"Do I, right now, feel fundamentally okay?"

That's the key question that determines if you need this page.

If you can look inside yourself and find a yes to this question, even on your worst days, and especially when that answer doesn't seem to make sense based on your circumstances, then that means you're already experiencing persistent equanimity*. Congrats! A lot of this website will be dedicated to tools and resources to help deepen your experience.

If, however, like the overwhelming majority of people on this planet, you sometimes can find a yes to that question but other times can't, or if you can't ever find a yes to that question, then this page is for you.

Background and Caveats

What follows is the process I personally used to flip the switch from temporary into persistent equanimity in three days. I essentially cobbled together a bunch of free resources offered by Dr. Jeffery A. Martin to create a DIY program for myself.

Something to keep in mind: this protocol requires an hour of uninterrupted meditation every day. In the courses Martin developed, he required first a six month and later a 45 day committment to this amount of meditation. When I started this on my own, I was mentally prepared to try this for up to six months before giving up on it; I figured that if the benefits of it were even remotely what I imagined then pretty much any level of effort would be worth it. The reason this process requires 1 hour per day is that the glimpses of persistent equanimity we're looking for typically don't start showing up until ~45 minutes in, and you'll want at least 15 minutes' to work with whatever glimpses you start getting.

I'll note that there are currently experiments to make this process even more efficient, but for now this seems to be the most effective secular route to persistent equanimity.

The Steps

Watch Jeffery Martin's Finding Your Meditation Fit (~1hr long).

• Ignore his notes about looking for deeper relaxation or focus; what we're looking for here are more fundamental nervous system changes.
• Follow along with the guided mini-meditations, and make note of which ones seem to have the biggest impact on your brain, nervous system, breathing, etc.
  • For example, when I hit the "Praise __ for my life" meditation, it felt like my brain literally started wriggling around, and this is actually the meditation that ended up leading to my shift. Some of the other contenders brought a deep sense of peace and settled focus almost immediately.

Starting with the most impactful method, spend one hour per day with it.

• Even if the meditation sessions themselves don't feel great, just keep pressing on; we're looking for changes in life in general, not just during the sessions.
• If at any point during the meditation you experience a sudden fundamental sense of peace, stillness, ease, openness, silence, or "okayness," stop focusing on the meditation technique and instead rest your awareness gently on that experience of ease and okayness, inviting it in with open appreciation. (Check out this article for more information on this.)

If at some point you find that you're able to answer "yes" to the opening question about feeling fundamentally okay (especially if it doesn't make sense based on your life circumstances), then you can stop this protocol. The entire point is to get access to that sense of stillness, ease, or okayness; after that, you'll just want Sink In to that experience in order to expand it.

After a week, reflect on whether you notice any reduced reactivity in your life, or a greater access to stillness, ease, or peace.

• If yes, then continue to use the same method for at least another week.

• Otherwise, feel free to try the next method on your list.

• Rinse and repeat.

Resources

• 45 Days to Awakening - The official "fast track," self-paced program Jeffery Martin developed to help people experience that initial shift into persistent equanimity (which he calls fundamental wellbeing). It's now hosted and run by the Fundamental Wellbeing Foundation.
• How to Safely, Reliably, and Rapidly Reach Fundamental Wellbeing - Ebook compiled by Jeffery Martin and team, chock-full of insights from his research.
• nonsymbolic.org - Official website of Jeffery Martin's work on persistent non-symbolic experience / fundamental wellbeing.

• Some other terms you might be familiar with: awakening, the peace that surpasses all understanding, persistent non-symbolic experience, fundamental wellbeing (the last two being Jeffery A. Martin's terms for the experience).