I’d like to ask for your help in thinking through some techniques—or hearing from you if you’ve used any—that could serve the following purpose.
There’s a meditative practice aimed at cultivating the jhanas, where the idea is to count the number of blissful or positive states experienced throughout the day. What I’d like to do is track these experiences using a memory palace, in the same way one might use a mechanical counter (like those used to count people entering a room) or like some Muslims use prayer rings to count recitations.
My current idea is to have a well-structured memory palace where each locus is assigned a number. Then, every time I experience a positive or blissful state, I “activate” the next locus in some way to mark it.
I’m still unsure how best to mark these loci. One idea is to visualize the locus catching fire, or being flooded with water. Something vivid like that. But I’m wondering if any of you have experience with something similar or ideas for how to implement this more effectively?
This is quite simple, use ChatGPT to learn a list of numerical and alphabetical colors, all colors evoke certain emotions, such as blue depth if it is a positive emotion or coldness if it is negative, you can use characters, shapes, flavors, etc., in my case I use characters, shapes/textures, flavors/smells, sounds… Each one with its emotions, for example red for me is passion, energy and love if it is positive and if it is negative the emotion is anger, danger and aggression… In practice it is very simple, just use it in your daily routine, for example when I get out of bed and I feel exhausted I persive the color brown which has all the qualities mentioned and I try to look for the color red in search of energy in which I observe a woman surrounded by energy and her beautiful red hair dressed in red, the crunch of an apple, the texture of a ribbon or the sound of drums… The combination is also another point, so I don’t need to look for more images but to add in my daily life the ones that incite me this or that emotion as an alter-ego would work, not the same but similar, since it changes my mood and I also keep track and I can know the reason for my previous day.
Having long-traveled in these realms, some person on X advising this makes me instantly question why he is turning anything related to the Jhanas into an object…
Has he demonstrated the goal for example?
I’ve never seen any such suggestions, that’s for sure.
But I have seen many suggestions that recommend avoiding such “materializiations” of the process.
What I have found helpful, a practice I believe is more consistent with the goal, is to create a feedback loop by using a mantra like “deepen deepen” when such states occur.
This will likely become less and less necessary as you practice.
If there is still the desire to recall the number of instances despite this contrary suggestion, a pre-numbered Memory Palace could do the trick…
And that might match the Dalgleish research on Memory Palaces linked to improving mental states.
Either a number-object on each station or associations drawn from a 00-99 PAO could do the trick.
I just wouldn’t want you to miss out on additional bliss by focusing on counting when counting itself without reference to anything than numberness could be more fruitful. If you haven’t seen Gary Weber’s number-skipping exercise in Happiness Beyond Thought, it’s recommended.