đ Coordinates: Toronto, Canada. đ¨đŚ
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đ§ Vibecheck: (1) Celebrated my 31st birthday on Sunday. 𼳠(2) Feeling rooted, ready, and raring to go for one of the greatest initiations Iâve ever cooked up: the Warrior100. We begin September 1st. Make the time, dig deep and find your courage, this is going to be incredible. If you could, please share it with someone who may be interested. âSERIOUSPLAYâ will get you a discount and in a private group with me. âĄď¸
âOur minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others. This might not be obvious, especially when there are aspects of your life that seem in need of improvementâwhen your goals are unrealized, or you are struggling to find a career, or you have relationships that need repairing. But itâs the truth. Every experience you have ever had has been shaped by your mind. Every relationship is as good or as bad as it is because of the minds involved. If you are perpetually angry, depressed, confused, and unloving, or your attention is elsewhere, it wonât matter how successful you become or who is in your lifeâyou wonât enjoy any of it.â â Sam Harris
Your entire life exists within your conscious experienceâŚ
The fluid dance between your attention (concentration) and your awareness (mindfulness) is the canvas nature uses to compose the masterpiece of your waking existence.
The quality of your attention is the quality of your life.
Despite this⌠we rarely give our attention any of our attention.
We brush our teeth. We go to the gym. We practice our craft. We maintain our relationships. We eat well.
We strive for health and growth in so many parts of our lives, except for the one aspect that is universal to all of them â attention.
If you want to radically transform your life: transform your attention.
Contrary to popular belief, there are precise, methodical, and repeatable systems to help you develop your powers of attention, mindfulness, and concentration.
You are your conscious experience. Your life is your attention and what you concentrate on. If your attention is scattered, your life is scattered. If youâre always distracted, youâre never present.
âFrom the contemplative point of view, being lost in thoughts of any kind, pleasant or unpleasant, is analogous to being asleep and dreaming. Itâs a mode of not knowing what is actually happening in the present moment. It is essentially a form of psychosis.â â Sam Harris
For something that influences the quality of every moment of our lives, itâs remarkable how little we focus on it.
You must reprioritize your attention.
It doesnât matter if you agree that it should be your top priority, because itâs not an opinion, itâs a fact. Your attention preceeds any experience you have. It is how you experience your life. It comes first at the level of your life.
The choice is whether or not you want to recognize that and act accordingly.
Cultivating your powers of concentration and focused attention radically transform:
The level of presence and intimacy you bring to your relationships.
Your ability for complex thinking and rapid learning.
How productive you can be in terms of both quantity and quality of your output.
The felt sense of meaning in every moment of your life.
The calmness, composure, and clarity of your thoughts and feelings.
The richness and vibrancy of your external world.
The impressions other people make about you, how much you care, and how much you engage with them.
It is not hyperbole to say that developing your concentration positively transforms your entire life â because your entire life is made up of what you concenrate on, and how well you hold that concentration.
Do you get that?
Concentration is one of the 3 Trainings required to reach the later stages of awakening in Buddhism, alongside Morality and Insight.
Concentration is fundamental.
That is why concentration meditation is one of the core pillars of the Warrior100.
Unwavering, razor-sharp focus is a hallmark of true Warriors. And boy oh boy do we have our work cut out for us . Most of us have lower attention spans than goldfish. Social media and FOMO have obliterated our ability to concentrate.
The time has come to reverse the flow of attentional entropy, reclaim your ability to concentrate, and redirect your attention towards the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
We will be rigorously following one of the most accessible blueprints for concentration available â the framework presented in The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa John Yates, PhD.
If you show up and apply yourself in good faith, you will achieve something that no human can achieve without proper training. Something you cannot buy your way into.
Stable Attention.
This is the ability to hold your attention on a desired object (breath, work, screen, person, etc.) and not have it deviate unless you decide to redirect your focus.
You literally become un-distractable.
Imagine the possibilities that this opens for you:
Give your intimate partner the gift of the one thing they truly desire from you: total loving presence and fullness of attention.
Pursue the challenging but meaningful projects you have on your bucket list: writing your book, creating the masterpiece, or learning that new skill.
Increase the quality of your daily existence by slowing down the experience of time, increasing the richness of your external world, and creating a more balanced, calm, and composed mind.
Everything in your life is downstream of your attention.
On September 1st we begin Day 1 of the Warrior100. 100 days straight of 4 daily disciplines. Concentration meditation is one of them.
We have created a 30+ page meditation manual to guide you through this process, and with weekly intimate group calls and a general community space to ask questions and receive guidance â you can achieve stable attention and reclaim the quality of your moment-to-moment existence.
This is a true act of self-love. This is what deep self-care looks like.
I invite you to join us. We will do this together. It will fundamentally change your life, and I am willing to stand behind that claim with everything I am.
Reclaim your attention. Refine your mind. Reinvent yourself.
The Warrior100 begins September 1st.
You can use âSERIOUSPLAYâ to get 10% off, and be in a group with me as we do this together. I hope youâll join us.
Thank you, EB. đ
âIn the broadest sense, however, meditation is simply the ability to stop suffering in many of the usual ways, if only for a few moments at a time. How could that not be a skill worth cultivating?â â Sam Harris