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From this article on how “Breath-based meditation shifts the brain into a deeply relaxed state”:

“We found that rhythmic breathing practice like Sudarshan Kriya Yoga allows an easier access to a deep state of meditation,” Tripathi told PsyPost. “EEG from participants were recorded before, during and after they were practicing the technique. EEG records brain activity which can be quantified into different rhythms like alpha, beta, theta, delta and gamma.”

“What we found was that the breathing activated the theta rhythms in the brain which allowed a practitioner to easily transition to a relaxed state with heightened theta-delta activity. This activity is somewhere between fully awake (alpha/beta dominant) to fully asleep (slow waves and delta dominant), suggesting that the practitioner is in a relaxed yet aware state which traditional texts of meditation have referred to as Turiya (fourth state of consciousness, the others being sleeping, awake and dreaming).”

One thing you learn when you really become dedicated to mindfulness practice is that every moment you aren’t being mindful, you’re feeding your ego. Any thought about the past or future solidifies this “ego-cage” you have built up in your mind.

(Note: I saw the term ego-cage in a book, but I don’t remember which one.)

I haven’t interviewed for a job in many years, and yesterday I had my first interview in 14 years. I thought I could just pick up where I left off many years ago without any practice, but boy was I wrong.

I *did* want to talk about my health saga from 2012-2019 because it’s an important part of who I am today, but I talked about it too much. All I wanted to say was that (a) I got very sick and went unconscious many times before Doctor #26 found that I was born with a rare blood disease, (b) everything is fine now, and (c) the important part of that saga is that I gained much more empathy for people going through things, and I also learned that I wanted to be more of service to other people. But I blabbed on about the health stuff for too long, and I regret that. If they offer me a second interview after that, they will be very kind, indeed.

(I also could have added something useful like, “If you’re constantly itchy, have hives, or frequently get sick, feel free to ask me any questions you want later.”)

In my mind I thought that because I had written about this stuff many times before that I didn’t need to talk about it, but in retrospect I realized that it would have helped to talk about this stuff with other people before any interviews.

I also thought that I had conquered a lot of things with my ego, but this was another kick-in-the-butt reminder of where I really am.

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore

I recently took an online “assessment” test with a company named SHL. In general it was good and interesting, but after thinking about it, one thing it really lacked was a concept of “context.”

For instance, one question was something like, “Are you comfortable talking to strangers?” Well, that depends on the context of the situation. In the context of being at a grocery store I generally have my earbuds in and leave strangers alone until I talk to the cashier, but in the context of work, I pretty much talk to everyone. Two different contexts, two totally different answers.

So as I’m answering the questions I keep asking myself, “What’s the context?” Unfortunately I didn’t share this at the end of the SHL test when they give you a little room to comment, so I thought I’d share that here in hopes someone there might see this.