The temple remains.

Fragments of past transmissions echo below.

Category: Email Archives

  • Drawing should be painful

    Last night, I did a drawing demonstration live on Instagram.

    Everyone should learn how to draw.

    Well…everyone already knows how. But, it's still worth practicing.

    Drawing practice must be specific, technical, and mentally painful. Otherwise, you're just goofing off.

    At the same time, you need to distance yourself from your results. Otherwise, you're just being a crazy perfectionist.

    Human beings are always pulled in those two directions.

    Staying in the middle is the hard part.

    (and don't even think about compromising.)

    You can watch the replay on YouTube or Instagram.

  • So long, 2020. The year in review.

    2020 is drawing to a close, and I wanted to update you on what I’ve been up to this year.

    While avoiding the coronavirus, I've managed to create quite a bit.

    Let’s take a quick tour of some of the highlights. I hope you find these links useful.

    Mindful Piano Basics

    The year started off with the launch of the beta version of my piano course, Mindful Piano Basics.

    The course isn’t open right now. But, I also made a $5 Piano Lesson.

    E-Book

    I wrote an ebook for amateur pianists called Take Yourself Seriously.

    Mindful Piano Facebook Lives

    I did a 7-part Facebook live series on how to play the piano with mindfulness.

    Talking Videos

    In February, I began posting talking videos, mostly on Instagram. Throughout the year, I've posted approximately 369 (and 58 were made in one single day!).

    Here are some highlights:

    Email Cult

    I re-branded my email list as an email cult, and have sent out 171 helpful emails in 2020.

    Many of those are available in the email archives.

    Meditation Practice

    I've logged 581 hours of meditation on Insight Timer. This isn't all the meditation I've done, but it's everything I used Insight Timer for.

    No Problem

    I created a meditation course called No Problem.

    Podcast

    In August, I launched the Self-Defined Human Podcast. So far, I've published the following episodes:

    1. The Drama Triangle

    2. Stop Setting Boundaries

    3. Seventy Minus Nineteen

    4. Why I Hate Piano Teachers

    5. This Podcast is a MIstake

    6. F*** Yoga with Fabienne Egger

    7. When Meditators Get Cancelled, with Blake Shields Abramovitz

    8. Meditation for Musicians

    9. Videos are Awesome

    10. What Music Teachers Are Getting Wrong, with David Servias

    11. Universe Walks, with Samantha Faulhaber

    Instagram Lives

    I’ve done a bunch of Instagram lives, such as:

    Album

    Michelle Murray Fiertek and I released an album of American art songs called Every Tiny Thing.

    Free Digital Products

    I created a whole bunch of free digital products, which you can find on my “hey you” page.

    Other Paid Products

    Meditation Classes

    I started offering meditation classes on Zoom. Check out the schedule.

    KormanYoga

    I invented my own school of yoga (KormanYoga), authorized myself as a teacher in this school, and made a video demonstrating some basic techniques.

    I also wrote about what’s wrong with yoga.

    Skills

    I got much better at:

    • Audio editing

    • Photo editing

    • Video editing

    • Acting

    • Drawing

    Spreading Ideas

    People have started associating my name with concepts like “radical acceptance”, “toxic positivity”, the Drama Triangle (Victim/Persecutor/Rescuer), and the Empowerment Dynamic (Creator/Rescuer/Coach).

    Disappointments and Regrets

    I lost over 100 friends who don’t appreciate my style of helpfulness. I was called “racist”, “narcissist”, “fraud”, “harmful”, “dangerous”, “manipulative”, “troll”, among many other names.

    I got a phone call from the police as a result of one or more complaints that had been made regarding my social media posts.

    I wish I hadn’t done the following so much:

    • Toned things down so as not to upset “experts”.

    • Pandered to beginners and friends.

    • Eaten so much pasta.

    • Refrained from being helpful for fear of scaring people off.

    • Avoided creating products because of misguided attempts at following bad marketing advice.

    I also wish I had done a meditation retreat this year.

    Goals for 2021

    • Practice conversation.

    • Create more advanced material that’s truly helpful.

    • Ignore conflicts with experts and social justice warriors.

    • Make more money.

    • Market my ideas without holding back.

    • Set it up so that people can easily pay me to learn piano, meditation, calligraphy, drawing, and yoga without any logistical or psychological obstacles.

    Happy New Year!

  • Why it’s so hard to “just do nothing”

    “Just do nothing.”

    What a confusing instruction.

    (Meditation teachers love to give this instruction, as do music teachers.)

    Sometimes it takes the form of “trust yourself”, “go with the flow”, “let it happen”, “get out of your own way”, or “stop overthinking”. But, it’s always the same thing.

    The confusion comes up when you try following this instruction, and you notice that your own actions fit into one of three categories:

    1. Things you feel like you’re “doing”.

    2. Things that seem to be happening on their own.

    3. Things where you aren’t quite sure if you’re the one doing them or not.

    Categories 1 and 2 are no problem. If you clearly feel like you’re doing the thing, you can easily stop doing it. And, if it seems to be happening on its own, you don’t need to stop doing it.

    Category 3, however, is another story.

    First of all (spoiler alert!), no one’s home. There’s no “you” to begin with. So, that should be a clue that this is a…weird…problem.

    Still, those category 3 actions can be maddeningly frustrating. It might seem like:

    • You intended to do something, and it didn’t happen.

    • You intended not to do something, and it happened.

    • You intended to observe yourself doing it, and you got distracted in the middle.

    • The act of observing the action changes the action.

    • The harder you try to observe it, the more it changes.

    • The action keeps changing in subtle ways that always seem to be slightly outside of your intellectual grasp.

    • Doing the action causes more problems than not doing it.

    • Not doing the action causes more problems than doing it.

    Second of all, this is progress. You’re coming to terms with the paradoxes surrounding your sense of agency and intention. So, you should celebrate that.

    Here are a few things to try:

    1. Let your body do the thing, and observe how much of it is actually done by natural physical forces (gravity, inertia, etc.), not by “you”.

    2. Let your body do the thing, and observe how much of it is actually done by your desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain, not by “you”.

    3. Force yourself not to do the thing, and notice what happens.

    4. Refrain from making any decision about whether you’ll do the thing, and instead whine and complain about how frustrating it is.

    Practice all of these.

    Meditation class is tonight, Wednesday, December 30, at 9:00 PM EST.

    Also, there will be a class tomorrow, Thursday, December 31, at 3:00 PM EST.

    There will be no class on Sunday.

    Remember: you can’t just read about this stuff. You have to practice it. That means you must spend hours and hours meditating. If you come to the class, that’s some time right there that is guaranteed to be well-spent.

  • It’s all physical

    After I got enlightened (while practicing singing), I wanted to see if my realizations made sense in other contexts.

    That's because practicing a thing makes you better at the thing, and it stands to reason that being better at the thing will make it feel easier. After all, this is the typical narrative.

    So, I picked something that I was horrible at: calligraphy. And, to make it even more interesting, I chose to learn to write with my non-dominant hand (my right hand).

    At first, it was impossibly difficult and stressful.

    But that quickly changed.

    I discovered and invented exercises that made it all work.

    Break things into specific physical actions. Practice them independently. Then, integrate them.

    Example: You say it's “difficult” to write.

    What you then want to do is define “writing” precisely and physically. As an exercise, take “writing” to mean “pulling the pen DOWN on the paper, one stroke after the next.”

    This is a basic physical action. You can make it easy or you can make it difficult.

    If it's difficult, make it easy. You know how to do this.

    It's only a matter of willingness.

    Try it and see what happens. Interesting stuff will show up.

    I predict you'll see that it's only a matter of willingness.

    At the meditation class tonight, we'll talk about how it's all physical.

  • The medium of attentional waves

    All phenomena vibrate. There's no solidity anywhere, if you look closely enough.

    When you stare at an object, peer all the way into the center. See what's there.

    What is the essence of “staring at an object”?

    I don't mean literally staring (although that works, too). Even in your mind's eye, you can stare.

    What happens when you do that?

    Can you find the solidity at the center of the object?

    Waves propagate through a medium (air, water, space, luminiferous ether, consciousness, nothingness).

    What is that perfectly static medium through which waves of attention are moving?

    You know there's got to be something, or else you wouldn't be having the experience of “perceiving the object”.

    I'm fairly certain, though, that the insistence that there are static frames of reference is what the Buddha meant by “craving” and “clinging”.

    I haven't completely solved this puzzle yet.

    But, we'll meditate on it tonight.

    Sign up.

  • I was a Victim of piano lessons

    As a music student, I didn't take risks.

    I saw myself as having to defend territory. It was my job to avoid mistakes, so that I didn't get blamed.

    I looked to the teacher to give me a stamp of approval.

    I wasn't a Creator. If I were a Creator, I wouldn't have avoided mistakes. I would have let myself get blamed, because taking risks in music has a huge payoff.

    If I were a Creator, I wouldn't have looked to the teacher to give me approval. I would have looked to the teacher for help when I had a problem, but I would have given myself approval when approval was needed. This would have enabled me to accept or reject a teacher's advice based solely on how useful the advice was.

    As a student in piano lessons, I would play a piece of music, then stop and wait for the teacher's judgment.

    While playing, I could barely focus on the music. I was so preoccupied with what the teacher must be thinking.

    This went on for years.

    Then, something weird happened during the dress rehearsal for my master's degree recital.

    My teacher was in the audience. Normally, I would have been thinking constantly about her judgment, but that day I was tired, and wasn't in the mood to play so cautiously.

    Instead of “play the piece the way it's supposed to go”, the thought came into my head: “play the piece the way you would want to hear it.”

    That changed everything. Suddenly, it was like I was the only one who mattered. I was free to take risks, because hey, it was only me who got to say how I would want to hear it.

    Seeking the teacher's approval is a form of Victim mentality. It is viewing the teacher as a Rescuer, rather than as a Coach.

    It is viewing your own (lazy/careless/underachieving) self as a Persecutor.

    It's much more fun to play the piano as a Creator than as a Victim.

    • © 2020-2026 Michael Korman

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