The fear · 16 of 24

What remains

Stop trying to produce love, and see what subtraction leaves.

Nothing to add

Here is where My Big TOE departs most sharply from every other meditation app, and it is worth being exact rather than paraphrasing loosely.

Love, the glossary says, is the opposite of fear and is about other — compassion towards, and caring about, someone else. Awareness expressing an intention to be caring, helpful and useful. Not a feeling; an orientation.

And it is subtractive. Love, it says, is nothing you have to attain and nothing you have to add. You simply have to get rid of your fear. If you get rid of your fear, what remains is love. That is why there is no loving-kindness exercise anywhere in this app: under this model, manufacturing a warm feeling towards someone is the wrong operation entirely.

Two consequences the material states plainly. Romantic love is excluded, because it implies need. And the word never requires the qualifier unconditional — unconditional love is the only kind there is; if it has conditions, it is something else.

One place to be careful. The material's line on self-love is that if love is about other then it cannot be about self, and that loving yourself is narcissism — with the permitted version being narrower: not feeling negative about yourself, which it calls necessary and the first step. That reads harshly next to ordinary self-care language, and it is worth saying that nothing in it licenses treating yourself badly. Not feeling negative about yourself is the instruction. Self-attack is just fear wearing different clothes.

Paraphrased from My Big TOE

The final paragraph's caution is ours, not his. His position on self-love is quoted closely because a loose paraphrase of it would do real harm.

My Big TOE glossary: Love(opens in a new tab)

Before you start

  • Lighten up. Do not be intense or serious about this.
  • Sit somewhere comfortable and quiet where you will not be disturbed. A chair is fine. He does not specify anything beyond that.
  • Close your eyes.
  • Pick a time when you are not already churning. First thing on waking or last thing before sleep tend to work; straight after a big meal, or while you are angry about something, tend not to.
  • Nothing to bring today. This one is done empty-handed.
How long

Campbell’s own instruction is twenty minutes, twice a day. The shorter lengths early on are ours, not his — starting at twenty is how most people stop after a week.

The two buttons during a sit

Campbell’s mantra is not a fixed thing you repeat for twenty minutes. Its size is a dial, and you move it during the sit against how much thinking is going on. His instruction is symmetrical: if intruding thoughts constantly stream into your awareness, give the mantra a more active form; as thoughts disappear and do not return, decrease the complexity.

Busier
Your mind keeps wandering off. Give it more to hold, so there is less room for anything else. At the busiest: fill your mind with the longer chant: ah-lum-bar-dee-dum · ah-lum-baa-dee-dum. no need to make an actual sound. let it be busy.
Simpler
Nothing much is intruding any more. Let it thin out — there is no point crowding a mind that has already gone quiet.

Keep going down and you reach the end of it: If the sound slips away and no thoughts come in behind it, let it go. Drift in the quiet blankness of your consciousness. That is the whole aim — the mantra is scaffolding, and you take scaffolding down when the building stands up. Arrow keys work too, if you have a keyboard to hand.

Keep this tab open. The screen stays awake and dims itself, so the phone can lie face down. On iPhone, locking the screen or switching apps stops the sound — a browser limitation rather than a setting.