Waking Up
p/waking-up
Discover your mind.
Andrew Wilkinson
Waking Up — Guided meditation with Sam Harris
Featured
177

Join Sam Harris—neuroscientist, philosopher, and bestselling author—on a course that will teach you to meditate, reason more effectively, and deepen your understanding of yourself and others.

The Waking Up Course is for anyone who wants to begin the practice of mindfulness meditation, as well as for those with an established practice.

Replies
Ivan Kirigin
@awilkinson @samharrisofficial I see there is an investment from Tiny. Have you blogged about this? What is the story here? http://tiny.website/
Sam Harris
@awilkinson @ikirigin Yes. Andrew Wilkinson (started Metalab, which built the current version) is also an investor in the app. He really got the project on track.
Ivan Kirigin
@awilkinson @samharrisofficial this is interesting with your views on ads. Taking on investors means their interests and yours might conflict. Might you hesitate criticizing any of their dozens of other investments? Investments follow a powerlaw returns, and investors tend to focus on outliers. I hope your app is a huge success, but I doubt you expect outlier returns here. What outcome do you want? http://blog.yesgraph.com/underst...
Stewart Henderson

The interface is easily to use. I haven't yet purchased a subscription yet so I can't speak to the paid content at this point.

Pros:

Good training and meditation practice

Cons:

None yet

Ben Casnocha
Have you done a samadhi concentration retreat before and any thoughts on how worthwhile a focused concentration practice is to a broader Vipassana practice?
Sam Harris
@bencasnocha I have never done a full retreat devoted to concentration practice. However, given the way vipassana is often taught (e.g. focusing on the breath), it's possible to develop a lot of concentration and keep things very narrow for a very long time. It can be useful to train this way intermittently—just to be sure that your awareness is actually precise. But, ultimately, fixating on any object of mindfulness can become a (dualistic) stumbling block.
Gerry Claps
@samharrisofficial - love this app (and all of your work), but if there's one thing I think you could tweak, it's the logo. Any thoughts on making it a little less cluttered? The bottom of the logo has a lot going on in a small amount of space (which looks fine when not a logo, but since it's the first thing you see, every day, it's worth considering). P.S. Come back to Sydney when you can ❤
Bryan Maniotakis

I've been waiting to see what this app is like after using 10% happier and Headspace for the last few years. I like the inclusion of the lessons, which offers a little more insight compared to the competition.

Pros:

Easy to listen to from someone with a unique perspective in the same

Cons:

Having some login issues as a previous patreon (content isn't showing up as unlocked, but was earlier)

Bryan Maniotakis
Knowing what you do now about the process of app development, what are some tips you would pass on to someone looking to do the same for the first time?
Yevgeny Simkin
@bryanmanio Hi Bryan. The Russian Mob develops apps and specifically we have a platform to build this sort of app (I tried multiple times to get in touch with Sam to offer to build this app - we would have launched it many moons ago, but he's a very hard man to reach and I suspect he never saw any of my various entreaties to him). If you have questions about app development in general or specific questions as they pertain to your needs please don't hesitate to ask. My email is ysimkin@therussianmob.com
Chris Marin
Your book Waking Up, as well as your guided meditations and discussions with Joseph, Dan, and Richie, have all had a profound impact on my life. Very excited this app finally hit production. My question is about the tangible benefits you've enjoyed since embodying a state of selflessness. What have been some of the most positive life experiences resulting from losing your sense of self? Similarly, were there any adverse life experience that arose from jettisoning this sense of self? We love that you are doing this Sam! There are thousands of us who believe this, for every one of us who state it outright -- thank you all the work you do thinking in public @samharrisofficial
Sam Harris
@_chrismarin Thanks, Chris! Very glad to hear it. Re: selflessness — Being able to recognize the illusoriness of the self on demand (rather than having the feeling of self fall away from time to time at moments of peak concentration, likely on intensive retreat) is a very important life skill. It has the power to cut through psychological suffering in a way that just "being mindful" of the suffering often doesn't. Of course, if you're lost in thought in the next moment, you'll be miserable again. But it really is possible to develop a type of (nondual) mindfulness that frees you in every moment that it arises.
Emily Hodgins
Hi @samharrisofficial thanks for joining us! In this busy world we live in, how do you recommend people find time for mindfulness? What are you top tips for getting into a positive routine?
Sam Harris
@ems_hodge You just have to prioritize it and do it. Apps make it easy, because you're only committing in increments of 10 minutes. Commit to 10 minutes a day for 30 days and see what happens. If you don't think you have 10 minutes to spare, you should probably do 20 minutes...😄
Benjamin Lupton
@samharrisofficial I've read Waking Up (I found the split hemisphere problem to be fascinating) and The Moral Landscape ("hurting to prevent further harm" changed my life dramatically, it essentially unlocked my potential, finally giving me a way to incorporate cruelty into my ahimsa orientated morality) as well as listened to dozens of your podcasts, however I still find these breathing apps a waste of time. Several years ago, I discovered Eckhart Tolle which had a profound impact on me, and I threw myself into the deep end of that practice, and was able to completely distance myself from the rat race and the immediate suffering, violence, and abuse that was thrown upon me against my will. However, all these sit down and breathe things I find to waste my time, just like how I find listening to Eckhart Tolle now a waste of time, as I can already detach from suffering and control my attention quite well. Paulo Coelho has written that meditation for him is his archery practice. I've given the first two days of your app a go, but found it just as useless as the other apps in the scene. In your introduction to the app, you said that once you achieve the ability of "mindfulness" then it is a skill that doesn't go away (like the knowledge of the illuminated night sky). Could I have merely unlocked that skill with my Eckhart Tolle study 5 years ago? Or am I missing something here? From what I can tell, the benefits of meditation seem to skew towards certain big 5 personalities. If one has already have developed the skill to detach at will, to endure abuse stoically, then it seems better for them to act to solve identified problems than to let them linger in stillness (like using a combination of spontaneous and systemised thought, like journalling, questionnaires, and procedural planning), as well as to gain ether-like meta awareness by doing the routines that consistently produce that state for them (say running, looking at the stars, or having a slumber), and that being still when the situation is beckoning for action is a mistake. Perhaps Americans may be more high strung than Australians, and overwork themselves too much, as the lack of success I see most often among my Australian circles, is not too-much-action (which antidote is stillness and calmness), but too-little-action (which antidote is more diligence). It seems that meditation/stillness/mindfulness is always packaged as this "be all do all for absolutely everyone" where it seems to me, that certain demographics may achieve the proposed benefits better from other means, or gain no benefits from it, yet no one talks about such limitations, and I don't understand why.
Alex Birkett
Really excited to give this a spin! I've used Oak and Headspace regularly in the past, but always enjoyed the guided meditations @samharrisofficial put out more. Cool that it's now a full program/app
Mike Fiorillo
Excited to give this app a whirl @samharrisofficial. I'm a fan of your podcast, and also a regular user of @get_headspace and @choosemuse. I don't see the meditation app space as a winner take all market, so I absolutely think there's space for new apps with unique styles / approaches.
Sam Harris
@get_headspace @choosemuse @mikefiorillo Definitely not winner take all. There are very different approached to teaching meditation—and even very different approaches to teaching mindfulness. I think @get_headspace is great!
Francesco D'Alessio
Very impressed by this app so far! 🎧
James Pearson

The lessons on free will are amazing.

Pros:

Nice clean interface, good meditation guidance. Doesn't treat you like a child like many other mediation apps.

Cons:

Not much content yet as just released.

Dries De Schepper
Good to see you hear @samharrisofficial. I am a big fan of your work and I absutely love the UI/UX of your app. Excited to give this a try!
Steven Harries
As a @samharrisofficial and product hunt fan it’s great to see both worlds collide. This is exciting. I’ve been a beta tester and been very impressed with the experience so far. Great job
Chris Guest
@samharrisofficial congrats on launching! I could have sworn you’ve only been talking about this for 1188 days ;) Downloaded and trying now. I love headspace but have hit a bit of a plateau after 3+ years of use so am excited to try something different.
Sam Harris
@guesto This will be different, and more directed. In later meditations, I'm really trying to get you to realize something—e.g. about the illusoriness of the self—right then and there. We'll see if it works!
Zach Ashenfarb

I call this intellectual meditation. Meditation never worked for me, for years, because it didn’t engage me enough in the right places of the mind. Sam does that with his interesting and brilliant logic and speech. His voice is soothing to begin with, but just hearing him describe the human experience in intellectually stimulating and sensory ways is true meditation in itself. I have finally found it.

Pros:

Meditation for intellectuals

Cons:

None

ThisIsAnAccount
Hey Sam! Thanks for keeping at this despite the hassle of software development. Will there ever be a live component of the app?
Sam Harris
@arbitrarylabel re: Live component — We're considering that.
ThisIsAnAccount
Heads up Sam: All your responses are being tweeted (in case you didn't know)
Sam Harris
@arbitrarylabel Whoops... That's very Trumpian. Now I see the box that got checked.
Ryan Hoover
Interesting to see this launch and surprised more authors/podcasters with large followings don't expand their reach in this way. What's the backstory, @samharrisofficial? Curious how long it's been in the works and what you think about the competitive meditation app space today.
Jason
@samharrisofficial @rrhoover "competitive meditation" that's such a hilarious phrase! 😉
Sam Harris
@rrhoover I think I can guess why more don't do it—building an app is hard! I naively thought it was analogous to building a website. After a very protracted and expensive false start, I finally found a team that I could trust to do it. The current version was build by the great people at Metalab, and we've now put a full-time team in place to maintain and develop it.
Michael Jones
@samharrisofficial @rrhoover @sixside I predict Sam's offering will fare well in the cutthroat, competitive meditation app space.