practice › top-level practices/categories › meta practice [solo and otherwise]

meta protocol:

  • Contents
    • (0) Notes
    • (1) Retrospective Evaluation of Happening and Doing
    • (2) Dyadic Tight Feedback Loop

(0) Notes

  • Note that you can also interleave/​weave these questions (or the spirit of these questions) with[/​into] a main meditation practice as you're doing it.
  • Don't force the questions below. If you're mind doesn't want to answer them, then don't make your mind answer them.
  • You don't need to get complete answers or verbal answers to the questions. Just good-faith try/​intend to answer, being willing to release the how of how you're getting the answer or answering. When in doubt, let go and start over or let go completely. Let you mind have time and space to answer the questions however it wants. The mind might answer by doing something rather than answering the question, specifically.
  • You don't need to ask the questions below verbally or discretely, though it's good to experiment with that first. You can also cast your mind over the questions or the memory of the questions, sequentially, semi-sequentially, or all together, all at once. Try to vary how you're accessing the questions, verbally/​sequentially versus all at once, and the degrees in between.
  • There is a "meta meta protocol" [sic] which is applying this protocol to itself. There are contextually better and worse ways to use this meta protocol and there are better and worse interpretations of how to use it. The "meta meta protocol" can help you move towards better and better interpretations and uses.
  • Note that the meta protocol can be used for other things besides meditation, such as problem solving, planning, or really anything, mental or physical.
  • Lots of things have the "flavor" or spirit of the meta protocol, without looking exactly like the below. You might feel like you’re "not doing the meta protocol" but you actually are! Any time you’re wondering whether you doing the right thing, or if a good or bad thing happened, or you’re asking other people and dialoguing about it—that’s "going meta." It doesn’t have to have the exact form of the below and it doesn’t have to be done explicitly.
    • Updates: the above was intended to be reassuring, like, "you don't have to do the meta protocol or think about the meta protocol," but someone ([d]) offered a critique [and another commentator made a similar critique in the dialogue in this section: preliminaries and vacations; conceptualization as such]. [d]'s critique is in the bullet below:
    • [d]: I don't like this note in the meta protocol. I think there's a distinction between engaging in the protocol vs executing habits learned from doing the protocol and doing things that you've already been doing but the protocol gets you to do more of. I think this functions to make the protocol more of a totalizing memetic object [ed. note: See section: document-level meta-warning] I think it kind of goes out and "captures" some good that doesn't belong to it.
    • I (Mark) agree with the latter point! A lot of stuff in this document will be things people are doing already anyway, because those things are natural and spontaneous and/​or learned/​discovered/​acquired/​inferred independently or via elsewhere. And part of practice is sometimes kind of collecting those things and putting them in different or new conceptual buckets, and often just leaving them alone and letting them do their thing! See also section: practice in daily life or no?
    • [d] additionally offers these suggested phrasings:
      • "this protocol can teach you skills which you can find yourself using independent of "using" the protocol"
      • "using this protocol can create habits that you execute independent of "using" the protocol"
    • [mo] adds:
      • "Maybe something like 'there's a need for going meta, but it doesn't have to look anything like this metaprotocol'?"
      • "Maybe it would actually be worth renaming the meta-protocol to just say 'going meta' and then offer the current meta-protocol instructions as a starting point for that"
  • You might simply ask, what are all the options/​affordances, here, and which might be good right now to pick?
  • Intuition! Feeling! Body! You can ask the questions with the body, the mind, or the bodymind, or anything, or everything. And you can listen/​feel for answers with the body, the mind, or the bodymind, or anything, or everything.
  • A bit of a ramble: The second-most-minimal way to barely-there "do the meta protocol," the maybe almost least likely to jam or grind, is to maybe give yourself space and time to let what happened to have happen, a sort of liminal retrospective. And maybe the most minimal thing to do is to "fully and completely release the container while maintaining the context for just a little longer," so not even a liminal retrospective but just a liminal space, a little bit of time and space, between meditation and lost in life. So, not jumping into things right after meditation, but nor sort of letting meditation linger and then jumping into things. Just kind of a "release meditation [not that you were holding on to anything!!!] but don't get up / walk away," immediately, just yet... Let things recombobulate a bit, let the system come to its own conclusions. This could even be as long as half again the time you spent meditating, or even as long again as the whole length of time you were meditating, or just five minutes, etc. [Not to reify meditation(tm) as something crisp and thing-like!!!] (All of this might sort of naturally happen, too, sort of near the end of meditation proper, in any case.)
  • The meta protocol as "a thing" that "you do" can be distancing, separating, anti-nondual, as it where. Again, the lightest, most minimal version, with a feather or even less, and even better the mere idea of it or whisps of it spontaneously, liminally arising, and so on, until it undoes itself, eats itself with no remainder, and so on[, and on].

(1) Interleaved or Retrospective Evaluation of Happening and Doing

  • Happening/​Experiencing
    • What is currently generally happening when you meditate? What are you currently generally experiencing when you meditate?
    • What of that is in some sense seemingly contextually good, as far as you can currently tell? How did you come to have this/​these impression(s)[/​sense(s)/​intuition(s)/​feeling(s)], as far as you can currently tell?
    • What of that is in some sense seemingly contextually bad, as far as you can currently tell? How did you come to have this/​these impression(s)[/​sense(s)/​intuition(s)/​feeling(s)], as far as you can currently tell?
    • What of that are you currently unsure of whether it might be contextually good or bad? How might you come to know better what of that is contextually good or bad?
  • Doing
    • What do you currently generally do when you meditate? (And how do you do it, this, that, or all of that, or all of those things??)
    • What of that is in some sense seemingly contextually good, as far as you can currently tell? How did you come to have this/​these impression(s)[/​sense(s)/​intuition(s)/​feeling(s)], as far as you can currently tell?
    • What of that is in some sense seemingly contextually bad, as far as you can currently tell? How did you come to have this/​these impression(s)[/​sense(s)/​intuition(s)/​feeling(s)], as far as you can currently tell?
    • What of that are you currently unsure of whether it might be contextually good or bad? How might you come to know better what of that is contextually good or bad?

(2) Solo or Dyadic Tight Feedback Loop

  • Online Data Collection, Alone or with an Observer/​Coach/​Consultant/​Friend:
    • As you’re meditating, simultaneously interleave verbal reporting of (a) what’s happening and (b) what you’re doing, all of this just as best you can and makes sense. So, as best you can and makes sense, don’t force anything, you can’t do it wrong, what’s happening and what are you doing? (And how are you doing it, this, that, or all of that, or all of those things?) Start now. [If talking/​articulating/​explicating/​sharing is grindy, jammy, force-y, unsafe, bad feeling, don't! It's not the right time or context to be doing it, then! If alone, you might try doing the spirit of this but completely nonverbally.]
  • Interleaved or Offline Analysis (While Taking a Break from Meditating):
    • What of that was in some sense seemingly contextually good, as far as you can currently tell? How did you come to have this/​these impression(s)[/​sense(s)/​intuition(s)/​feeling(s)], as far as you can currently tell?
    • What of that was in some sense seemingly contextually bad, as far as you can currently tell? How did you come to have this/​these impression(s)[/​sense(s)/​intuition(s)/​feeling(s)], as far as you can currently tell?
    • What of that are you currently unsure of whether it might have been contextually good or bad? How might you come to know better what of that was/​is contextually good or bad?
    • For what’s seemingly contextually good, as far as you can currently tell, how might or will you keep doing it? And under what conditions might it or might it not be good to stop, if ever?
    • For what’s seemingly contextually bad, as far as you can currently tell, what might or might not be good to do about that, and when or under what conditions, as far as you can currently tell? Offline Generative, While Taking a Break from Meditating:
    • How are you currently coming to know, or, how might you come to know, about additional possibly contextually good things to do, that you’re not currently doing, or not doing at all the times they might be good to do, or have never done before, as far as you can currently tell? What are some things you’ve never done before that might be good to do, as far as you can currently tell? How might you come to do those possibly good things at possibly good times, as far as you can currently tell?
    • How are you currently coming to know, or, how might you come to know, about additional possibly contextually good ways of doing (good) things to do, that you’re not currently doing, or not doing at all the times they might be good to do, or have never done before, as far as you can currently tell? What are some ways (of doing) you’ve never done before that might be good to do, as far as you can currently tell? How might you come to do things in those ways, at possibly good times, as far as you can currently tell?

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Notes: how/​manner/​way

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