Published: 25.01.2026
Today is day 30 of my meditation habit. It’s hard to believe that I’ve stuck with the practice for 30 days in a row. Even though I haven’t reached the goal of a 60 minute session yet, I feel oddly content with having gone through the process.
The session itself was no more special than the others. My monkey mind doesn’t seem able to appreciate this milestone and instead went on with its usual ruminations, labeling them as insights. From time to time, it felt like I was simply observing the contents of my mind from a small distance. I could see thoughts floating around without immediately getting pulled into them. The most profound realisation was that every single one of these thoughts is a form of conditioning. Some of it is environmental, and some of it is genetic. A lot of what we treat as knowledge in society originates in selfish economic or emotional motives. At the same time, much of our genetic conditioning evolved in conditions that are very different from the world we live in today. Because of this, I cannot really be certain that any of my thoughts & desires are autonomously my own. Even my emotions are conditioned. They are built on accumulated experiences across my own life and across evolutionary life. I was not awake enough in the past to be aware of what my relationship to my life situation should be, or how I should relate to the emotions that arise from it. In that sense, the entire construct of what I define as “I” feels like an illusion that I have not been aware of. If I want to change my relationship with these thoughts and emotions (because I want to have as much inner peace as my life situation allows me to) then I have to start understanding them better. And the understanding itself involves a deliberate act of loving myself. I thought about how I would respond if my wife or my parents came to me with a problem. I would not react harshly. I would allow them to express themselves. I would listen with patience. I would try not to judge them. And ultimately, I would accept them nevertheless, because I love them. And hence, in order to understand my emotions & thoughts, I need to have a foundation of self-love. Only then will I have the capacity to interact with them with enough attention, patience, and care.