Throwing New Light into Meaning of Life, Stoicism, Meditation and Happiness: A Personal Experience
Chien-Wei (CW) Chia, Ph.D.
Chief-of-Staff CyberSG R&D Programme Office || Startups Ops || Founder Hungry2Learn & InventiveMindset || Professor of Design Science & Emergent Learning || Proponent of Mental Wellbeing Thru Underwater Exercise~UWX
Good Saturday morning to all people following me...I start to realize that there are at least a handful out there....
For my first LinkedIn Article, I want to talk about Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning and Stoicism....and their relation to Meditation and Happiness
The first traumatic experience of my life happened when I was age 26. I healed and fantastically. What got me through was Anthony Robbin's 21 Program on DVD/VCD and also the book by Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning. Long story short, it was a case of deciding that I would not succumb to the pain and then to take immediate action. This is more AR's teaching on being immediate and taking massive action. It was a bit contrived at the beginning but it started to have a positive impact on my psyche, my physical and emotional well being.
Coming out of the traumatic experience, I felt it was a turning point in my life. I did become a much better and must more goal-oriented person after that but deep down inside there were still struggles with moods, negative thinking.
But each of such negative episodes were met head-on with my find the meaning exercise. At one point, I came to the realization that meaning in life could be found and linked to your family, your friends, your colleagues, your leaders, the organization in you work in and in my case being an ex-military person - the country. That was 1997 to 2010.
On 20 March 2011, an earthquake hit the Tohoku Region Japan and also caused a Tsunami. Reporting how the courageously and calmingly the Japanese reacted to the disaster, main stream media used the word "Stoicism" - and it was at that point I began to wonder if this school of philosophy could have other teachings and insights beyond what I practiced from Year 1997 to 2010.
From 2010 to the present has been 12 years of very deep soul searching. Deep down inside me, I was working on cracking what it mean for humans - individuals, teams and organizations - to be creative and innovative. Naturally, I devoured the literature from East to West, watch whatever videos I could lay my hands and eyes on. All came to light and the search stopped when I finally read Vygotsky's work that laid the foundation for Socio-Cultural and Historical Psychology.
It's crazy, some would say, why subject myself to such a process? Having to work a job in that was already demanding by itself and expending all my spare time on a seemingly inconsequential question which kept emerging and emerging.
This has to go back to 2000 while I was studying in Orlando where Disneyland is. I woke up from a dream which shook me very deeply. It was so vivid, that today after 22 years, I still have very vivid images of it. Hours after the dreams, I was still very shaken. I won't go into the details of that dream here - maybe someday I will share on social media who I saw and what I was told.
From 2000 to 2021, with the piling of work, a separate research track on everything I got a kick in....I really had not time to rest and to recover. In 2007 while I was attend the Singapore Armed Forces Command and Staff College I became deeply interested in answering this question of what a strategy is. This led me to the study of Sun Tzu. And as a track it would take 10 years ending again with Vygotsky's Socio-Cultural and Historical Psychology. Physical and mental well-being took a toll on me.
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Up to 2021 at least, I was still guided by the idea of search for meaning in life. Stoicism did not really bring new insights. And as you can see in many posts on Stoicism, it's not uncommon that Stoics and many other schools of self-development also deferred to Viktor Frankl; including the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
What happened in 2021 was unexpected. I stumbled into Underwater Hockey. In that one year, I lost a tremendous amount of weight and got back my physical and mental well being. This time I started to get interested in the study and practice of meditation.
"Meditation & Monkey Mind" ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Crying out Loud - Meditation was difficult, very difficult even with videos like the below from Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche that try to simplify it by teaching that it's about giving the wondering monkey in your mind a job.
But I am sorry to say it did not work for me - breathing in and out did very little for me.
Okay, if you have read until here I salute you. Becuase I was to discover in 2022, the secret is not in the breathing but the opposite, not breathing and suddenly everything fell in place and I felt as if I reached another higher plane. At this plane, I could transcend over difficult situations at will. And in 2022, I went through another life changing and traumatic experience.
As I look back, I realized I have stumbled upon the key to Happiness, being calm not by affirmation but something neuro-biological. This became the genesis for the founding of a new kind of exercise I call UWerCise – Or Underwater Exercise that are not contact in nature and something more people can benefit from.
Meditation through breathing to me is not a dead idea. After I am able to ascend to a meditative state through Continuous Waves Meditation Method by the practice of holding breaths with air all expelled, I can transit into breathing-focused meditation very easily; and in between all these I discovered the joy and liberating experience of mindful eating which I will share in my future articles.