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Morning Meditation Walk Journal // 26 May - 1 June 2025
[edited minimally to make it easier to read]

Monday, 26 May

‘calm’ [added 2 days later]

• Woke up with a stuffy nose [allergy, flu?], not very well-rested, slightly anxious. → Potential reasons:
  → because of:
  – not being rested/having slept well
  – not sleeping under my weighted blanket
  – having a feedback call at work for the first time since I started the job, and needing to ask for approval for my artist freelance registration
  
  
• First walking meditation: ‘calm’ – I exhale blue bubbles, the trees and plants around me exhale green bubbles.
  
  “Notice that the trees continue to breathe freely, even if the conditions are challenging – and so can you.”
  
  +
  
  “Watch as your bubbles and the trees’ bubbles begin to overlap and connect in a colorful kaleidoscopic constellation. A myriad of blue and green bubbles mixed together.”
  [p. 30f]
  
  
• It was difficult to imagine the bubbles. I can’t produce imaginary images;
  I’ve tried a lot of times – it seems to be only possible to see/imagine things I’ve seen before in real life.
  → Think of last disconnect episode – maybe I’m trying too hard?
  → Stopped making an imaginative effort, nothing happened. All I had on my mind was the color the mixed bubbles would have – the color of the logo of The Soda Club.
  
  
• Two middle-aged women on bikes [1 e-bike, 1 cargo bike] came towards me within a minute, probably on their way to work – usually, I don’t say anything or look at people when they pass by, even though it’s common here to say hallo when you see another spaziergänger – so I looked at them and smiled. The first one [the one on the cargo bike] replied with an out-of-breath Guten Morgen, the second one, who passed by about a minute later, barely looked at me and eventually replied with a subtle smile on her own [maybe intimidated by a man wearing almost all black, smiling at her from beneath the hood that’s covering his head?]
  
  
• After I stopped trying to envision the bubbles, I perceived the nature around me as it was – art → no active use of my brain, just passive observing.
  → The stress/feeling of failure of the days before, because I didn’t carve out time last week to experience art in real life amidst organizing and working on my own exhibition, vanished – this week, I can go to a gallery and experience art every day – nature.
  → I will walk the same route every morning and keep track of what I observe.
  → I had some thoughts that I considered noteworthy while I was walking that I forgot by now – maybe they’ll come back in the next days? One was related to being intentional.

Highlights/impressive works of art I noticed on this morning walk:

• Two different types of grains on each side of the narrow road I was walking along; one was soft, one was stachelig when I touched them – both moving gently in the wind. One, observing the entire field, looked like a soft pillow, a cloud-like surface I wanted to lie on – the other, looking at it up close, looked like small dragons. [I touched both of them and the two different tingly feelings remained in my palms for the next 2 or 3 minutes.]
  
  
• A snail [about 15 cm long, translucent, with a shell in off-white, grey, and beige tones], crawling slowly on a muddy path between sparse grass blades, its antennae retracting every time they touched one of the blades. When I looked at this beautiful, alien-like, otherworldly creature, I thought:
  
  a) It looks so impressive – its shape, color, concept – it belongs in a museum.
  [Mini-epiphany: a museum of natural history is a museum of fine art.]
  
  b) This creature definitely has a soul.

• Crystal-clear dewdrops in different sizes on an oak leaf that reflected the light of the sun, which had just appeared from behind the clouds.
  
  
• A deer jumping across the path that leads to my mom’s house – I only saw it for a second – it was probably hiding behind a bush at the edge of my mom’s garden, munching on leaves for breakfast, noticed me approaching, and, with one quick, long, elegant jump, disappeared between the bushes on the other side of the path into the depths of the forest.
  
  

Nachtrag: attention w/o intention

Tuesday, 27 May

‘gratitude’ [added 1 day later]

Just like yesterday, I didn’t wake up well-rested and energized. My head in a rather negative place [dissatisfied because I feel unrested, sleepy]. I could easily fill a page about the causes, but right now I’m more interested in the cure.

As soon as I woke up, noticing how I felt, I was curious if my meditation walk would change my state of mind. It did. Now, as I am writing this, I still feel the light dizziness of not having slept well – I’m definitely slightly schlaftrunken [the equivalent of drinking about three beers]. I have a smile on my face: because of the beauty of nature and its soothing, inhuman power that I just witnessed.

Yesterday, when I took a shower after writing about my walk, the thought about intention reappeared, and I added a short phrase to the journal entry – attention w/o intention.

I haven’t re-read what I wrote yesterday. I believe it was related to the intention/intentionlessness of my morning meditation walks. On this walk, I noticed that almost always, I aim to be intentional. And right now, probably because of my Schlaftrunkenheit, I am totally confused about why I even started writing this paragraph.

I noticed, witnessed, observed so many impressive, beautiful, wonderful things on my walk that I could write about instead:

The wind, blowing firmly and gently at the same time – it felt like a living, invisible being, waking me up and getting me out of the state of mind I woke up in.

The bright red poppies, growing sparsely between the countless crops that were moving in the wind. From afar, looking at the swaying crops resembled looking at an ocean that’s moving in soft waves.

The narrow asphalt-paved road I walked between those fields [so narrow that even one Dodge Ram would have trouble getting through] – leading straight up a small hill for 500 m, which makes it look like it’s ending abruptly and leading into nowhere.

The two pheasants that fled into the fields [one went left, one right] as soon as they noticed me approaching. It made me feel like an intruder in their territory and reminded me that we’re nothing but guests on this planet that we share with a billion [?] other species – and that it’s important to cherish and preserve places like this one, where it feels like everything inhuman is thriving and more present than what’s human [places where the inhuman is outweighing the human].

And, lastly, the insect that I noticed on my left arm when I reached for the key in my pocket as I arrived at my mom’s house again. It just sat there calmly, didn’t move, as I looked at it, observed its fascinating body: it was the size of a common fly – its body, its legs more delicate though – and it had long, thin antennae. These two hair-thin antennae, about five times as long as the insect’s body, were pointing right towards me. And its body: a shimmering gold with a pattern of thin black stripes. I looked at it for about half a minute. I felt just what I felt when I looked at the snail yesterday. This being has a soul.

Then, it flew away, disappeared between the leaves of the 35-year-old maple tree my mom planted for the birth of my brother. I am grateful to live on this mysteriously beautiful planet.

There are several other things I observed, experienced, and that appeared in my mind during this morning’s walk. However, I need to continue my day now. Last thing before I close my notebook:

The walking meditation I did today was about imagining a soft golden light surrounding me. It enters my body at the feet, passing through all of my body parts.

It was difficult for me to imagine the golden light, just as it was difficult to imagine the blue and green bubbles yesterday. I tried for 5–7 minutes, until I turned onto the narrow road between the fields. I let go of any thoughts and simply existed in and walked through my environment, observing my surroundings.

After another 5–7 minutes, I stopped for a moment, at the top of the hill the road leads up to, looked down on the crops swaying in the wind, and felt a warmth in my entire body. I didn’t see any golden light in my imagination – but what I felt could have been just that. This feeling remained in my body for the next 15, 20 minutes or so, until I returned home – and noticed the golden insect on my arm.

Wednesday, 28 May

‘focus’ [added after writing – I feel very unfocused, yet present]

It’s my weekly liminal space day today. Most weeks, it’s on Sunday. My regular schedule is mixed up because I’m traveling back to Berlin on Sunday and will spend about a third of the day on public transportation, crossing Germany from west [close to the Dutch border] to east [close to the Polish border].

It’s a gloomy, rainy morning. I don’t have to work my day job [only Monday and Tuesday this week] and didn’t set an alarm [even though I mostly wake up before my alarm anyways when I set it]. I don’t know what time it is. There are no clues from nature. No sun, grey sky – it could look like this at 7 AM, 1 PM, or 7 PM. It’s a timeless moment.

It’s very fitting for a day where it’s my intention to leave things unplanned. The only thing I have planned is to meet P. to play golf – and even that is uncertain due to the abruptly changing weather [at what time? regular course? indoor in case it’s raining too much and the course is too muddy?]. The ambiguity and uncertainty of this day fits how I feel – I don’t feel good, I don’t feel bad, I’m just here today, existing.

I had a bit of a hard time focusing when I read the walking meditation I wanted to follow today, and I have a bit of a hard time focusing on writing – no, that’s not true. I have a hard time focusing on thinking about what I believe I should write – about my morning meditation walk, about what I discovered, about what I observed, about what crossed my mind. Just as I did yesterday, and the day before.

It doesn’t feel natural today, so why force it?

This passage from this morning’s walking meditation spoke to me the most:

“As you open the door, take a breath and become aware of how you feel today without judgment or the need to change how you are.”

Highlights of today’s walk

• The entire scenery as a whole [Gesamtbild]
  → Today’s walk reminded me of walking with a soft gaze through exhibitions with an overwhelmingly high number of artworks on display.
  
  
• The rain that changed from drizzle to steady, gentle drops during my walk, to heavy rain a couple of minutes after I returned.
  
  
• The sky – a soft grey mass that covered everything in timelessness.

Now that I’m done writing, the sun has come out and is shining right into my room. I’m curious what time it is. It’s 8:21 AM.

Thursday, 29 May

This morning walk was so full of interesting, fascinating observations—both in my mind and my environment—that I feel I could write an entire book based on this walk alone.

When I had completed about two-thirds of the route I’ve been walking every morning this week, I already thought about what I may write down, and feared I wouldn’t be able to remember everything unless I spent the entire rest of the day writing. I felt sad [?] that I might forget some things that had left me in awe by the time I’d be sitting at my desk—because of the sheer amount—and then, in the last third of my walk, even more miraculous, wonderful things kept appearing.

So, where to start?

Probably at the very beginning—how my day began. Reading the walking meditation I’d follow today, still in bed, just a minute after waking up, made me smile: It was about imagining, in your mind’s eye, stepping out into a sunny day and walking through an ancient woodland.

I could already see the sun shining through the small cracks in the blinds I hadn’t closed entirely. And the environment I’d step into for my morning walk could very well be described as an ancient woodland. No need to use my imagination today.

Describing/writing down what I experienced feels overwhelming right now. I still have all these different thoughts and images in my mind. It’s difficult to get them out on the page. At least in full, well-written sentences.

Friday, 30 May

This morning, I enjoyed having no thing on my mind and walked three longer stretches (200–300m each) with my eyes closed. I enjoyed walking with my eyes closed as well.

Saturday, 31 May

[the blue ink hurts my eyes—I need to get new black ballpens]

The walking meditation I read this morning, right after waking up—still a bit sleepy and dizzy because I came home late last night from a night bike tour/walk in Osnabrück [and kind of enjoying the feeling of still being partially in the realm of sleep]—was about perceiving sound:

“Begin to tune in to what you can hear inside you—for example, your heartbeat or thoughts might be audible.”

And so I got up, out of bed, and put on the clothes I’ve been wearing every morning: black track pants, navy blue crewneck [on top of the t-shirt I’d worn to sleep], black hoodie, light grey fleece zipper jacket, and trail running shoes I keep at my mom’s house because I can wear them for pretty much anything here [I don’t care if they get soaked and muddy, which is quite likely as soon as it’s a bit rainy]—and stepped outside.

I began to tune into the sounds within me. My thoughts—they were definitely present. But audible? I’m not sure. It’s more like when I read—a silent stream of words flowing through my mind.

Next: my heartbeat. I couldn’t hear it either. I remembered that I do hear it sometimes—when it’s pounding, like after a run. In that moment, my body was still in the process of deactivating hibernation mode, and my heart was beating inaudibly, at least to me.

“Listen now to the sounds in your immediate vicinity.”

As I walked along a road framed by bushes and small trees, boasting lush leaves in different shades of green, I was surrounded by the sounds of birds. Their songs—different melodies, different pitches, different intensities and volumes—as faceted, diverse, and lush as the plants, trees, and leaves around me. I didn’t see a single bird. They were all well-hidden by nature, protected from my gaze.

The birds’ chirping was the only sound I noticed. One sound I realized was missing today: the wind—or more so, the sound of things moved by the wind.

It was a very calm and still morning. The crops whose wave/ocean-like movements I’d admired and lost myself in didn’t move today. Looking at them—still—was as calming as when they were swaying in the wind. Both wind turbines on the field to the right of the narrow road stood still as well. Usually, when they’re running, you can hear the soft sounds of their rotors turning in eternal circles, sometimes accompanied by mechanical groans. Today: no sound at all. The birds faded too as I walked between the fields, leaving the forest behind.

“Next, take a deep breath and begin to open your ears to the sounds that are beyond you. These are sounds that exist, but you can’t actively hear them.”

I tried to imagine sounds—no success. My difficulty with imagination is: where to start?

When someone asks me to imagine something, the first thing I do—sometimes consciously, sometimes not—is scan my database of memories, things I’ve seen and experienced, looking for a match. That’s how I 'imagine'. But is that real imagination?

Imagination: the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality. – Merriam-Webster [added during editing]

I was about to get lost in these thoughts when I noticed a small stone on the side of the path. Roughly the size of half a thumb, warm orange and red, streaked with a few white lines that gave it a marble-like texture. The bright red and orange seemed out of place in this landscape of green, brown, and beige. I picked it up.

As I held it closer to admire its color and texture—wondering how it got here—I imagined that holding this stone might unlock my ability to imagine. I continued walking, the stone in my left hand. I played with it, moved it slightly between my fingers, explored its surface, closed my eyes to enhance the sensation. Without intention or effort, situations and sceneries appeared in my mind—imageless memories accompanied by sound. And disappeared again shortly after, too faint to recall now.

It felt like the stone had unlocked some part of my imagination. Not necessarily because it had supernatural, mystical powers [maybe it did—who knows?]. But holding it in my hand—having an object to subtly, effortlessly focus on—pulled my attention away from the sensory input around me, and freed up capacity in my mind to imagine. I imagined my mind like a computer that’s often running too many programs at once.

Maybe it’s not that I’m unable to imagine. Maybe it’s just that I struggle to fully imagine because external input constantly takes up too much of my capacity?

I heard a bell ringing. Briefly startled, I opened my eyes. A man on a bike, a dog jogging next to him, approached me. [Did he see that I was walking with my eyes closed and rang for that reason?]
He greeted me kindly as he passed. I replied only with a smile, half-lost in my imagination, unprepared to produce words.

I decided to drop the stone. It had been a pleasant feeling to dive into my imagination so unexpectedly. [Was it really pleasant? I can’t think of a word that describes it accurately.] Opening my eyes opened my eyes, though. What do I need imagination for if I live on a planet this fascinating, this beautiful, […]?

Sunday, 1 June

Last day of my week of morning meditation walks. I filmed the walk from start to finish. It was fun. Even though I wasn’t able to fully focus and enjoy my environment as much as I have the previous days, without filming.

I’m wondering if I have a conclusion to this experiment. Right now, I don’t. I usually come to conclusions after some time, after processing an experience without actively thinking about it.

I’ve definitely gained new insights and inspiration—some written down in these entries, some in my phone notes [ideas for future audiovisual albums/projects]. Others have slipped my mind already. Das macht aber nichts—just having them on my mind in that moment was enough.

I can’t quite pinpoint it, but right now, I feel like a different person than when I left Berlin exactly one week ago. I’ve evolved.

PS: conclusion/takeaway – when looking for an intention, maybe it’s as simple as:

do what you enjoy

PPS: If you’re curious to dive even deeper into my morning meditation walks, here’s the full recording of my last walk: