In a similar spirit, I was reading a few months back how we are ruining today's children's imagination by keeping them busy every waking moment. The problem (psychologists discussed) was that kids need to be bored, and once they get bored they start day dreaming (https://www.parent.com/5-surprising-benefits-of-letting-your...)
I started my journey to minimalism a year ago, that gave me time to get "bored", be and feel less busy, meditate more, focus more, and I could find new aspects of myself; boredom helped.
The article writes at some point: '..and thereby slowing your mind.."
I found this very liberating at yoga classes, where the savasana in the end of the sessions is combined with guided meditation or with just complete silence. Let the river if the mind Carey away the thoughts and the void/silence that will exist will be the best tool for the brain.
It’s interesting because I spent many hours when I was young daydreaming. But today I can’t remember the last time that I did.
I’ve always found time to meditate but I don’t find that boring, and it doesn’t let me day dream like I used to in a Biology or History class as a child.
I’ve been joking with my girl friend that my resolution for 2020 is to fill my days with less exciting things and somehow find boredom again.
I always wonder if it’s the extra stimulation these days, or the extra responsibility or if I just headed my grandma’s words that only “boring people get bored”. Maybe it’s the freedom? As I child I was forced to sit in classes I didn’t enjoy. Today I have the freedom to get up and leave.
I was one of those kids who live in his own head and was forever daydreaming and I as I grew up I never stopped helped I think by my early adult life been working on production lines/factories usually alone or so noisy ear protection was required removing any irrelevant conversation - I'd turn up, go onto autopilot and disappear into my head.
I still do it now, if I'm walking along the riverbank near where I live the world recedes and I visualise how it must have looked hundreds or thousands years ago and imagine the people/animals around then and so on.
It's both an escape hatch and a pressure valve for me - I also don't dream (or more correctly I do dream but maybe once ever couple of years I actually remember one) which I think is likely somehow connected.
My partner finds it odd because she'll come into a room and I'll just be sat still staring into space completely unaware she's entered the room.
This was a great article though, the idea of deliberately cultivating that state by sitting in an isolated place is attractive.
There are days where I hate the modern world (while accepting all it's advantages) - the constant distractions, clamour for attention from everything, the splitting of time into tiny increments in which everything must be done, it often feels like the world is just slightly off axis and I don't fit.
I've never found it an issue and an hour just sat in that state leaves me feeling refreshed and alert, the days where I feel the most flattened are the ones that are so busy that I don't get chance to do it.
I have to say I daydream all the time. If you were to ask me when I last did it, it was half a minute ago staring out of the window of a train.
I am however somebody who always did this more than other kids and never lost it really. I hate beeing distracted all the time, stops you from seriously thinking about yourself and the world you inhabit.
When I was a kid, I had entire recurring plot lines of elaborate day dreams. These days my daydreams are more "realistic". I'm not fantasizing about riding unicorns and wielding ancient magic anymore, but I do daydream about starting my own company.
+1. The downside, of course, is procrastination. Back when my plotlines were really farfetched, I really wasted a lot of time dreaming about all sorts of stupid (in hindsight) stuff. Sometimes I regret that if I had spent that time usefully, I could have done better for myself, though I think I have done pretty well for myself. I think excessive daydreaming is a form of anxiety
Restricting the scope of my daydreams to align more with my actual goals (like starting a successful company, becoming an engineer of renown, making tons of money) was a very important step. It is closer to visualizing oneself as a successful person which, in general, is a good thing. It has also had the welcome side effect of curtailing the duration of my daydreams.
This is such a sad comment. You threw away everything that doesn’t fit the standard capitalist idea of a good person, i.e. someone who is never wasting time making himself a better worker and making more money. And why? For money and fleeting fame.
I still daydream a lot about crazy things. A steady diet of science fiction novels and movies feeds that habit so I am in no danger of losing my soul. Of course, I don't dream any longer about bringing world peace,curing cancer and winning the presidential election in the same week Lisa Simpson style. Instead, I dream of making a huge breakthrough in the search for AGI or something like that.
I can say I daydream all the time too and have been doing it since I was a child. Except that I lost it and it feels that I'm losing it more every day: I've already started talking and laughing aloud to the conversations I have in my mind while daydreaming even when someone is around (but I take care that it is silent enough). Makes me wonder if it is really dangerous or not. I wouldn't argue that it is definitely still a pleasure (compared to the childhood times)
I still daydream, every day. I can't imagine what it would be like to never think inward like that. Every now and then I feel like I need to put more into my day, and I'll try to do lots of things and see lots of people, but even then I'll still inadvertently day dream. There's always time somewhere. Maybe I'm just well practiced so it comes easily.
I believe a lot of people don't know how to be bored, or how to be slow and engaged. The lack of daydreaming is just one symptom. They skim through every task just enough to get it done, so that they can move on to the next one. So not only are you never bored, you're never fully engaged either. If you are always moving fast you are often eager to move to the next task instead of being active and present with the current one.
Technology trains us that we can fill in boredom, and simultaneously makes us unable to appreciate the stuff will fill it in with. Our reward loops become so short that we don't even finish what we're doing before looking for the next loop to start. We distract ourselves from our own enjoyment.
I recently had to stop daily use due to an injury; I am now dreaming regularly for the first time in 20 years. I don't remember it being this intense an experience, though I also had to stop nicotine at the same time, so that may have had something to do with it.
Leave your phone at home and go walk for 1-2 hours. You get a little exercise and as long as you're just cruising along level ground then you can space out for long stretches.
I like to start with a good fantasy. What if I won the lotto or I had created Facebook? Then I could launch a war with the mayor. Become mayor. Create a new traffic enforcement group. Buy out the cable internet monopoly and make it a National coop.
Swimming laps is what does it for me. I don't swim competitively anymore, but I think competitive swimming provides a good, almost contradictory, mix of teamwork/socialization and isolation.
Your comment about daydreaming hit me really hard. I used to daydream all the time, but had completely forgotten that I even used to do it till you mentioned it. I now am always thinking about work, side projects, what to do next or worse investments. That's in the few moments when there isn't distraction like a podcast, audiobook reading it just simply doing random stuff on the phone. In essence even that is only while I'm in the shower. No wonder I'm never daydreaming.
Thank you so much for providing this disturbing insight! I need to fix this..
Also... imagining/dreaming together with other kids. Left to eachother, kids often "play make-believe." This is basically brains freestyling what they do best, making meaning for everything.
I'm not convinced that requires a barren environment, though. My son spends hours in games with friends starting every other sentence with 'Imagine if...' setting out one crazy scenario after another using the game he's playing as nothing more than a prop.
Agree...I would enjoy road trips if I wasn't so bad with traffic, noise, and being in a running vehicle. I prefer a bike over walking or being in a vehicle any day. The AC inside the car makes me nauseous like there is no tomorrow. The constant shaking and pressure you can feel by focusing (unintentionally due to having nothing else to do) makes me feel anxious af. I get a headache and want to vomit if I eat anything heavy inside the car. I just want to get out of that box...ASAP. It feels like a big prison. I feel disassociated too when there is different weather outside and I can't open the windows.
My last lonely motorcycle multi-day road trip through South America took almost a month, taking more than 10kkm. In those trips there are some distinct parts: the torture part when you are worried with the trip itself (counting each kilometer to destination, when will it be the next gas station); the wandering random thinking part (when in the middle of nothing and the landscape simply does not change at all) and the contemplation part (when you are in the middle of the mountains and begin feeling strangely good).
This last good part sometimes come unexpected and can be better than the destination of the trip itself.
As a former child, I can't help but point out that one of the most common pitfalls parents make is to think that what's best for them is best for their kids. Being bored can take forms other than being locked in a car for hours on end. After doing many road trips in my youth, I vowed never to take more than an hour or two on a road trip with my family. I'd rather just not see my family than relive the torture of sitting in a car for an eternity.
To summarise, research suggests boredom is distinct from depression. In tests, [3]people seemed to recover from depression much faster than they did from boredom. [4]Boredom is associated with rising HR, decreased SCL, and increased cortisol levels. [5]Those symptoms are possibly triggers for or present in people suffering from depression. People expressing high level of boredom may suffer from substance abuse, relationships and career building like with depression.
Noting everything, it seems quite plausible boredom can be a trigger for depression and vice versa. Literally everything that causes boredom can also cause depression and the symptoms from both are trigger for each other despite being different enough.
0] Relationships between boredom proneness, mindfulness, anxiety, depression, and substance use:
Is that really true? Of course extreme deprivation of stimuli like in solitary confinement might do it, and of course loneliness, but I don’t think boredom in itself causes depression.
Part of me wonders how much of the author's sense of sublime isolation came from getting away from his small children for a whole day :)
If you live across the pond in the US and have a free weekend, it's pretty easy to do this sort of thing here, too.
Many national forests and lands administered by the BLM allow 'dispersed camping' in the wilderness. You're encouraged to use existing sites along forest roads, but the rules are usually pretty loose. Search engines don't do a great job of indexing the USFS or BLM websites, so you might have to poke around a bit to find a 'camping information' page for the area that you're interested in. But you can find some basic information here:
Sadly, it's not all roses and sunshine. The author got told that he technically needed a permit to be in the part of the wilderness that he stumbled into, and you'll probably get some of that if you spend much time in BLM lands. People throw up false 'private property' signs and gates all the time, and those sorts of people tend to have the 'Cliven Bundy' sort of attitude that they have more of a right to public lands than others. There's no arguing about land usage with someone who points a gun towards you.
We also see the sort of aristocratic land grabs that he mentioned here; there are a lot of BLM lands which are now surrounded by private property, and those property owners are not required to provide access to the public lands which they surround. It essentially cedes "multi-use" public lands to the people/companies who own the properties around them.
It's too bad we don't have a right-to-roam in the US. It seems like the sort of thing that would fit in with the ostensible national ethos of freedom and independence.
> It's too bad we don't have a right-to-roam in the US. It seems like the sort of thing that would fit in with the ostensible national ethos of freedom and independence.
That’s something I’ve never understood about the US. You came late to the “land grab” (compared with Europe), and different kinds of freedom are deeply embedded in the culture. Ought to be perfect conditions for a proper “right to roam” policy.
Here, we’ve the right to roam, you can camp almost anywhere on private and public land as long as you clean up after yourself and camp at least 150m from houses or cabins.
You’re allowed to pass by a house/cabin on you way, blocking passage is illegal.
We’ve unrestricted access to the shoreline, even next to houses and cabins. You can forage berries, etc, etc.
But I think that it might have something to do with the near-religious reverance with which Americans view absolute property rights. If you frame it as a contest of "freedom and liberty" vs "get off my property or I'll shoot", then it makes a bit more sense. There's a certain segment of the population who are just itching for an excuse to shoot a 'bad guy', which is one of those things that makes exploring this nation so... interesting.
Still, I like to think that there's a reason why 'property' got replaced with 'the pursuit of happiness' when Locke's basic rights were enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.
Great read. It reminded me of that time some 15 years ago when I did a 12 day Vipassana silent retreat.
I completely lost track of the days. I remember one day waking up assuming it was the last day. I started packing up until someone told me there were still 2 days left. We both started counting the days and we had this really strong mind fog. Somehow the mind had slowed down so much that even very basic addition was a difficult thing to do.
To be honest, it wasn't a particularly enlightening experience like other stuff I've done. I vividly remember the strange feeling of joy and wonder of coming back to the real world. As if we were entering into an awesome simulation.
Thank you for sharing that, it's very interesting.
> As if we were entering into an awesome simulation.
This reminds me of coming back to the US after finishing up my Mormon missionary service in Japan. Regaining the ability to sleep in. To study out of any book I could find. To explore the internet again. No longer needing to bow. The overwhelming sweetness of the food. Cars that looked too old to be on the road. Seeing obese people in public on a regular basis. Carrying around a small notebook to write down simple but forgotten English phrases.
And somehow still deeply caring about the world I just left, but realizing it was a hugely uncomfortable context-shift away, and permanently behind me on top of that.
I'm reminded of this section of a teaching from a Dzogchen master. (Dzogchen is the highest practice in Tibetan Buddhism, and perhaps considered a bit heterodox by other schools):
According to the general vehicles [other schools of Buddhism], to dwell undistractedly in nowness is to be undistracted. But from the Dzogchen perspective, that is called being distracted. Dwelling on nowness means you are already distracted. Why? Because you are dwelling on something, repeatedly. The awareness is directed towards something which is not rigpa [roughly: nondual awareness itself]. When there is a split between the rigpa and something other, you are already distracted.
There is some risk of misunderstanding this matter, if you only get half of this message, the nonmeditation part, and you miss the first part, which is to remain undistracted. It would be easy then to simply not meditate! But that wouldn’t make any sense. People who are already not meditating are constantly being carried away by the three poisons of attachment, aversion or dullness. That is not meditating at all, so if one is told “don’t meditate” in that situation, that makes no sense at all.
On the other hand, if we pay attention only to the first part, ‘be undistracted,’ it might seem like we have to remain mindful of whatever takes place: “Now I’m walking. Now I’m putting my foot down. Oh, there’s a pink flower. The air is touching my skin. I’m breathing in. Here is a thought coming. There is the thought going. Now I am angry. Now I have some desire. Now it is leaving again.” In the normal sense of the word one is certainly undistracted, but there is no sense of freedom. You are not liberated at all. It’s like you’re a shepherd totally involved in watching your sheep or goats: “Now they are going up the hill over there... now they are coming back down... oh, they shouldn’t wander too far... now they are going up another hill... now it’s five o’clock, I should gather them all together and go home.” That type of practice is called “maintaining the meditation.” You are herding the meditation, keeping constant watch. Dzogchen practice is not like that. Instead, meditate without being distracted at all, and without “keeping” a meditation.
If we aren’t able to maintain a free and easy attitude, we will never have good meditations. During these few days up here at Nagi Gompa, give up any anxieties, hopes, fears or worries. Just leave them all behind. There is nothing you need to do. There is no office you need to go to, no long-distance phone calls to make, no faxes to reply to. Let go of the whole thing. Let go, let go and let go, until there is nothing more to let go of. Let go until that point.
I had a similar experience on a five-day isolated, silent retreat in a mountain hermitage. Losing track of the calendar and the clock was an incredibly disorienting, and thus fruitful, experience. By day three, I was estimating time with the sun, wind and shadows.
> As weirdly counterintuitive as it feels to acknowledge, human beings are not naturally predisposed to think of life in terms of seconds and hours, of how they might be optimised.
Other merits of this article aside, it always perplexes me that the works of man are somehow regarded as outside or in opposition to “nature”, as if an atomic clock with seconds display is somehow less natural than a beaver’s dam.
Both are entirely natural processes, produced by and within natural systems.
Yes technically everything on this planet is natural including the creations of man. Unfortunately this is not a particularly useful definition of the word. When we talk about natural what we mean is the systems of the planet that have been around a lot longer than the tiny slice of time since civilization emerged. Things that evolved rather than things that were conceived. Things there due to instinct rather than rational thought and planning.
Words exist to draw boundaries, something cannot exist without its opposite. If everything is natural then what is unnatural? If your answer is nothing then you have discovered non duality which is fascinating but has no practical value. The practical value of defining what is natural is to understand our impact on the world and what that means for the future of the planet.
You're right that they're natural processes, but they aren't natural to us. Our bodies naturally respond the day and night cycle, and even the seasons. By naturally, I mean at a chemical/genetic level. The breaking of a day into hours/minutes and such is an abstraction of these, and doesn't have a physiological basis as far as I'm aware.
I assume because nearly all the works of man are aiming to control and suppress nature. Instead of the natural untidy beauty of an ancient forest, or wild meadow, with random animal and human tracks through it, we pave, concrete and "neaten". Everything tends to a boring concreted monoculture, with straight lines and walls or fences everywhere, such that even parks are a poor second to the natural world -- though if I ever find myself in a city they are a blessed relief even knowing they are the ersatz second best.
It is almost unheard of to work with nature, to produce sustainable, sympathetic houses and cities that are a part of the natural world. The nearest we get is an occasional designer rendering of a sustainable city of the future... A future just about everyone fights hard to ensure never arrives, and we get the sad, brutal ugliness of the city.
Only with a completely new definition of the word.
Oxford: nature [mass noun] The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.
Where in nature, outside human creations, can I find an airliner, or even a fence? A beaver dam involves no human activity so is of nature. By stretching the definition only a little, one might consider a log cabin and other buildings that use natural materials to be of nature, or at least sympathetic -- wood, stone, earth based, but certainly not steel.
Once you distance yourself via fossil fuel, tools, rules of physics or chemistry and highly complex industrial manufacturing processes the claim becomes absurd. A 3d printer, airliner, drug production or an atomic clock cannot be part of nature -- they exist only through the confluence of man and fossil fuel.
We evolved the ability to think past our instincts, but not yet the ability to totally suppress or control them, generally. That is a source of conflict, particularly when we build technology that, though useful and/or pleasurable, is frequently at odd with our long term mood and health.
This is the unnatural/natural divide when it comes to human engineering. Think of it as hacking the human psyche, vs living closer to the primitives we evolved from. Don't forget that the human brain has existed for an exceedingly small amount of time in proportion to life overall; but many of our primitive psychological and physiological functions are many millions of years old.
I guess instead of "natural", if you say "inherently biological" or "circadian" it conveys the sense better. I think the author intends to refer to the natural cycles inherent within the human body without the aid of devices. In that sense, sunlight and the day-night cycle, and the cycle of seasons may be a better indicator since they have a large enough effect on the human body even in the absence of other mechanical aids.
> Roberts asked him whether there was a bridge we could cross further on. He shook his head and courteously informed us, in a Devonshire accent as soft and mulchy as the ground beneath our feet, that we were on land privately owned by one of his neighbours, and that the more densely forested territory across the river was private, too, and that we technically required a permit to walk this trail
Wouldn't this be covered by the right to roam [1] [2]? What he intended to do once he found a good spot might count as camping, which isn't covered, but just walking there seems like it would be covered.
Dartmoor national park has its own bylaws regarding camping. It’s fine for up to 48hours. I’m guessing other bylaws for private property- and of course the MOD land.
It seems to me the author paid someone to... not sit with him in the forest but generally hang around nearby? To my Eastern European eyes, this looks super weird.
If you want to spend a day alone in the forest, why not just go? Do you need the "Way of Nature UK" organization to support you in doing that?
Boredom for me is to be in a place where nothing can be changed, everything has its place.
We allow a lot of customization both at work and home and I find that extremely satisfying to keep my mind "free". I mean you could be bored because you don't have any possibilites and be bored because you're tired of being creative where the first is bad and the second good.
Time moves past me and I don't have control so I tend to have a lot of discussion or random thoughts about stuff that I see, which annoy the living soul out of some other people. I think that if we let control over time go a bit more we would also gain a bit more control over the relationship with time. Your milage might vary.
This article reminded me of an intriguing experiment my Music teacher proposed to me and my classmates. He made us listen to some classical music and then he asked us to express what mental images popped in our mind. I realized that we (14yo students) were lacking creativity. Our teacher said that when he proposed the same experiment to children they were much more creative (which is obvious to me now).
By the way, this was a really nice read while listening to Kid A.
If you liked this experience then try the cave experience: you retriet into a 100% dark room (with a toilet attached) with only water and some fruits (a few per each day) for 3-5 days.
No devices no toys nothing that can keep you busy. Just you your inner self the dark and the air you breave.
Not bringing food, staying within a circle of 10 m diameter for 24 hours... I think I can see the point but it seems like he could have reset his clock while not taking it that "extreme". I enjoy nature, but prefer to walk in it, and take it in, explore.
I think the author’s point is that the “extreme” is required, at least for him, in order to truly indulge in the escape. A walk/exploration would be too much of a connection to normal life.
I started my journey to minimalism a year ago, that gave me time to get "bored", be and feel less busy, meditate more, focus more, and I could find new aspects of myself; boredom helped.
The article writes at some point: '..and thereby slowing your mind.." I found this very liberating at yoga classes, where the savasana in the end of the sessions is combined with guided meditation or with just complete silence. Let the river if the mind Carey away the thoughts and the void/silence that will exist will be the best tool for the brain.
I’ve always found time to meditate but I don’t find that boring, and it doesn’t let me day dream like I used to in a Biology or History class as a child.
I’ve been joking with my girl friend that my resolution for 2020 is to fill my days with less exciting things and somehow find boredom again.
I always wonder if it’s the extra stimulation these days, or the extra responsibility or if I just headed my grandma’s words that only “boring people get bored”. Maybe it’s the freedom? As I child I was forced to sit in classes I didn’t enjoy. Today I have the freedom to get up and leave.
I really want to understand boredom more in 2020.
I was one of those kids who live in his own head and was forever daydreaming and I as I grew up I never stopped helped I think by my early adult life been working on production lines/factories usually alone or so noisy ear protection was required removing any irrelevant conversation - I'd turn up, go onto autopilot and disappear into my head.
I still do it now, if I'm walking along the riverbank near where I live the world recedes and I visualise how it must have looked hundreds or thousands years ago and imagine the people/animals around then and so on.
It's both an escape hatch and a pressure valve for me - I also don't dream (or more correctly I do dream but maybe once ever couple of years I actually remember one) which I think is likely somehow connected.
My partner finds it odd because she'll come into a room and I'll just be sat still staring into space completely unaware she's entered the room.
This was a great article though, the idea of deliberately cultivating that state by sitting in an isolated place is attractive.
There are days where I hate the modern world (while accepting all it's advantages) - the constant distractions, clamour for attention from everything, the splitting of time into tiny increments in which everything must be done, it often feels like the world is just slightly off axis and I don't fit.
I've never found it an issue and an hour just sat in that state leaves me feeling refreshed and alert, the days where I feel the most flattened are the ones that are so busy that I don't get chance to do it.
I am however somebody who always did this more than other kids and never lost it really. I hate beeing distracted all the time, stops you from seriously thinking about yourself and the world you inhabit.
Restricting the scope of my daydreams to align more with my actual goals (like starting a successful company, becoming an engineer of renown, making tons of money) was a very important step. It is closer to visualizing oneself as a successful person which, in general, is a good thing. It has also had the welcome side effect of curtailing the duration of my daydreams.
I believe a lot of people don't know how to be bored, or how to be slow and engaged. The lack of daydreaming is just one symptom. They skim through every task just enough to get it done, so that they can move on to the next one. So not only are you never bored, you're never fully engaged either. If you are always moving fast you are often eager to move to the next task instead of being active and present with the current one.
Technology trains us that we can fill in boredom, and simultaneously makes us unable to appreciate the stuff will fill it in with. Our reward loops become so short that we don't even finish what we're doing before looking for the next loop to start. We distract ourselves from our own enjoyment.
Personal question, feel free not to answer: are you a regular cannabis user?
My one 'vice' is coffee but even then in moderation.
I love these bike rides and do a lot of thinking. But it’s not the same as when I was a kid and daydreaming and I’m not sure why.
Maybe my mind is just more structured? So rather than meandering I end up think about more introspective/pragmatic things?
Or maybe I’m just crazy!
Thank you so much for providing this disturbing insight! I need to fix this..
Yes. It is why I made my kids endure road trips several times a year.
I love road trips. All my good ideas come from the boredom of the open highway.
I enjoy road trips today as an adult, but as a kid they were kinda torture.
It's just as good a version of boredom for the stated purposes.
People also need to learn to explore their mind and thoughts, not just their surroundings for the next thing to distract them.
I'm sure I was just as big a pest as my own kids on road trips, but I don't have any bad memories of them. Quite the opposite, actually.
This last good part sometimes come unexpected and can be better than the destination of the trip itself.
fun fact, savasana translates to "Corpse pose" or dead man position in english.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Alphabet_of_Sans...
Noting everything, it seems quite plausible boredom can be a trigger for depression and vice versa. Literally everything that causes boredom can also cause depression and the symptoms from both are trigger for each other despite being different enough.
0] Relationships between boredom proneness, mindfulness, anxiety, depression, and substance use:
http://www.azmonyar.com/DownloadPDF/15562289.pdf
1] Proneness to boredom mediates relationships between problematic smartphone use with depression and anxiety severity:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/089443931774108...
2] Traumatic brain injury, boredom and depression:
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/3/3/434
3] An open label pilot study of citalopram for depression and boredom in ambulatory cancer patients:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/palliative-and-suppo...
4] Characterizing the psychophysiological signature of boredom:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-013-3755-2
5] Cortisol Secretion in Depressed and At-Risk Adults:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4451064/
If you live across the pond in the US and have a free weekend, it's pretty easy to do this sort of thing here, too.
Many national forests and lands administered by the BLM allow 'dispersed camping' in the wilderness. You're encouraged to use existing sites along forest roads, but the rules are usually pretty loose. Search engines don't do a great job of indexing the USFS or BLM websites, so you might have to poke around a bit to find a 'camping information' page for the area that you're interested in. But you can find some basic information here:
https://www.blm.gov/programs/recreation/camping
Sadly, it's not all roses and sunshine. The author got told that he technically needed a permit to be in the part of the wilderness that he stumbled into, and you'll probably get some of that if you spend much time in BLM lands. People throw up false 'private property' signs and gates all the time, and those sorts of people tend to have the 'Cliven Bundy' sort of attitude that they have more of a right to public lands than others. There's no arguing about land usage with someone who points a gun towards you.
We also see the sort of aristocratic land grabs that he mentioned here; there are a lot of BLM lands which are now surrounded by private property, and those property owners are not required to provide access to the public lands which they surround. It essentially cedes "multi-use" public lands to the people/companies who own the properties around them.
It's too bad we don't have a right-to-roam in the US. It seems like the sort of thing that would fit in with the ostensible national ethos of freedom and independence.
That’s something I’ve never understood about the US. You came late to the “land grab” (compared with Europe), and different kinds of freedom are deeply embedded in the culture. Ought to be perfect conditions for a proper “right to roam” policy.
Here, we’ve the right to roam, you can camp almost anywhere on private and public land as long as you clean up after yourself and camp at least 150m from houses or cabins.
You’re allowed to pass by a house/cabin on you way, blocking passage is illegal.
We’ve unrestricted access to the shoreline, even next to houses and cabins. You can forage berries, etc, etc.
But I think that it might have something to do with the near-religious reverance with which Americans view absolute property rights. If you frame it as a contest of "freedom and liberty" vs "get off my property or I'll shoot", then it makes a bit more sense. There's a certain segment of the population who are just itching for an excuse to shoot a 'bad guy', which is one of those things that makes exploring this nation so... interesting.
Still, I like to think that there's a reason why 'property' got replaced with 'the pursuit of happiness' when Locke's basic rights were enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.
https://maps.usgs.gov/padus/
I completely lost track of the days. I remember one day waking up assuming it was the last day. I started packing up until someone told me there were still 2 days left. We both started counting the days and we had this really strong mind fog. Somehow the mind had slowed down so much that even very basic addition was a difficult thing to do.
To be honest, it wasn't a particularly enlightening experience like other stuff I've done. I vividly remember the strange feeling of joy and wonder of coming back to the real world. As if we were entering into an awesome simulation.
> As if we were entering into an awesome simulation.
This reminds me of coming back to the US after finishing up my Mormon missionary service in Japan. Regaining the ability to sleep in. To study out of any book I could find. To explore the internet again. No longer needing to bow. The overwhelming sweetness of the food. Cars that looked too old to be on the road. Seeing obese people in public on a regular basis. Carrying around a small notebook to write down simple but forgotten English phrases.
And somehow still deeply caring about the world I just left, but realizing it was a hugely uncomfortable context-shift away, and permanently behind me on top of that.
Just--crazy and weird and wow what a transition.
According to the general vehicles [other schools of Buddhism], to dwell undistractedly in nowness is to be undistracted. But from the Dzogchen perspective, that is called being distracted. Dwelling on nowness means you are already distracted. Why? Because you are dwelling on something, repeatedly. The awareness is directed towards something which is not rigpa [roughly: nondual awareness itself]. When there is a split between the rigpa and something other, you are already distracted.
There is some risk of misunderstanding this matter, if you only get half of this message, the nonmeditation part, and you miss the first part, which is to remain undistracted. It would be easy then to simply not meditate! But that wouldn’t make any sense. People who are already not meditating are constantly being carried away by the three poisons of attachment, aversion or dullness. That is not meditating at all, so if one is told “don’t meditate” in that situation, that makes no sense at all.
On the other hand, if we pay attention only to the first part, ‘be undistracted,’ it might seem like we have to remain mindful of whatever takes place: “Now I’m walking. Now I’m putting my foot down. Oh, there’s a pink flower. The air is touching my skin. I’m breathing in. Here is a thought coming. There is the thought going. Now I am angry. Now I have some desire. Now it is leaving again.” In the normal sense of the word one is certainly undistracted, but there is no sense of freedom. You are not liberated at all. It’s like you’re a shepherd totally involved in watching your sheep or goats: “Now they are going up the hill over there... now they are coming back down... oh, they shouldn’t wander too far... now they are going up another hill... now it’s five o’clock, I should gather them all together and go home.” That type of practice is called “maintaining the meditation.” You are herding the meditation, keeping constant watch. Dzogchen practice is not like that. Instead, meditate without being distracted at all, and without “keeping” a meditation.
If we aren’t able to maintain a free and easy attitude, we will never have good meditations. During these few days up here at Nagi Gompa, give up any anxieties, hopes, fears or worries. Just leave them all behind. There is nothing you need to do. There is no office you need to go to, no long-distance phone calls to make, no faxes to reply to. Let go of the whole thing. Let go, let go and let go, until there is nothing more to let go of. Let go until that point.
Is this from a book?
I find this to be a critical yearly reset. Simple but difficult.
[0] https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com/blog/general/five-day-fast...
Other merits of this article aside, it always perplexes me that the works of man are somehow regarded as outside or in opposition to “nature”, as if an atomic clock with seconds display is somehow less natural than a beaver’s dam.
Both are entirely natural processes, produced by and within natural systems.
Words exist to draw boundaries, something cannot exist without its opposite. If everything is natural then what is unnatural? If your answer is nothing then you have discovered non duality which is fascinating but has no practical value. The practical value of defining what is natural is to understand our impact on the world and what that means for the future of the planet.
It is almost unheard of to work with nature, to produce sustainable, sympathetic houses and cities that are a part of the natural world. The nearest we get is an occasional designer rendering of a sustainable city of the future... A future just about everyone fights hard to ensure never arrives, and we get the sad, brutal ugliness of the city.
We could have both. Without much difficulty.
So are the works of man.
Oxford: nature [mass noun] The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.
Where in nature, outside human creations, can I find an airliner, or even a fence? A beaver dam involves no human activity so is of nature. By stretching the definition only a little, one might consider a log cabin and other buildings that use natural materials to be of nature, or at least sympathetic -- wood, stone, earth based, but certainly not steel.
Once you distance yourself via fossil fuel, tools, rules of physics or chemistry and highly complex industrial manufacturing processes the claim becomes absurd. A 3d printer, airliner, drug production or an atomic clock cannot be part of nature -- they exist only through the confluence of man and fossil fuel.
This is the unnatural/natural divide when it comes to human engineering. Think of it as hacking the human psyche, vs living closer to the primitives we evolved from. Don't forget that the human brain has existed for an exceedingly small amount of time in proportion to life overall; but many of our primitive psychological and physiological functions are many millions of years old.
Wouldn't this be covered by the right to roam [1] [2]? What he intended to do once he found a good spot might count as camping, which isn't covered, but just walking there seems like it would be covered.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/right-of-way-open-access-land/use-your-ri...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam
> ... my own childhood, the lost civilisation on which my adult self now stood.
If you want to spend a day alone in the forest, why not just go? Do you need the "Way of Nature UK" organization to support you in doing that?
Time moves past me and I don't have control so I tend to have a lot of discussion or random thoughts about stuff that I see, which annoy the living soul out of some other people. I think that if we let control over time go a bit more we would also gain a bit more control over the relationship with time. Your milage might vary.
> My life seemed to be getting busier, faster: I felt constantly short of time
I can't seem to find any mention whatsoever about whether this changed... hmm...
But to each his or her own!
How much does human brain contain?