Best Of

I have always noted that for myself the prime sense gate of interest is the visual one.
It is the key signaling device in full attendance when I'm present and the first one that books off when I'm about to leave the building.
When we talk about a practice feeling like it's 3 steps forward followed by two steps back, my two steps back seem to be intrinsically connected to my conditioned susceptibility to visual stimulation.
If I have a totem animal, karmically it would probably be a Magpie. An ever-widening heart & mind only limited by whatever sparkle from any nearby phenomena happens to catch my eye at the moment.
My most consistently helpful medicine for my obfuscations of reality is to physically limit my total screen time allotments of any day to be no longer in duration than whatever time I devote that same day to formal meditation. I think this sometimes looks a bit like a Presbyterian's idea of a Buddhist practice (or punishment). Still, it effectively self-regulates my own conditioned responses to electronic stimulation like no other method.

So dam you, Jeroen!
The construction of this response has just added another 3/4 hour of formal meditation to my day. My meditation being reduced to an imaginary hair shirt, ever competing with the torments of electronic media addictions.