"Last night I woke up early morning and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I sat down to meditate". This phrase repeated in my mind several times as I was trying to meditate, thinking about how I would describe the experience today. I noticed my ego narrating its journey, and I had to come back to my breath much more often than before.

It's the first time I've sat down to meditate in... perhaps one year. There's always moments of meditation--as you lay in savasana after a yoga practice, as you are waiting for your departure at the airport, as you lay in bed trying to sleep. But to deliberately sit down in a lotus-like position with a straight back--that had been more than a year.

My monkey mind is all over the place. This is the reason why I've taken to write every day. My mental activity needs an outlet. Some of the activity is due to the fact that I've quit weed and that makes the monkey lethargic. My body is also more tense than before. I want to re-learn how to relax my body and my mind without any exogenous substance.

But a part of me also kind of loves the drama of life. I don't want to become one of those equanimous, serene and peaceful people who write spiritual platitudes and speak softly. If anything, I want more intensity, vigor and fullness in life. I want to laugh loud and to dance as if the world were to end tomorrow.

I see there is a false paradox in my proposition, I am relying on stereotypes to build a straw man to say: see, I cannot go over there, that boring spiritual wanker is in the way of pleasure, ecstasy and rapture. Well, you can still go over there, and indeed it is a straw man.

Light him on fire and dance around him!