Theme for 2025
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Intro
Theme. Taste. Flavour. Theme as stance, direction.
My theme for last year was “rest”. It didn’t go so well. However, I did pull together a bunch of different thought and stances into “The Three Uhds” and “LSD” that I found pretty fruitful and useful.
My theme for 2025 is going to (try and) be acceptance.
I will (try and) be more accepting of more things.
- It’s not about giving up, but it is about yielding.
- It’s not about ignoring bad things, but it is about being more clear about how bad they are, or if they really are bad.
- It’s aligned with the (humanistic psychologist) Carl Rogers’ stance of acceptance being required for change, and with Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance (my notes).
- It’s about taking care.
Gates: WHIP
Gates for practice this year are Work, Health, Interests (new name for art, creative stuff, hobbies), Practice.
- Work
- Write at least one thing a month
- Talk and/or facilitate something a few times in the year
- Health
- Keep doing lots of walking
- Get back into more serious exercise
- More healthy drinking and eating
- Socialising (health is not just physical)
- Interests
- Drawing, maybe sketching
- Reading
- Music: get back into learning to play the (smol) piano
- Cooking
- Gardening, inside and outside
- Practice.
- Meditating, at least once a day
- Zen still feels like a good fit, so I’m going to keep going with it. I’m using The Way app for my morning sits, and Waking Up more generally. I still have plenty of Zen books on the (physical and virtual) shelves. I’ll probably meander in and out of it a bit more this year, though.
- Track Valued Action in daily reflections
- One Mindful Breath stuff: Janitorial duties (IRL and online), finding facilitators, facilitating.
Other things to maybe do
- Figuring out how I can / if I want to channel the energy from some of my patterns:
- Poker (inquisitive, analytic)
- Remixer
- Pragmatic (useful, helpful, fruitful, etc)
- Have another go around at koan practice. Dig deeper into shikantaza / just sitting.
Self-fulfilling activity
- Just do the thing, nothing else.
- No “in order to”. Do the thing for the simple delight of doing it.
- Free of goals and outcomes, like play.
Valued Action: POCK
Continued recommitment to aligning my actions with my values. A triangle of three with acceptance in the middle are POCK: Patient, Open, Clear, Kind. These aren’t the only things that are important. They are the ones I want to focus on.
- Kind(ness) is the root for me, the thing that underlies it all.
- Patient is the most important one for Acceptance. It’s the thing I’m worst at. So… this year I’m trying to be more patient with my impatience. This is a bit of a paradox conceptually, but not experientially.
- POCK is partly aspirational, and partly a lens to examine deeply who I am, and the ways in which I don’t to live up to the values. “Slowly, painfully, reconcile to life.”
- It’s admittedly a bit circular and self-referential. The Acceptance Practice is using POCK as gates to Acceptance.
Two chonky things to apply these to
- Restlessness
- Accepting it when I can, and noticing it when I can’t. Waiting a moment.
- Applying Redirects (Implementation Intention / habit type things) in an Antifragile way: avoiding things that don’t work, rather than looking for things that do.
- Linking to hiding, avoidance
- Considering Non-restlessness, refraining from restlessness, being more still
- Roxy’s old age
- What I can do
- What I can’t do
Practices to stay on the Path
These are whittled version of practices, using my pattern / skillset of Research, Remix, Reply.
- Catch it early? LSD (Listen (centre, edges, changes), Slow your tempo, doubt)
- Catch it late? The three uhds (Should, Could, Good)
- Let go of the idea that “this isn’t it”
I also really like RAIN (Recognise, Allow, Investigate, Nurture), but… I find it very difficult to do the Nurture step. For now at least, other practices have a bit more traction for me.
Tracker
A short record of what I’ve done, and what I plan to do next.
I’m aiming for a specific topic for each month, to keep myself focused.
January
- Work
- Write at least one article
- Make a plan for talks this year
- Health
- Stretches
- Interests
- Research (distant) Japan trip
- Tidy up the entranceway. Shoes!
- Rethink home office layout
- ✔
Draw some snail circles - ✔
Zen Aesthetic
- Practice
- Focus on the Patience of POCK: Slow Your Tempo watch.
- Write up notes on Kelly Boys Meeting Emotions and Meeting Thoughts session from her Easing the Nervous System series on Waking Up.
- Plan some sits in nature
- Think about moon viewing around 13th Feb. See Lunar Calendar.
- ✔
Dig into letting go of “this isn’t it” - ✔
Dig into tension, energy, of restlessness - ✔
Decide on two sessions to pitch between now and June. Check back in Ideas for OMB sessions.
Later
- Health
- More serious exercise
- Interests
- Theme for a Quarter: visualisation. Sketchnotes, icons, iconography, ornaments, logos, that kind of thing.
- Liminal wet spots (😳): rivers, rivermouths, coasts.
- Draw a series of circle, triangle, square
- outlines; solids; 1up, 2up, 3up
- Venn diagrams with dots
- Paint more enso
- Do some sketching in/at/of the Peace Flame at the Botanic Garden
- Learning to play piano
- Get some new houseplants. Bamboo. A buncha tiny ones. New spots around the house.
- Have a tinker with a tiny shrine-like thing
- Practice
- Notice what poles I’m using, when there’s high energy
- Read Annaka Harris articles
- Remix a(nother) chapter of Tao Te Ching
- (March) Metta month (run OMB session?)
- (June) Step down from ABET Trustee (never actually did the paperwork)
- (June) Step down from OMB Care Committee (joined 22/06/23)
Added 2024-11-29, last updated 2025-01-18.