#presence — Public Fediverse posts

La présence est merveilleuse

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/30/la-presence-est-merveilleuse/

How to do mindful walking. www.tiktok.com/@drdannypenm... #mindfulwalking #gratitude #presence #deepermindfulness #vedana #feelingtone #mindfulness #stress #headspace #artofbreathing #anxiety #depression #PTSD #pain #chronicpain

tiktok.com/@drdannypenman...

J’aime

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/29/jaime/

Pondering invisible bottlenecks and delays

Looking for a job is different to working in an organisations with many teams.

For one thing looking for a job is more boring than having a job. For another thing, my side of the job matching is visible, while the “hiring person” side is basically invisible.

I can see if I look at a role and then postpone applying and even though a day might slide by, I can see that the bottle next was me. I cannot see whether someone read my resume or discussed it internally or much of anything else.

This impacted my “quick cycle times lead to quick learning” because I can fire off a resume and hear nothing back, or I can hear back a couple of weeks later. So I improve my online profile and the information I submit for jobs with no feedback from real customers.

That is the opposite of continuous discovery and good product management but is also a factor of the constraints of my current market. Of course calling it a market when I have one product (me or the services I can offer) and a few potential hirers is probably a stretch, but the principles of product management apply.

I could innovate with the product by offering to work as an interim executive, a volunteer, a part-timer, a contract or permanent. I could add features to my offering by doing a course in governance or learning to be a hit man. I could do a lot to tweak what is on offer and I should prioritise that.

Interim executive is a good idea, governance training will not likely improve my time to the next role but it would add value in the long run. Hit-man qualifications are probably not going to enhance the value of a delivery manager, unless I change my target market to “illegal mafia like organisations and international espionage”.

What I was thinking though – is that nearly everything on my side is visible to me and that is a real luxury compared to working as part of a system.

Even the invisible bits can be tackled. If I want to improve my resume I can fire it off to many organisations and hear nothing, or I could share it with friends who work in the industry and get real feedback from these “proxies for the customer”, because they, like I, have hired for similar roles that I would apply for.

But in a real job, you often wait for feedback, wait for permission, wait for work to get done and generally depend on others. In this situation you can get really busy, but the activity will not move things along if you are waiting for some input or decision.

So you get good at managing dependencies, stakeholders and change. It is a real skill that comes with experience but can almost be invisible.

Of course you can “get good” at managing dependencies by harassing people mercilessly, but that strategy is both less fun and less effective than it sounds.

On TV, leaders are often very demanding and they get all the resources they need because they demand them. They also tackle drama head on and keep moving at a pace that keeps the audience engaged.

In the real world, asking for people to swarm onto your dependency is less likely to succeed when there are many more dependencies for them to manage, with their own dependencies to manage and many more annoying stakeholders asking for urgent attention.

So a real skill is to know when focusing on something will increase the speed and quality and when it is better to let things take their course.

I guess that seems like a vague statement, but they say you don’t appreciate something until you miss it or lose it. In this case I think I don’t see the challenge until I am in a simpler environment with few dependencies and a product I build myself without needing much negotiation with others.

So sitting hear next to the trees in my backyard, I can operate at my own sustainable pace. But the real thing I realise is that in a complex working environment, not everything is visible and the lack of that visibility has a real impact.

It is quite easy to “see” a bottleneck and focus on it. But generally you are seeing the symptom of a bottleneck and not the real cause, or sometimes not even the real bottleneck.

For example, at my last company, code reviews took a long time. So doing faster code reviews with AI would seem like a good idea. But in fact it was not the time spent on the code review that was an issue, it was the scarcity of experienced people who understood the code.

So getting more people experienced with the code seems like a good idea and it probably is.

But there are a couple of problems with that. Firstly the desire to use a tool or process to fix things – “Use AI to make it faster” – can actually be a distraction. Getting people to pull experienced technical people into meetings to decide whether to make AI code reviews better makes them more scarce on the ground. Doing that might cause them to take longer to go to a code review and make it harder to find time to mentor others to increase the people who can review code.

Of course, using AI to improve code reviews is the way to go and things like telemetry and automated checking will improve both quality and time spent on manual reviews. But it won’t in itself make senior staff more available.

So what might make the crew more available is better delegation, better decisions rights or more focused discussions when the crew do get together.

But then, what if the problem is not just scarcity of gurus? And what if the improvement or decay in our cycle time is the result of a change we made a month or two ago.

Guru scarcity will increase if we have a lot of turn-over but should reduce over time if we have stable teams and good senior staff who spend time coaching others. Even having people fix bugs will add to their understanding and reduce the overhead of code reviews. So we could see improvements now that are the result of one good tech lead creating stability in the team because people enjoy learning from her.

That change occurred a while ago, then people realised and then their skill increased and then we saw the improvement. Similarly the use of AI in code reviews might initially not have a visible impact and then a few weeks later it might be having a massive impact, but people are not mentioning it because it is obvious.

Or the code reviews are taking a long time because in fact the engineer was making “dumb assumptions” because they did not understand the way the customer used the product and the guru sent them back to ask questions of the PO and then make changes. If this happens then the delay in code reviews happens twice every story (or code package). And it might be the result of poor information coming into the team, which is fixed by neither the use of AI or the increased availability of coding gurus.

So I guess the conclusion is that, while AI is revolutionising the way we build products, there are skills and attitudes that still matter a lot. And the more complex the environment the more they matter.

The problem is though, the same as it was a hundred years ago. People fix and improve what they see and when they see a change they often assume that they understand the cause, when they are only looking at a symptom.

I don’t think I can put “take time to notice things and has a knack for finding invisible stuff” on my resume.

But I can say that it is a requirement of many senior product and engineering roles. It is part of the joy of the work and also part of the invisible value that motivated and experienced people can add.

So if it is not a resume thing, what is it?

Some of it is boring process and habit management. Making things visible, being transparent and looking at the system are all ways that uncover previously invisible delays and bottlenecks.

Part of it is also curiousity. There is an Irish saying, or at least a saying I was told is Irish – “If you fall over, don’t look where you landed, look back at what caused you to trip”.

We could say that it is moving upstream or shifting left, but it is really as simple as remaining curious. Instead of acting on the symptom you see, you pause and ask how it came about.

More often than not, the slow moving tech lead who is not getting to code reviews is not actually a slow moving tech lead not bothering to look at code. It is a person in a system with many forces creating the existing situation.

And the better you get at finding where the hidden things are the better. It is often the time to make a decision that delays the implementation. It is often the distraction and not the work itself that is a delay. And it is often a lack of access to the right information or resources that causes the delay and the rework.

That kind of sounds obvious when you sit back next to a tree and ponder. But the art comes in paying attention and creating space to notice and ponder things when being pulled in 20 different decisions while multiple important things compete for attention.

`

Le bon jour

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/27/le-bon-jour-3/

IF THE EGO HAS
A THOUSAND ARGUMENTS… 💎

Most of us spend far too much time answering thoughts that never deserved a reply.

Training the mind may be much simpler than we make it.

Not filling it with better thoughts. Not winning arguments with it. Not becoming expert at identifying every form an untrue thought might take.

Because untruth is clever about changing clothes.

It can arrive as fear. Grievance. Judgement. An old memory. An imagined conversation. A perfectly reasonable complaint. Something someone should not have said. Something that should have happened differently twenty years ago.

It can even arrive dressed as wisdom.

The problem with examining every thought to decide whether it is true is that the negotiation has already begun.

There is another possibility.

NO COMMENT.

A thought wants to be followed.

No comment.

It wants justification.

No comment.

It produces evidence, witnesses and a very convincing closing argument.

No comment.

This isn't suppression. It isn't pretending reality hasn't happened. And it doesn't require the mind to become silent.

It is simply the refusal to automatically give every thought attention, agreement and belief.

That is where training matters.

At first, "no comment" has to be remembered.

With repetition, it begins to become the response itself.

The forms can keep changing. They will.

There is no need to learn every disguise.

Only to stop automatically believing every story the mind presents.

The ego can prepare its entire case.

No comment.

THERE IS NO NEED TO ENTER THE COURTROOM.

@3goodthings
@DigitalCoup
@meditation
@economics_that_works
@startrek

#mindfulness #meditation #ACourseInMiracles #ACIM #stillness #presence #innerpeace

PEURS (Supervielle)

https://arbrealettres.wordpress.com/2026/08/21/peurs-supervielle/

Ni l’un ni l’autre

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/17/ni-lun-ni-lautre/

Ni l’un ni l’autre

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/17/ni-lun-ni-lautre/

Ni l’un ni l’autre

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/17/ni-lun-ni-lautre/

Ni l’un ni l’autre

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/17/ni-lun-ni-lautre/

Ni l’un ni l’autre

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/17/ni-lun-ni-lautre/

✮ Patience and the World It Governs ✮

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✮ Patience and the World It Governs ✮

Subscribe to keep reading

Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.

✮ Patience and the World It Governs ✮

Subscribe to keep reading

Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.

Awareness is knowing the world is on fire. Presence is knowing what you can do about it — in your kitchen, your neighborhood, your one small life.
We've confused the two, and it's making us anxious. Shrink your world (not your heart). Local action over global worry.
#presence #mindfulness #digitalwellness

Lucioles

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/09/lucioles/

Poésie verticale

https://dandanjean.com/2026/08/08/poesie-verticale-2/

You don't need to travel far to find peace, quiet, or clarity—it is already within you.

#InnerPeace #Mindfulness #FindYourCalm #SelfCare #Presence

Despacio. One word. My grandmother's entire yoga teaching, without the yoga.

She said it to her plants, to herself, to a ten-year-old who didn't know she was learning.

What word from someone you loved carries the most?

#slowliving #yoga #embodiedwisdom
#spanishyogi #breath #contemplativelife
#yogajourney #presence #clararamirez

Despacio. One word. My grandmother's entire yoga teaching, without the yoga.

She said it to her plants, to herself, to a ten-year-old who didn't know she was learning.

What word from someone you loved carries the most?

#slowliving #yoga #embodiedwisdom
#spanishyogi #breath #contemplativelife
#yogajourney #presence #clararamirez

Despacio. One word. My grandmother's entire yoga teaching, without the yoga.

She said it to her plants, to herself, to a ten-year-old who didn't know she was learning.

What word from someone you loved carries the most?

#slowliving #yoga #embodiedwisdom
#spanishyogi #breath #contemplativelife
#yogajourney #presence #clararamirez

Despacio. One word. My grandmother's entire yoga teaching, without the yoga.

She said it to her plants, to herself, to a ten-year-old who didn't know she was learning.

What word from someone you loved carries the most?

#slowliving #yoga #embodiedwisdom
#spanishyogi #breath #contemplativelife
#yogajourney #presence #clararamirez

Despacio. One word. My grandmother's entire yoga teaching, without the yoga.

She said it to her plants, to herself, to a ten-year-old who didn't know she was learning.

What word from someone you loved carries the most?

#slowliving #yoga #embodiedwisdom
#spanishyogi #breath #contemplativelife
#yogajourney #presence #clararamirez

SLEEP IS FUNDAMENTAL
TO EVERYTHING ELSE 💎

In sleep, your body self-repairs.

Your brain restores itself.

And your nervous system settles.

If sleep isn’t coming easily, try five or ten minutes of conscious breathing.

Draw a long, slow in-breath.

Then let the out-breath be even longer.

Keep going.

For me, Ocean Breath is the doorway into deep, restful sleep.

Never underestimate a good night’s sleep.

Everything else depends on it.
________________________________
Find Kevin Connelly's Reconnect
Breathwork here: https://aus.social/@Robinzz3

#Sleep #Breathwork #OceanBreath #ConsciousBreathing #NervousSystem #Recovery #Healing #Wellbeing #Health #Relaxation #Rest #Mindfulness #Presence #Peace

My breath practice showed me the doorway. Sleep helped me pass through.

#Breathwork #OceanBreath #Sleep #Peace #Stillness #LettingGo #Trust #Rest #Presence #Healing #NervousSystem #Mindfulness #Wellbeing #Life

SO I SLEEP 💎

I've been doing evening #Ocean Breath just before sleep for about a #year now.

I look forward to getting into the #zone every #night.

For the past two nights, I've started my usual 30 to 50 minutes.

A few minutes later...

I fall into a #deep, #sound sleep.

A few months ago, I would have forced #myself to stay #awake and complete the round.

“I haven't finished my practice.”

Now, though, my body says, “Sleep.”

So I sleep.

The purpose was never to complete 30 to 50 minutes.

The purpose was to arrive at peace.

Perhaps some practices don't need to carry us all the way across a threshold.

Perhaps they only need to bring us to the #door.

Then life, knowing what is needed, quietly takes over.

#Breathwork #OceanBreath #Sleep #Rest #Peace #Wellbeing #Mindfulness #Presence #NervousSystem #Health #Healing #Relaxation #Meditation #Recovery #Life #AI

Saisir l’émerveillement

En apprenant à écouter notre intuition,

nous traçons des aménagements en soi

pour y semer les graines de notre imagination.

Et le plus beau, c’est que ce qui germe de soi

démontre que l’improbable est notre condition.

Apprendre à observer avec attention,

c’est saisir l’émerveillement dans l’amour

de la vie.

Une chanson de Yusuf / Cat Stevens – Morning Has Broken 

Les paroles sur https://www.lacoccinelle.net/263358.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmAOBosGlHY

Par Daniel Jean dans Voies (x) de passage

COPYRIGHT – DROIT DE REPRODUCTION – La reproduction de cet article sur un blogue ou un site est autorisé à condition de respecter :   * L’intégralité du texte — Vous ne devez pas modifier, transformer ou adapter ce texte. * Le droit d’auteur — Vous devez citer le nom de la source (avec un hyperlien vers l’article original de préférence). * La finalité sans but lucratif — Vous n’avez pas le droit d’utiliser cette création à des fins commerciales. Si j’ai utilisé vos textes/photos et que vous souhaitez que je les retire, merci de me contacter en commentaire, ce sera fait rapidement.

La méditation sans religion

Avec les progrès de l’imagerie médicale, il est devenu possible de voir, avec grande précision, ce qui se passe dans le cerveau d’une personne en méditation ou d’une autre qui prétend avoir des visions. Lorsque des neurologues s’intéressent à la religion, la proximité entre les sciences dures et les disciplines interprétatives posent de multiples questions.

Depuis une trentaine d’années, de nombreux scientifiques ont étendu le champ des recherches sur le cerveau. Dans l’immense champ de recherches, sont nés les concepts de « neuro-anthropologie », « neuro-théologie » et bien d’autre « neuro-quelque chose ».

La méditation sans religion

Les neurones de la spiritualité (1/5) La méditation sans religion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwIdGgdgBcE&t=15s

One Tuesday morning I practiced with no mirror, no phone, no one expected. The body just moved.

I didn't know I was still carrying it until it was gone.

When did your practice stop being something you performed?

#yoga #presence #slowliving
#yogalife #mindfulness #authenticpractice
#embodiedpractice #spiritualgrowth #yogajourney

REALITY:
NO ASSEMBLY REQUIRED 💎

There is #nothing to attain because reality has never been absent.

The mind imagines that #peace lies somewhere ahead, just beyond one more insight, one more #practice, one more achievement. Yet every movement towards a #future peace quietly assumes that peace is not already here.

“I need do nothing” is not an invitation to become passive. It is an invitation to stop interfering.

Reality does not require my improvement. It does not wait for my approval. It does not depend upon my #understanding. It simply is.

The #sun does not struggle to shine. It shines because shining is its #nature. Reality does not struggle to be #real. It is complete before I notice it.

On your #planet, extend yourself vertically towards your Sun.

In #ACIM terms, the #horizontal is the #world of bodies, #time, special #relationships, #conflict and #comparison. It is the movement of the #dream across the surface of the mind. The vertical is the turning of the mind towards #God, towards the #light that has never left it. It does not require withdrawal from the world. It simply restores direction. The horizontal continues, but it is no longer asked to provide what only the vertical can give.

The burden has never been the world. The burden has been my attempt to replace what is here with what I think should be here.

#Stillness is not something I create. It is what remains when I stop #manufacturing #alternatives.

Nothing needs to be added to this moment. Nothing real is missing. Nothing true has been damaged. God has already completed creation. My part is not to improve it but to stop overlooking it.

When I breathe without demanding another experience, stillness becomes obvious.

When I stop searching for meaning, meaninglessness dissolves into simple #presence.

When I stop trying to become, I #discover that being has quietly been here all along.

The world continues. #Weather comes and goes. Bodies age. #Thoughts appear and disappear. None of that has the authority to define reality.

#Reality is #light.

Reality is #warm.

Reality is already here.

The choice is always the same: to become fascinated with the horizontal movement of the #dream, or to remember the vertical orientation towards the light. The vertical does not reject the horizontal. It simply gives it its proper place.

The sun has never stopped shining.

I need only stop looking away.

Right here.

Right now.

Nothing is needed.

Nothing is lacking.

Reality is still exactly as God created it.

#Stillness #INeedDoNothing #ACourseInMiracles #RealityIsHere #NothingIsLacking #InnerPeace #PresentMoment #SpiritualClarity #ChooseTheLight #ExtendTowardsYourSun #NoAssemblyRequired

Les bienfaits de la nature sur notre santé

Il y a mille et une façons de profiter d’un parc ou d’une forêt, mais avez-vous déjà pensé à les utiliser pour augmenter votre concentration ou réduire votre stress? Les bienfaits sur la santé mentale sont démontrés scientifiquement. Seulement 20 minutes par jour d’exposition à la nature suffisent à vous faire du bien. Adoptez le réflexe nature pour votre santé!

Les bienfaits de la nature sur notre santé physique et psychologique

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tUBpfALg_Q

L’œil du Québec

La construction du barrage Daniel-Johnson a révélé l’un des cratères d’astéroïde les plus spectaculaires au monde, une cicatrice géante dans le paysage québécois visible depuis l’espace. Des expert.e.s nous dévoilent les secrets enfouis dans la région de Manicouagan. Découvrez l’ampleur de ce choc colossal survenu il y a 214 millions d’années.

L’œil du Québec – La préhistoire du Québec, saison 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvB8ecMqysk

L’œil du Québec

La construction du barrage Daniel-Johnson a révélé l’un des cratères d’astéroïde les plus spectaculaires au monde, une cicatrice géante dans le paysage québécois visible depuis l’espace. Des expert.e.s nous dévoilent les secrets enfouis dans la région de Manicouagan. Découvrez l’ampleur de ce choc colossal survenu il y a 214 millions d’années.

L’œil du Québec – La préhistoire du Québec, saison 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvB8ecMqysk

L’œil du Québec

La construction du barrage Daniel-Johnson a révélé l’un des cratères d’astéroïde les plus spectaculaires au monde, une cicatrice géante dans le paysage québécois visible depuis l’espace. Des expert.e.s nous dévoilent les secrets enfouis dans la région de Manicouagan. Découvrez l’ampleur de ce choc colossal survenu il y a 214 millions d’années.

L’œil du Québec – La préhistoire du Québec, saison 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvB8ecMqysk

L’œil du Québec

La construction du barrage Daniel-Johnson a révélé l’un des cratères d’astéroïde les plus spectaculaires au monde, une cicatrice géante dans le paysage québécois visible depuis l’espace. Des expert.e.s nous dévoilent les secrets enfouis dans la région de Manicouagan. Découvrez l’ampleur de ce choc colossal survenu il y a 214 millions d’années.

L’œil du Québec – La préhistoire du Québec, saison 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvB8ecMqysk

L’œil du Québec

La construction du barrage Daniel-Johnson a révélé l’un des cratères d’astéroïde les plus spectaculaires au monde, une cicatrice géante dans le paysage québécois visible depuis l’espace. Des expert.e.s nous dévoilent les secrets enfouis dans la région de Manicouagan. Découvrez l’ampleur de ce choc colossal survenu il y a 214 millions d’années.

L’œil du Québec – La préhistoire du Québec, saison 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvB8ecMqysk

Avec l’autre

Il arrive un moment où l’autre n’est plus interchangeable. Il ne fait plus partie d’un ensemble vague. Il prend une place précise, une place qui ne se remplit pas autrement.

Quand l’autre commence à compter, la relation à déjà fait son travail. Le lien s’est tissé sans bruit par la répétition, par l’attente, par le temps partagé.

Rien n’a changé extérieurement, mais tout a changé intérieurement. Ce n’est pas l’autre qui est devenu différent, c’est la relation qui a crée une singularité.

Compter pour quelqu’un ne signifie pas être possédé, cela signifie être reconnu, exister pour l’autre au-delà de l’utilité ou de la fonction. Ce moment est beau, mais il reste fragile, car reconnaître l’importance de l’autre, c’est accepter de devenir vulnérable. Quand l’autre commence à compter, la relation change de nature, elle n’est plus un passage, elle devient un lieu où quelque chose engage, et c’est souvent là que l’attente porte enfin son fruit.

Geoffrey Wion Florens dans S’asseoir un peu plus près

Une pièce musicale de Pat Metheny – Alfie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWaXHq33OiA

We Live In The Shadowlands

Several years ago, I watched Shadowlands and was deeply touched. The movie tells the true story of the author C.S. Lewis (Jack), who though an award-winning author, leads a relatively passionless life until he meets an American divorcee, Joy Gresham. It is the beginning of a deep love, a love that changes both of them in a powerful way, and deepens their faith in God. But their time together is short as Joy becomes terminally ill with cancer.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night afraid that something horrible has happened to someone that I love. So I pray for everyone I can think of. I reach my hand over and draw comfort from the warmth and breath of my wife who still sleeps beside me. Slowly my fear ebbs away because for another night the Angel of Death has passed over the doors of those who are closest to me. (Though I do not think it has very much to do with my prayers).

I want to pray as hard for everyone in the world as I pray for my family and friends. The Angel of Death does not always pass over. I do not want to live my life in fear. I do not want to be afraid of the pain that comes with being close to people and thereby miss the happiness that comes from their presence.

In the movie, Joy, in pushing Jack to be present to ALL of life, states: “We can’t have the happiness of yesterday without the pain of today. That’s the deal.”

We live in the Shadowlands, between the sunrise and sunset. But the sun is always present and as long as I cast a shadow, it means that I am alive. Alive to live and love and care and hurt to the fullest of my being.

That’s the deal.

(November 2007)

Aventurier philosophe à 95 ans

Aventurier, philosophe, artisan, musicien, horloger… Paul Du Marchie n’a pas vécu une seule vie mais plusieurs. Grand voyageur, il découvre dans les années 40 le désert et les nomades dont il partagera le quotidien de nombreuses années. Aujourd’hui à 95 ans, il continue de transmettre avec fougue une vision de la vie basée sur l’émerveillement. Dans sa maison retirée du Liboson sur les hauteurs de Montreux, le visiteur pénètre un lieu magique où la beauté et le mystère invitent à une véritable introspection.

Passe-moi les jumelles du 26 octobre 2018, une émission de la Radio Télévision Suisse.

La folle vie d’un aventurier philosophe de 95 ans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmxz8GPBv6I

Second devoir (Nikos Kazantzaki)

https://arbrealettres.wordpress.com/2026/07/05/second-devoir-nikos-kazantzaki/

The physical part of running a marathon is the easy part.

The mental challenge is where you discover who you are. When doubt appeared, I didn't fight it, I returned to my breath.

When do you find it hardest to stay present?

#meditation #mentalstrength #marathonmindset
#mindfulness #running #presence
#marathontraining #yogapractice #innerwork

An elderly nun in Nepal told me something I needed to hear.

Waking grateful for breath, that's enlightenment. Choosing kindness when tired. Ten thousand small moments, not one big awakening.

What small moment today did you choose presence?

#mindfulness #presence
#meditation #innerpeace #spiritualawakening
#buddhistwisdom #contemplativelife #dailypractice

LE POÈTE (Eqbâl)

https://arbrealettres.wordpress.com/2026/06/14/le-poete-eqbal/

LE POÈTE (Eqbâl)

https://arbrealettres.wordpress.com/2026/06/14/le-poete-eqbal/

LE POÈTE (Eqbâl)

https://arbrealettres.wordpress.com/2026/06/14/le-poete-eqbal/

LE POÈTE (Eqbâl)

https://arbrealettres.wordpress.com/2026/06/14/le-poete-eqbal/

Migraine, Perception, and Creative Flow

Living Inside A Migraine

When pain, perception, and medication reshape daily life

I’ve been dealing with a migraine for nine days. This isn’t just a headache—it comes with aura, Alice in Wonderland syndrome, and persistent vertigo with nausea. My perception gets distorted, my thinking slows down, and basic tasks become difficult. The medication helps with the pain, but it brings its own side effects, and overall, it’s been hard to function.

In the middle of this, something unexpected happened.

A Brief Shift in State

Unexpected focus and creative flow during disruption

While I was heavily medicated, I had a period of intense creative focus. For a few hours, I was able to paint with a level of freedom that I don’t usually reach. It felt like my usual mental filters were lowered. I wasn’t second‑guessing decisions or holding back. I just worked.

The result was different from my normal work—more direct, less controlled, but also more expressive.

This raised a question for me: what actually changed in that moment?

Changes in Perception

How migraine and medication alter access, not ability

Triptans, the medication I use for acute migraine attacks, act on serotonin receptors. They’re not psychedelics, but they do affect how the brain processes signals. Combined with the migraine itself—especially aura, which already alters perception—the overall effect is a shift in how I experience space, color, and thought.

That shift isn’t comfortable. Most of it is disorienting and unpleasant. But within it, there was a brief window where my usual patterns loosened. And in that space, creative work felt easier.

Access, Not Creation

The work was already there—the conditions just changed

It’s important to be clear: the migraine didn’t “create” anything. The creativity was already there. What changed was how accessible it felt. The conditions removed some of the internal constraints I usually work within—habits, expectations, and self‑editing.

That’s not something I want to rely on. The cost is too high. But it does point to something useful.

If a change in mental state can affect how I access creativity, then there may be other ways to reach similar openness without the physical toll. It suggests that part of my creative process is limited not by ability, but by structure—how tightly I control the outcome, how much I filter while working.

There’s also a broader connection here. Decades ago, I had experiences with psychedelics that shifted how I saw the world and myself. Those experiences helped me let go of a lot of fear and rigidity. I don’t return to them now, but the perspective they opened up has stayed with me.

That perspective has been important in dealing with chronic migraine. The pain itself isn’t optional, but my response to it isn’t fixed. Over time, I’ve learned to manage the mental side of it—how much resistance I bring to it, how I interpret it, and how I move through it. That doesn’t eliminate suffering, but it changes its intensity and impact.

The recent experience fits into that same pattern. Even in a difficult state, there was a moment where something shifted—not into relief exactly, but into clarity of a different kind.

For me, the takeaway isn’t about the medication or the migraine. It’s about access.

The kind of creative flow I felt isn’t something external that I need to recreate through extreme conditions. It’s something internal that I was briefly able to reach under unusual circumstances.

Openness and Letting Go

When the boundary between experience and experiencer softens

There’s also a quality in that state that’s familiar from meditation. It’s a kind of openness where the usual sense of separation starts to fade. Instead of feeling like an observer acting on an experience, there’s just the experience itself—no clear boundary between the one perceiving and what’s being perceived. In that space, the need to control or interpret loosens, and the work unfolds more directly, without the usual distance between intention and action.

Working with Pain

Perspective, resistance, and what can shift

Another layer to this is perspective. The difference between being overwhelmed by the experience and moving through it often comes down to how it’s held. I wrote previously about the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path as a framework for navigating chronic pain from migraine and lupus. What stands out to me now is how practical that framework is—not as philosophy, but as a way of adjusting perspective in real time.

When The Pain Takes Over

A reminder that practice isn’t always accessible

Pain is present. That part isn’t optional. But the added weight—resistance, fear, frustration—can shift depending on how tightly I hold the experience. That said, this isn’t always accessible. There are moments when the pain takes over completely. Last night was one of those times. I woke up in the middle of the night in severe pain after my first medication didn’t work. I couldn’t find my stronger medication, didn’t have my glasses, and ended up searching through cabinets, drawers, and bags in a panic. I knew that without it, I might end up in the ER—where the treatment helps, but comes with hours of discomfort and side effects. I was overwhelmed, in tears, and scared.

In moments like that, there isn’t much space for perspective or practice. But experiences like this also make something clear to me: without meditation, without the framework I’ve built from Buddhist practice, I would likely be living in that state of panic much more often. My commotion woke up my husband, who came in—calm, steady, not caught in the panic I was in. He found the medication, and he cleaned up the mess I had made searching as I went back to bed. That contrast stood out. It reminded me that while I can’t always access those tools in the moment, they still shape how I move through these experiences over time.

Returning to Openness

Creative flow, meditation, and another way of relating to experience

It’s not easy to stay open in the middle of persistent pain. In those moments, it’s hard to remember that the pain will pass—that it isn’t permanent. Pain forces attention into the present, but not calmly or intentionally. It can narrow everything down to urgency and survival. At the same time, it can act as a kind of teacher. It shows where resistance builds, where fear takes hold, and how quickly the mind tries to escape what’s happening. When I’m able to step back, even slightly, I can see it less as something to fight and more as something that reveals how I relate to experience.

What I keep coming back to is this: the experience changes depending on how I meet it. Not completely, not all at once, but enough to matter. And in those moments of openness, there is less separation—and a little more space for things to be as they are.

I painted this over six hours while medicated for a migraine, drifting in and out of focus. The haze loosened my usual self‑judgment, and the work shifted into something more fluid and intuitive. It’s not complete, but the evolution itself tells the story.

Le diable préfère les saints

Dans Les Frères Karamazov qu’il écrit à la fin de sa vie, dans les années 1878-1880, Dostoïevski raconte, dans un chapitre, la longue entrevue du Diable avec Ivan qu’il qualifie ironiquement d’hallucination. Sous l’apparence d’un gentleman russe de la cinquantaine, fort poli, le Diable dévoile devant Ivan sa nouvelle stratégie :

À mon avis, il ne faut rien détruire, si ce n’est l’idée de Dieu dans l’esprit de l’homme : voilà par où il faut commencer.

*

Une fois que l’humanité entière professera l’athéisme (et je crois que cette époque, à l’instar des époques géologiques, arrivera à son heure), alors, d’elle-même, sans anthropophagie, l’ancienne conception du monde disparaîtra, et surtout l’ancienne morale. Les hommes s’uniront pour retirer de la vie toutes les jouissances possibles, mais dans ce monde seulement. L’esprit humain s’élèvera jusqu’à un orgueil titanique, et ce sera l’humanité déifiée.

Propos prémonitoires, qui semblent décrire l’état de la société occidentale actuelle. L’ultime ruse du Diable n’est pas seulement de faire croire qu’il n’existe pas, comme le disait Baudelaire, mais de persuader l’homme qu’il est lui-même Dieu.

*

Lorsqu’on lit avec un regard neuf les Évangiles, on est frappé de constater que la tâche principale de Jésus durant sa vie publique consiste à expulser les démons, et aussi que la préoccupation majeure de ses contemporains est la délivrance de ces « esprits impurs » qui causent maladies et folies diverses. Voici donc plus de deux mille ans, l’homme avait conscience que, loin d’être net et pur, il était trouble et confus, plus ou moins infesté par d’obscures présences. Il cherchait donc à y remédier. Tandis que dans le monde moderne, grâce aux lumières de la raison qui repoussent l’obscurantisme, à la fée électricité et aux progrès de la science, le citoyen est persuadé qu’il vit dans la clarté et la sécurité.

Jacqueline Kelen est une écrivaine française, diplômée de lettres classiques et productrice à France Culture pendant 20 ans. Elle est reconnue pour ses réflexions sur la solitude, la liberté intérieure, la spiritualité, ainsi que sur des sujets comme le carême, la recherche de sens, et la tradition mystique chrétienne.

Jacqueline Kelen dans Le diable préfère les saints

Une pièce musicale Hijaz Mandira by Ajam Quartet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LppXyPQ2i9Q&list=RDLppXyPQ2i9Q&start_radio=1

The audio recording of last week’s session about knowing yourself is now available to listen to for free: https://www.patreon.com/posts/157646710

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