the bottom of this email.
And Eckhart was basically says in the video that there are two opportunities to not feel irritated.
The first opportunity is right when something irritating happens.
If you can catch it in that moment and just notice, "Oh, this normally would be irritating" even if some irritation comes up… at least it's surrounded by awareness that it is potentially irritating.
The second opportunity is after you've already fallen into the irritation.
Most people miss the first opportunity and get totally consumed: angry, upset, irritated.
So the next chance is to notice that you're already in the state of irritation.
Those who know they are insane, are not fully insane. It’s only those who are insane and don’t know they are insane that are fully insane.
So then, the meditation: I asked my dad how long he thinks we could both go in walking distance — without getting lost in a train of thought.
We looked up and we were almost the midway point of our walk.
There was a stop sign ahead, lightly still covered in snow from the storm.
And I said, "Let's see if we can make it up to that stop sign."
It was maybe about 100 steps away.
"Let's see if we can make it up to that stop sign while remaining totally aware and present, no matter what comes up in the mind or emotions."
And so we walked. I noticed a very subtle but pleasant feeling of awareness as I took my steps, and as my Dad did so alongside me. And we made it to the stop sign.
When we got there, we agreed, that it was actually pretty useful to have a physical anchor with an increasingly decreasing distance to help be aware and not get lost in the train of thinking.
And so then we turned around and started walking back in the other direction.
We looked up in the distance at a fence post.
"Okay,” I said, “let's see if we can maintain our awareness up until that fence post."
And we just kept making arbitrary distances for testing our awareness. We did this all the way home.
It was probably about three-quarters of a mile back.
So I recommend trying this out today if you go on a walk.
Pick something—50, 100 yards in the distance—and see if you can maintain your experience of awareness throughout.
All right. Back to work!
Don't be a two-thirds type of guy.
And be present.
-Arlin
PS - here’s that eckhart tolle video on irritation
