Ayam- Discover Your Beautiful Self

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Let me begin by sharing that I started the journey of writing this book with the intent that it was going to be essentially about mindfulness and meditation; an application-oriented DIY book, especially focused on some core ideas that I saw missing from mainstream discourse on the subject. As the project evolved and progressed, I noticed that I could not write meaningfully about the benefits of meditation without delving into processes of life that fill up our living experience- be it family, work, health or the eternal quest for meaning. This gave me a pause, which lasted well over a month, given I was clear that this was not meant to be a self-help book but a book that is focused on real-world practical applications but also rich in the contextual background.

Additionally, when writing a book about meditation one has to understand that it’s almost like writing a book about "swimming" No matter how well written the book is and how detailed and accurate the instructions are, its impossibly difficult to learn to swim by reading a book. For sure it’s possible to 'understand how: to swim from a manual, but that understanding does not give much skill of actually being a swimmer. So in this book while the context has been carefully presented and where possible practice exercises are provided, I chose to really rely on the ayam as the tool for readers to put into practice what they have learnt. You will not find long mediations scripts in the book (do they serve any purpose anyway how could you be meditating while reading?) rather you will find references to meditations in the ayam platform that are recommended for the reader to experience, to allow the learning to truly integrate.

This was beginning to seem like a tightrope walk: to write enough about life to provide applications and relatability, but not so much that it became a self-help book. To go deep enough in meditation to enrich the context but not so deep that it becomes a spiritual or philosophical treatise there are so many good ones already out there and I certainly have no aspirations to add to that list.

**Contents and Sample Pages**