your “anchor,” something you’re fuzzily aware of even as you examine other things, and something you may return your attention to from time to time. The key thing is that, whatever you’re experiencing, you experience it mindfully, with that ironic combination of closeness and critical distance that I mentioned in describing how I had viewed the feeling of overcaffeination. I realize that mindfully viewing some feeling you’re having—anxiety or restlessness, for example—may not sound as exotically appealing as the psychedelic ecstasy that concentration meditation brought me on that summer night
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