An Adventure in Lying Down

So now we're at New Year's Eve. And I feel good. I've been taking this chronotherapy seriously and I get into bed at 9:30, read with Ben and fall asleep by 10. It's the fourth day I've done this and I feel so much better. I feel like there's this obvious key to happiness that's always been right under my nose, but I've never seen it. I read recently that just getting an extra hour of sleep every night makes the average person happier than a $60,000 raise.

I'm going to add this to my committment. I get up at 6 a.m. I fall asleep by 10 p.m. and then I see how my life unfolds just from the stable supply of energy that evolves from these practices. That is my new year's resolution.

Christmas Eve

This is the celebration that is supposed to cheer us up during the darkest time of the year. But I talk to my mother and she is so tired. I find it exhausting too. Seems to me it should be the time when we are sleeping, not partying. Does that make me a Grinch?

But I could use some more sleep. Read an interesting article in the New York Times yesterday about circadian rythms. I've always known this, but the article claims that they will be the next big trend. Chronomotrists, or something like that. People who coach you into healthier circadian rythyms.

I suppose that's what I'm doing here. Waking up at dawn. But going to sleep early. I know what an effect that has on my life, and still I don't do it. I'm addicted to electric lights, televisions, all the things that mess with my natural sleep patterns. I've read that you can lose weight just be sleeping earlier.

Today I sank a little deeper into my posture. This squatting, with your hands above eye lever is supposed to distort your sense of time. And true enough, the hour I meditate in the morning seems to pass much faster now. While I'm in this kind of trans state I try to visualize myself getting really, really tired near eight or nine o'clock. All I want to do is start getting ready for bed. I lose interest in television. I can barely keep my eyes open. Maybe I can hypnotize myself into an earlier sleep time. Wouldn't I rather be alert all day, than entertained for a couple of hours at night?

It seems simple, but until you feel that alertness as a daily fact in your life, for an extended time, then it's hard to keep it up.

Being Dreamt

As the days where I'm standing first thing in the morning build, the energy builds and my realization that I am an energy that is dreaming me becomes clearer.

Okay, clear to me, but I realize that might be a little cryptic to somebody else. Here's what happens now when I meditate. I stand. I feel the energy starting to circulate in my legs, in my Tan Tien. It builds up in my spine and between my knees and hands. Then I hear my muse, the voice that instructs me in what to do while I'm standing. I tells me to stand with her a little bit behind my body and just observe. Observe the energy a it builds, as it becomes the ball that lifts my arms. As it begins to open up my chest, my upper back, my brain.

I just observe the energy. And sometimes that energy even starts to get a little funky with me, sending pleasurable, erotic feeling through my tummy. Yesterday I had a weird afternoon meditation where I remembered my first, very disappointing, sexual encounter. I remembered it. I surrounded it in this new energy and I let it go. I feel like I'm being cleaning out of sadness and anger and disappointment as I ally with this new, although it's always been there, concept of self.

Is this self-immolation? It doesn't feel like it. I feel stronger, sturdier when I'm allied with this energy. I have a clearer picture of what I need to do to bring well being into my life. I feel healthier, not manic or unsettled.

The more I do this, the more I am driven by this energy. The more I am driven by it, the better I feel. To be driven by wellbeing. That is the best way to live.

Letting the energy do my thinking

The last week instead of assuming postures, I've been starting from the first position and letting the energy build and direct my body. At a certain point my muse told me to simply let this energy do my thinking for me. For a short while my thoughts stopped chatting and I was able to simply be in this energy.

I felt that very strong field of magnetic energy. It began to loosen my shoulders and go into my upper back. I started to shake a little, like a mini seizure. And then at one point it was like my body filled up like one of those snowmen balloons. I was just this energy being there.

I felt the urge to scream, and started fooling around with the idea of a mantra. Eventually it morphed into Yaweh. I am.

It's a hard, hard thing for me ego to accept that this. Just this standing in this field of energy is such a strong and important part of our evolution. But I know it is. And I know that my rewards for this are deep and enduring. To become this energy. To let it direct my life towards more loving, useful behaviour. To do this is to be secure in the knowledge that abundance is always available to me.

Now it's time to stop worrying.

soft snow

There's a soft snow falling this morning. While I was shovelling it off the entrance I thought of it as all the pleasant numbness that can so easily build up, become ice and block the entrance of energy into my life.

I'm making healing metaphors out of all my housework recently. It's working wonders. My kitchen and bedroom are orderly. I managed to do some sweeping and dusting yesterday. Metaphors, I read in a poem recently, are god's directions.

I talk with my muse more regularly now. And last night while Ben was at piano, instead of reading or watching a movie on the ipod, I just sat. And sat and thought about how through most of my life I've felt really unwanted. Or maybe more acurately, I haven't often felt wanted. Really passionately wanted. In an erotic way, or in a loving way. Ben makes me feel wanted. But that's more needed. And it's not fair to burden him with that responsibility. I sat for a while and it struck me that the best way to be wanted it to actually want others.

I sat there for a long time and just wanted God. Really felt the strong desire for that in my heart.

It carried me through a difficult evening with Ben, who is becoming increasingly angry and rebellious. I took away his video game privileges. I decided that he needed an "evening of acceptance."

I'm worried about the effect of those games on his energy level. He seems to be driven by this rigid angry energy. Almost a rage. I need to find a way to help him unhook from that. But I need to unhook from it myself.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the nigth. I meditated. I read. I went back to sleep and made the mistake of bringing the ipod into the room with me. I slept in and had dreams about my mother. She and my father were sleeping in my room (I had moved to Ben's room in the middle of the night). She seemed sweet at first, but something put her into a rage. I responded in rage. And soon we were fighting with all the anger and despair we have always fought.

I don't want that in my life. I do not want to continue the tradition of that rage. I need to find peace.

creativity

It says in The Way of Power that creativity is the expression of your natural energy. For me it's an expression of my connection with the universal energy. I don't particularly like that description. It makes me feel all new agey, utopian, flakey. But I don't have words for it right now. I don't know why it's so important for me to find my own word for it, but it is. Consciousness will do for now. Creativity is the expression of my consciousness and I now that I believe in consciousness driven creativity.
Today is a day that is inching closer to the shortest day of the year. Dawn is late. Instead of turning on the light in the morning, this morning I sat in semi darkness until Ben woke up at around 7:20. There was no pink window. It had snowed last night and it was simply grey. This is why we celebrate Christmas I guess, because there is so little light.
I would rather sleep than celebrate. Man I could use a good sleep. Ben and I are developing a habit of watching the news until we fall asleep. Not healthy I'm sure. But at least it gets us into bed.
I would love to go to bed earlier. Have a really long and deep sleep and clean out all the sleep debt.
I wonder if this is the secret to cleaning out my financial debt. Getting rid of my sleep debt. If I slept that off, I would have enough energy to resist temptation, to make better financial decisions, to eat better and have more energy and willingness to work. I would be more useful, and healthy and all the things I want right now.
So what stops me. Habit. Bad habit. But more importantly absence of good habit. Absence of being in touch in the evening with my deepest desires. My desire for authentic happiness. I am not cultivating habits that put me in touch with that.
I need some sacred evening rituals. As permanent and ingrained in me as this habit of getting up in the morning.
Then I will have the energy and then the creativity and power that I want. That God wants me to have.
The Way. I still like The Way as an expression of this energy.

Famous last week words

Remember a couple of days ago when the chi was getting stronger. Well here I am now struggling to maintain my focus.

I'm obsessing over, all things, Roman Polanski. I wrote an opinion piece yesterday and now I can't stop thinking about it and get my mind back to the gentle energy I need. This morning, while standing, I had a Roman Polanski related memory, which I won't go into. But at least in standing I begin to trace the roots of my obsessions.

Much of my writing is driven by this obsessive energy, memories that want to come to the surface, desperation for validation. I wonder sometimes, okay often, if my public blog is more of a distraction than a help. I can't seem to settle down to the subject that I'm pretty sure is my calling, consciousness driven writing.

I, I, I, I.

Yesterday it hit me why I want to believe in this force, this energy that is stronger than me and that will intervene in my life in a positive way if I ask it. Because if it can help me and others then I have a responsibility to believe in it. If channeling it actually can bring love and justice and peace to the world, then I have a responsibility to channel it and encourage other people to do it. But I'm scared because I know that a lot of people will consider that regressive and irresponsible and immature. And I don't really have the authority or the great life to prove to anyone that this is a good thing to do.

But can't I do it because it's a good thing for me and a good thing for the people in my life, and for the other people who are also in the process of channeling it?

What is my way?

chi drive

The Chi is getting stronger. And the motivation and drive to stand is getting stronger. I feel myself being more and more willing and able to surrender to it.

So now what. I don't feel like I'm ready to write anything substantial about this. Re-reading Elizabeth Gilbert and I think maybe I'm going to need some time with this chi before I figure out how and what I'm going to write about it.

It's hard

This getting chi to flow into the rest of my day turns out to be harder than I expected. It all seemed to easy. Spend a few minutes connecting with chi everytime I feel the urge to do mindless net surfing.
But the will the mindless netsurf if strong in me. Or more specifically, the will to write entertaining, but ultimately unsubstantial blogs for Salon is pretty strong in me. The urge for validation is strong in me. And it makes it hard to stick with a practice that doesn't usually get validation from society.

I wonder. I wonder if there is a place where I could get the validation I need for this. I've said it before, but I think it's true now. I need a teacher.

A Plan

My concrete sense of Chi is growing every morning. I'm optimistic that peace and energy are flourishing in me and have a permanent home in this dawn routine.
But how to get this consciousness to flow into my day, instead of dissapating by evening? One of the tricks I've been using to create an antidote to self-hatred and depression has been the habit of countering every negative utterance with a positive cognitive action. "I hate myself" with "May I be happy, at peace, flourishing in inner well-being." I think it would be good idea to target some bad habits in the same way. For instance when I feel the urge to do some mindless internet surfing, I hold the ball for five minutes. That way I'm bringing little pockets of healthy energy into my life and cultivating a nurturing habit that will hopefully take over and tip the balance from negative habits to positive ones.

This will be especially helpful at those times of the day when I want to sit down and overeat in front of the computer.

Let's try it and see.

Dark night

Dark night of the soul last night. Or dark hour. Lay awake for a while frozen in fear with a vision of a life of poverty, not enough money. Just not enough. I couldn't seem to shake it. And then suddenly my brain shifted not to what I had instead of what I didn't have. I remembered that I have this flowering of peace inside me that I've been developing for the last two month in these morning meditation, and developing for years in my mid morning meditations. I focused on that and my mind shifted eventually from my fears to my sense of security.
This morning I'm tired. I know I'm not getting enough sleep, and I hear a voice telling me I'm depressed. So I decide to take twenty minute to stand and look at the sky. I realize that I am carving a permanent place for peace in my brain, that these morning practices, once established, are less likely to get tossed aside. I'm planting the tree of peace in my brain, and that is the most precious source of abundance that I can have. Greater than any bank account. I know this is true, but it may take some time to feel it.

negative mantra

I still have a very negative voice in my head. A voice rooted in longstanding depression and self-loathing. It tells me regularly throughout the day "I'm depressed." "I hate myself". And it asks regularly "what do you want?"

I'm experimenting this week with using these entrenched chronic thoughts as triggers to consciousness. When I hear "I'm depressed" I look up at the sky. I connect as much as possible with my natural openness and remember how vast and full of potential the word is. When I hear "I hate myself" I take a moment to feel some loving kindness towards myself, and anyone else who comes to mind. When I hear that question what do I want? I reply authentic happiness, for myself and for everyone.

Today I try to focus as much as possible on just what that means for me, authentic happiness. I'm trying to visualize a procession of dawns where the chi grows in my body, heart and mind. I'm trying to imagine a clean, tidy house that stays clean and tidy. I'm trying to imagine enough money in the bank to maintain a simple life with a few meaningful luxuries. I'm trying to imagine work that inspires other people towards happiness as well.

Above all I try to catch myself when I'm drifting off towards meaningless anger and negativity and I try and nip that in the bud.

going deeper

After the great circle the next posture in my cycle is "going deeper." I sink down lower, let the gravity loosen my hips and my spine. My hands rise and I begin to feel a magnetic energy create a pathway to my brain.

This increases the tension in my body, but like a good stretch it also releases it. I feel like I'm stretching my brain. But after it's stretched I feel a calm. Kind of the calm you feel after an orgasm. But this is more sustained. It feels like my hands are holding the calm in place with their magnetic energy. And all I have to do is surrender to this calm. The fact of this calm. Just surrender to it.

This is surprisingly difficult because we don't think of calm as a fact of life, or a sustained state of being. We think of life as sustained stress and suffering, relieved from time to time by moments of calm. But when I'm in this state I feel that it's really the suffering that is artificial. This calm is the state we are naturally programmed to feel. The stress is a result of cultural programming.

I'm not saying that's true. But that's what it feels like when I'm in that state of being, and I make a choice to step out of it and back into the culture of stress that I've been born into.

the great circle

I've been spending recent mornings trying to cultivate my vision. Trying to build my desire to be genuinely happy as an antidote to my self-hatred. Just now, however, I did something really simple. The Great Circle posture.

This posture is a little deeper and more intense than holding the balloon. I sink my lower body, I raise my arms above my head, still in a circular position. Soon I'm feeling a magnetic force between my hands and my brain, or at least my frontal lobe.
They say that if you use TMS wands over the frontal lobe you can improve mood and creativity.

I forget that if I simply stand in this position eventually my brain starts to slow down and become still. I don't have to make the conscious intention to focus on awareness, or to bring my mind back to my breathing or whatever. I simply allow this magnetic energy to build and eventually I hold my brain still with my hands.

I suspect that if I were to make a regular practice of this my mood and my creativity would improve in a permanent way. So why is it that I haven't simply done this?

Is it because I get distracted by all the other things I think will bring me happiness, all the practices and intentions. What if it is as simple as doing this everyday, whenever I feel the desire, until my brain simply shifts? All this reading, all this aspiring, all this thinking. What if it's sort of useful, but not ultimately as effective as assuming this posture?

awareness

The phantom anxieties that have been tormenting me for the last few weeks seem to be flying off somewhere. Things seem to be stable and friendly with Ben's teacher. His marks this term are excellent. All these things I've been anxiously obsessing over.

Starting to see the fruit of the heightened awareness. I catch myself when the irritation starts to bubble up and I stop myself there. Or at least try to stop myself there before letting it erupt into angry words. I'm starting to see the self hatred and anger as a deep addiction. Like smoking. I always thought my next biggest addiction was food. But the food is a way to numb the emotions. I'm addicted to the emotions. The self hatred, the loneliness, the emptiness, the boredom. These are the triggers and I need a different way to deal with them.

Last night for the first time in a while I didn't feel like overeating. I was hungry before bedtime, but I just had some cereal and was okay

Soon, I know, I'll get back to cultivating the chi. But until I have a deep desire for optimal happiness, it's unlikely I will stick with the chi. So I think I need to deal with this stuff first.

antidote

Still reading Mathieu Ricard's Happiness. This is a convincing book. A life changing book. One of the things he's made me conscious of is how I can work to defuse the deep, pervasive self hatred that keeps knocking me off track whenever I try to deeply commit to a meditation practice.

I won't go into great detail about where this self hatred comes from. There are any number of mundane, and perhaps interesting reasons. My Catholic origins, my overachieving parents, my possible learning disability. Who knows. But Ricard explains that hatred and love cannot co-exist. Not real love, the deep aspiration for happiness, safety, contentment, true abundance. So these days, during my meditation time, I'm working a little less on the chi, and working on holding this aspiration for my real happiness in my mind. Working on trying to root it firmly and deeply in the ground of my chi.

This morning I thought of the balloon as all the positive feelings I have and want to have for myself. I thought of the tan tien as the place where I store these feeling and make them a permanent, strong, driving part of my inner self.

The vision I have of this six months is setting my circadian rythmms so that waking up at dawn and sleeping not too far after sunset become my normal way of being. And I root my desire for happiness in the rituals surrounding this change of light. Something about that feels permanent and possible.

thoughts

This morning I'm starting to feel some of the chi return. I've been in the grip of a lot of anxiety. Some of it no doubt useless. But I am clearly in the grip of thought. Not in the grip of chi.

For a small moment while I was holding the balloon I remembered the importance of surrender. I remembered to stop trying to hold the balloon up, to just relax and rest in the magnetic energy that will do a far better job of holding this balloon up than I will. I forget that again and again and again.

Much of this has to do with the continuing dominance of the ego in my life. My ego is still convinced that only it can, should, will drive my life. And for the most part I still seem to be in its spell. I don't want to be there anymore. I want to be allied with nature and with consciousness, not careerism, ego building and status obsession.

I've been writing recently about The Muse. To work with a muse you have to be willing to surrender your creative ego. I'm not there yet. I'm trying, but it's still hard.

Fog

This morning there was no warm window filled with dawn. Just a grey fog, which turned out actually to be an early morning frost. It's gone now. But I did take it as a sign.

I am in a fog these days. I get up like I've planned, but it is no longer a really energizing meditation. It's all I can do to just stand in one place for an hour. Which as I write that is still probably more than most people would be willing to do.

Willingness. That word pops out at me. I have a willingness right now to get up early. But not as much of a willingness to do the other things I could be doing. Standing in a challenging posture. Even putting in the time I need to put in to clean the house.

I need a guide, so for the time being I'm working on my muse. On what I believe the muse is, and in actually cultivating a relationship with this muse. Maybe I need to research that a bit. Maybe I need to really commit to that subject for some substantial time. Because without some kind of guide, inner or outer, I feel a little lost.

Dawn

Woke up late this morning. Somehow my alarm had been turned off. But my eyes opened and I could see the golden light and lavender sky of dawn from my window. Got out of bed just in time to see the golden window. A few minutes into my meditation the sun was up and the window had turned silver.

Yesterday in the afternoon I felt overwhelmed, tired, lost faith in myself. I lay down and simply imagined myself cradled in this golden light. Later in the day I read Ricard's book and he suggested an exercise. Imagine that you are taking in somebody's suffering, sucking it into your heart and then re-transmitting it as a healing energy.

Dawn is becoming that for me. A light that transforms me in the morning and a light that I want to pass on to others.

golden window

The view from my kitchen is not a beautiful one. It stares out into an alley that is pleasant enough, but in mid November Montreal, not particularly pretty. At dawn, the only evidence of the magnificent rising sun is the golden light that hits the upper story windows of an industrial building on St. Laurent.

This is the view from the picture window on the left side of the room. Not much to see out of the door window on the right side of my room. It hit me this morning, however, what a lovely subtle metaphor this is for what is happening in my brain. I've been reading Mathieu Ricard's book, Happiness, this week. His theory, which I wrote about in an earlier post, is that happiness can be measured on an fMRI. Happier people, like long time meditators, tend to have more activity happening in the left side of their brain. Depressed people, the right side.

The last few weeks for me have felt like a huge neurological detox. My right brain is regressing, picking fights, wandering all over the place, obsessing, trying desperately to regain control. And often it is winning. But I am waking up every morning and standing in the place and watching those small golden windows in my left brain start to take their place, permanently. Someday, maybe in the summer I will go out and do this in a place where I can watch the sun rise every morning. But for now this golden window is all I need. It's there. And when I come back to meditation during the day I look at that window. If the weather is nice it is bright with the sun. That is my brain, now, more often than not. That is a good enough vision for me.

Shenpa smack-down

Still wrestling with the shenpa. I'm pretty good at the first two steps, recognizing I'm hooked and feeling the negative energy. Don't seem to be as good at the third step, moving on.

But isn't this the story of my life. I'm good with beginnings not so good with endings.

I realized something this morning while standing. My original vision when I started this standing was to stand and see how much it affected the rest of my life. More and more all I want is just a better, deeper, more satisfying standing practice. The rest of my life is just the rest of my life. This is and should pretty much just be about standing, cultivating that energy that allows me to stand for an hour in the morning, and allows me to continue with the habit of standing first thing in the morning. I do that because I believe that this energy is an endless supply of peace and happiness for me.

If the only thing that changes after six months is that I've cultivated an early morning practice that I will return to again and again. Then that is all the change I need.

Shenpa

A couple of days ago I received a great book by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun from Nova Scotia.

Now I'm working on the concept of Shenpa, the magnetic pull of bad habits and afflictive emotional patterns. This came in incredibly handy yesterday at my son's "intervention" meeting at school. I seem to have expressed myself poorly in French and said something that really offended Ben's teacher. Normally I think I would have given into old patterns of defensiveness, and believe me I'm still feeling them. But I'm also able to stand and just feel them and not let myself get badly sucked in.

It's a huge relief even to know that I'm capable of resisting these obsessive, defensive patterns.

natural intelligence

I find when I wake up in the mornings, now, I'm a little less focused on achieving energy highs, and more focused on just absorbing the peace and quiet and subtle energy of the morning as it become light.

I think true happiness is a process of aligning oneself with the natural intelligence and happiness of the universe at it is. Sometimes this process brings tremendous gifts, tremendous alterations of consciousness. Sometimes it bring only a deeper appreciation for a more subtle stillness.

What I'm becoming more aware of today is the subtle tightening and stress that grips my body when my mind drifts off to other processes. The processes that have been promised to me by the civilization I live in, education (Ben's), career (mine, my parents), all my anxieties surrounding these things. My lack of mate, and to some extent community. I'm not saying these anxieties are not legitimate. But I no longer desire to be driven by them. I would prefer to be aware of them and to make my decisions from a place that is driven by authentic peace.

That I think is what I call natural intelligence. A place of natural intelligence where my choices and decisions are directed from the place of peace and strength we have when we are committed to this alliance with nature, with light, with the sky and the sun and the planets. This is a good place to come from. This is the only place I want to come from.

Growing desire

Woke up an hour earlier than usual, so I ended up standing for almost two hours. I'm starting to feel the energy really grow again. And with that I'm starting to feel a deeper desire for the energy.

My desire for this renewal of chi has been mostly intellectual up until now. But today I felt a real craving in my heart for it. For the wonderful feeling I have known. A kind of nostalgia, a kind of desire for what you've always had. It's such a great feeling because it feels like such a real, solid desire than can always stay with you, not the ephemeral feeling of a fleeting desire. Or the pain of a bad habit.

This is true healthy desire, and it gives me faith that I'm on the right track.

my life has changed

It hit me this morning that early morning rising will always be a habit for me now. Even when it's not. This is really what my mind needs and even if I fall off the path, I know I'm going to wind up here again. This early morning time, watching the sun rise, feeling the energy grow in my body and in my brain. Cultivating a center of my identity in my gut. All that is my true home. And because I know that I will always be secure.

taking a stand

I've unblocked my hangover, though still feeling a little lethargic. Reading Jon Kabat-Zinn and he has a little chapter on "taking your seat" and the importance of having a sense of purpose when you meditate.

I realized that when I stand I am in fact taking a stand. I am prioritizing consciousness over all other things, civilization, culture, the market economy, etc. I am aligning myself with nature, not political parties, or my nation, or whatever most people ally themselves with to gain power in their life. I am taking a stand and aligning myself with the planet. With energy and with a source of power that is not visible to most people.

And I am taking a stand to receive this power through my heart, and make others aware of it.

blocked

So, a break from my commitment.

Cousin's elopement celebration last night. I drank, I ate a midnight souvlaki, I didn't bother to set the alarm. I feel pretty crappy. At least I don't have to spend the day preparing for the exterminator.

I guess I still have some bad habits.

Yesterday evening before I set out I was feeling a massive level of lethargy. I didn't want to go. The voice in my head kept telling me how depressed I was. And then I decided to change things. I'm not depressed I said. I'm blocked. I did some standing meditation and felt immediately better.

I'm going to try this for a while. Instead of identifying with the bad feeling that seems to be permanent. I'm going to see it as a mere blockage that in time I can dislodge.

Right now for instance I feel terrible. But I'm going to just stand for 20 minutes and see where that takes me.

the growth forest

It's been about a month since I started this commitment to early morning zz and regular writing about it.

I expected change. I expected a steady a progress of building of chi. But, of course, that's not exactly what happened.

I've made some progress, but I've also experience what I supposed would call setbacks, but are merely the psychic knots of energy that always arise to undermine my practice if I choose to allow them to drive me.

Simply making the tension go away is not really the strategy that feels right. Just being with it, just knowing the familiar pattersn and getting up and standing anyways, even when I can barely focus on the changing light, let alone my tan tien.

Being with them, familiarizing myself with them is the first step, I hope, to loosening their hold. Yesterday for instance I sat with all the anxiety I've been feeling about this decision to send my son to a more challenging school against the advice of a young neuropsychologist. I still don't know if it's the right decision. He had a rough first year, but he seems to be doing better, making friends and enjoying the school. But we need to ask for services and its possible the school board will find out about the recommendation I ignored.

So there's the whole mix of anxiety, and guilt and possible shame, that is really as much about my own bad school experiences as my son's. I don't know what to do anymore except sit with it. Acknowledge that there is this whole nest of anxieties and I don't know where they started, where or if they will ever end. But they're there and they will probably return. And the best I think I can hope for in my project to "change" is to be more aware of them. To be able to continue working on my well being and be able to say, yes those are my school neurosis returning. Oh well. I'm going to stand and hope for the best, and do what I can.

It's not this steady progression of energy and power. It's more like being confronted by the fact that before you can renovate, first you need to toss all the junk in the basement.

metal brain

Things are progressing. I'm feeling more focused. I'm feeling more grounded. But I know that I'm still more anxiety driven than I want to be.

When I practiced today I began to imagine that the metal energy that I was cultivating was forming this deep permanent structure in my body and in my brain. Almost as though my body was becoming a very high quality, enduring machine that consciousness was going to flow freely through for the rest of my life.

I finished my practice by visualizing a wrecking ball destroying all the old structures used by the anxiety and sadness to dominate my life. My body and brain is now this funky new machine. It's going to last a long, long time.

There's still some clean up to do to move on from the old structures. But I feel quite firmly entrenched in my consciousness practice. And as a result I believe that consciousness is now firmly entrenched in my being.

more metal

Still having some focus problems. But the metal training is taking root.

One of the things I realized is that metal is a symbol of endurance, permanence and commitment (although, sadly, if we really wanted a symbol of endurance we might want to consider plastic training. From what I've read McDonald's happy toys have as great a chance of being around hundreds of years from now as wedding rings. But I digress because my mind is digressive.)

Anyways. Maybe if I work on my metal training I'll be a little less at the mercy of my anxiety drives.

What I'm doing right now is imagining my tan tien as a magnet that sucks in all the little distracted thoughts that keep buzzing around in my brain. Another thing I imagine is having a couple of big axes that cut through the scattered thoughts. Or little blades that quickly slice them into mulch.

Mostly I just try to imagine my inner strength as something extremely permanent. A permanent grounded force that will be there no matter what.

heavy metal

Of course it's not my brain I want back. It's my core. My consciousness.

I'm distracted, at the mercy of an anxious drive in my brain that drifts off to reparative fantasies to sooth whatever it is that's bothering me. But whatever it is seems lost in the chaotic underbrush of my mind.

So today I'm trying to cultivate some metal power. There are specific exercises in chi kung where you cultivate a feeling with the sharpness and weight of metal instruments. In martial arts you can use this power to use a sword, or to use your limbs like swords.

But you can also use it to develop mental clarity, to develop the ability to get right to the point.

These energies are supposed to develop protective strength. Right now I'm feeling tossed around by inner forces, bad habits, unchecked drives. I don't really want to live this way. So I'm setting out today with my mental machete.

I'm also trying to gather my power by focusing on my tan tien as though it were a magnet drawing more and more energy into it all the time. So that it can't suck my scattered thoughts into my gut and fuel my instincts.

Let's see how that works.

caged in chaos

So I got through the day. Did more housework that I've ever done in my life. Just kept going broken only with small meditations. From 9 in the morning to 4 a.m. Threw out more stuff than I ever have in my life.

But now I'm exhausted, stressed out over at situation at Ben's school. A recurring situation that's resolved itself before, but I'm tired and it's eating at me.


How do I get my brain back?

dawn

The clocks fall back today so when I woke up, quite hungover from Halloween celebrations, it was light during my practice.

So for the next while I do get to be standing at dawn.

Eventually I may train Ben to expect me to be in the park at dawn, but not while the weather is getting colder.

Practice was a challenge, but it certainly helped me with my hangover. And I need the help. My landlady suspects she has bed bugs so today I have to clean my house from top to bottom, bag everything, throw out every ounce of clutter and deep clean.

Knowing my housework challenges this is going to be an incredibly challenging day.

At the same time I almost wonder if it isn't something sent by the dawn.

I'm going to work on being able to do these tasks with an attitude of acceptance all day. Look at it like an intensive retreat. It's going to be difficult, but I wonder if I won't feel energized tomorrow being in a house I've managed to clean from top to bottom.

As I put everything back in the cupboard next week maybe I can just dump anything I really don't love. Get my possessions down to the bare minimum? Do a massive throwing out of stuff. And with it a massive clearing out of my psyche.

First, however, the accepting attitude.

anxiety driven

Okay now I'm officially anxiety rather than consciousness driven. Can't seem to stand in the morning even for 20 minutes.

Fantasy conversations with the psychologist at Ben's school. Even though I know he's going to be allright. Even though I know he's not going to be kicked out of school. Even though all he needs is for them to get him a computer.

I can't even get through writing this post without drifting off into a conversation about that.

So what do I do?

Other responsibilities aren't being met as well and they weigh on my mind. Although there's no reason I can't meditate and meet my responsibilities as well. I'm meditating because I WANT to have the energy and motivation to meet my responsibilities. I'm meditating out of responsibility.

SUDDENLY I SEE THE SUN RISE. I GRAB MY SON AND WE HEAD OUT TO WATCH IT IN THE PARK

Wandering off the way

I'm in danger.

This is where I wandered off the path last time. Being driven by my work obsessions.

And then I forget about how good I feel when I stand. And then I start filling my anxious belly with things to numb it. And then I'm eating badly, and sleepng late. And before you know it I'm managing to remember only for 10 to 20 minutes to stand. Just enough to keep me from falling apart.

But I want more than not falling apart. And maybe that means letting certain other things fall apart.

I don't want to lose my way again. I want to plant myself right here and grow here.

But I don't know how to make that permanent.

Help.

How do I make this vision of what I really want, a consciousness driven life. How do I make this a permanent part of my life?

Distracted

A job opportunity has come up. Something I think I would be good at, but I'm not sure would be good for me. Or that doesn't quite fit in to the plan I had for myself.

It was a situation similar to this that seriously de-railed me last time I got serious about Chi Kung. I found myself obsessing about that job, which would bring me more money and more stuff. I didn't apply for it in the end. Possibly the right decision, but I never quite got back on track again.

I'm trying to stay centered as I consider this one. One I'm probably better suited for, but still, one that would derail other writing plans I have. And one that would suck me full in to the written dialogue of our culture, its obsession, which are not always healthy.

Just thinking about it de-rails me, I know.

So it sounds like I shouldn't apply or it. Or that at the very least I shouldn't let it distract me from the things I really need to do today.

I want to stay committed to my vision.

Maybe I need to ask that Jon Kabat Zinn question a few times of the universe today. What is my job?

Why I stand

I stand to develop a deeper reason for standing that merely having a repertoire of cool feelings.

I stand to have a profound connection to universal energy. To the energy we want to conserve in all our challenges right now as a species.

I stand so that I will have a deep well of resources, which will make it easier for me to risk being loving. And that will give me something to give to others.

I stand so that I will be driven by the primal joys of life, not the fears. I stand so that I will recognize real anxiety when I feel it and sift out all the deluded anxieties conditioned into me by a dysfunctional upbringing and society.

I stand because i want to change my body and my brain.

I stand to change my world and hopefully the world.

But I also stand to honour stability and conservation and slow careful change.

I stand so that I will better know what needs to be changed, and what needs to be conserved.

I stand to that I can participate in the world discussion of those things.

I stand to have a more profound, more rooted, more stable sense of being in the world. I stand to help to experience that and then to help others find it.

What drives us

This morning I felt that real warmth that happens when the Tan Tien is starting to fill with relaxed energy. I'm never sure if what I'm sensing is a change in the Tan Tien, or if the Tan Tien is already full of energy and all that's happened is an opening of some kind of neurocircuitry that allows me to sense the energy that is always flowing through it. At any rate I know that something has changed.

And what I want is to make this change permanent. This may be the root of the problem. Usually when I feel this warmth I get all excited. This is it. Everything's going to be great by now. I've felt my Tan Tien. And then I don't know what happens. Maybe life doesn't change significantly enough. Or the mere egoistic thoughts of how much smarter and stronger and more creative I am going to be is a sort of regression in itself. And then before you know it I've regressed back to my unconscious way of living. Basically I back to being in my brain.

Yesterday as I was walking around the neighborhood trying to locate a book that I left behind somewhere when I was Sherpaing Ben around, instead of panicking, I focused on my tan tien. I started to feel a very solid and profound sense of being. And I understood something. That cultivating this energy, or an awareness of this energy, is cultivating a strong and solid sense of being. You sense the ground. You sense the reality and present moment more vibrantly from that point, that you do from the brain. You sense the ground.

It's not that you stop using the brain, but you don't live inside your head. The head, basically, is not a very good place to locate your sense of balance. Or i guess your center of gravity. And gravity is where it's at.

Does this mean I would use my head brain less. I don't know. I would like to think that I use it for less useless things. That I use it for more concrete living and connection with the world around me.

So this morning I come up with a theory. That the Tan Tien drives us, no matter what our relationship with it. If what is in the Tan Tien is a tense, unconscious feeling of powerlesness, then we are driven in life by a tense, unconscious feeling of powerlessness. If what is in the Tan Tien is a relaxed profound sense of being and connection to the universe, then that is what we are driven by.

I would like to get the point where this warmth in my tan tien is not an unusual exciting event. I would like it to become daily and mundane and a drive towards authentically powerful living that I barely think about.

Storing stillness

Power, it is said in the zhan zhuang literature, is born in stillness. One of the greatest pleasure of zhan zhuang for me has been the occasional feeling of stillness in my brain. There are these wonderful moments when my thoughts stop and I connect entirely with this quiet still present moment.

But I'm brain driven. Head brain driven. In zz the source and storage place of energy is the tan tien. In the gut. It's a challenging process for me to make the decision to be more gut driven. For a while this weekend I was trying to keep my focus on my gut and my brain felt drained and disoriented. Maybe that's why I decided to punish my gut by overeating at my parents.

Woke up this morning feeling a food hangover. Energy just wasn't moving. Ben woke up with a nightmare that I had sent him to tap dance school (We watched the finale of So You Think You Can Dance Canada last night.)

Had green smoothie and morning practice went better.

One thing I became conscious of yesterday is how much tension I have stored in my gut. All kinds of unhealthy, anxious drives down there I'm sure. Drives to grieve, grumble. Memories of sadness and feelings of powerless. One of the goals of focusing on the Tan Tien is to open up some fresh space to create joy and relaxation.

And stillness. I'm trying today to feel, really feel in a solid concrete way, the stillness at that point. So that I can feel stillness throughout my entire body and, ultimately, psyche. Not just in my brain.

From this stillness, the very grounded mountain peak of stillness, I plan to reconstruct some new, healthier, kinder and more loving drives.

Dawn

It is a strange dawn today. The sky is blue but it is extremely windy. A strong, quite warm wind considering the time of year.

Ben woke up early too. His coughing and loud page turning and then insistence on wanting to talk about the things he was reading was pretty distracting. But we did spend a bit of time talking about dawn, the illusion that the sun rises, the immensity of the universe. And God, if God exists, how big that love would be.

If God exists. Do I have doubts? No, not since my concept of God has shifted to this power.

This power I feel now in my lower belly. It's hard to make the shift. Hard because I keep wanting to make it "permanent." Instead of having a goal of focusing on it in the present moment. But I feel the loss of energy in my brain. It feels weird not being as active up there.

But it's where I'm thinking from for now.

Tan Tien

The Tan Tien, more formally known as the lower Tan Tien, is this place in the belly which is the grounding point of Zhan Zhuang.

It took me years of practice before I felt it. I guess I must be really blocked there or something. Even now as I come back to it, I have at tendency to forget how important it is. It is THE most important focal point of practice.

What happens now when I stand is that I get feeling, almost like a carbonated vitality starting to flow through it. If I keep my focus on it, eventually a very strong warmth begins to grow. The best way to think about it, I've found, is as the major ball bearing in the body. Like a magnetic ball bearing.

But I have a tendency to feel it and then want to move on to other parts of the body. What I"m practicing today is feeling it and then explanding my feeling, but always keeping the Tan Tien in mind. This is a pretty exciting feeling. It hits me right at the point I felt of first sexual awakening, and it's no surprise that the Tan Tien is supposed to be the place where we store out sexual energy.

As westerners, of course, we tend to focus on our genital area, but the tan tien is actually more effective at sustaining the kind of ecstasy we associate with sexual release.

Of course, quasi-puritan that I am programmed to be, I end up focusing on everywhere but. Anything that feels that good can't be good for me, right?

Well, let's see....

Heart brain

Two things. Two things happening today. This morning a very strong feeling of groundedness. I felt as solid as a mountain in my lower body. Haven't felt that in a while. It's an extremely comforting feeling, the sense that strength is coming from something other than the outer circumstances of your life, or I guess I mean, the cultural or economic circumstances. It is coming from something external though. I'm pretty sure, even if it feels like my brain is creating it. It's coming from the "cosmos." I guess. As you can see I'm not quite comfortable with that term. I'm not a New Agey person and I'm self conscious about using that terminology. And yet even if I'm not comfortable saying it, I do believe in it. How can I not? There is a cosmos. There is space out there and it's pretty powerful. Okay scratch that. Very powerful. Powerful beyond our imagination. I feel myself in the magnetic force of that power. It grows every day and it will become more intense.

The second thing. I read in The Way of Power yesterday that the energy of the cosmos enters through the heart. So I made a conscious effort to feel it there. And it felt good. Really good. Like I had stable, constant access to a powerful source of love, and that I just had to develop the practice everyday and that gradually the self hatred that I know permeates my soul, will have a weaker and weaker grip on me.

It doesn't want to let go. I can hear it, I can feel it. It is still stronger than my practice or any lovely feeling of connection to the universe that I have developed today. Or at least it feels like it is stronger.

It's not. Of course my little self hatred synapses, or paths in my brain that I've cultivated, are puny tiny barely alive little things compared to the energy in the universe and that love. But because they run my brain they feel bigger for the time being. I wonder how often I have to choose the consciousness of the universe over the chatter of my self-contempt before it loses power permanently. I wonder if that's possible. I hope so.

consciousness driven

I want to be driven by consciousness, not anxiety.

Reading Eckhart Tolle last night, I finally got it. Living this way is a decision to be consciousness driven. Not ego drive. Not anxiety driven. Consciousness driven.

I suppose in a certain sense it is chi driven. But what's interesting to me this morning is that to be consciousness driven is not to be word driven. Or language driven.

I had a moment in this morning's practice where the words disappeared. I was trying to think in words as I am constantly doing, and they wouldn't come out as words anymore, just sort of silent grunty things. Mumbles I guess. Because of this I was able to have a few moments of pure silence.

Moments like these are exciting to a writer because I am so driven by ideas and the words that I put to these ideas. Deep, complete silence is always a brand new place to me. Certainly not my home.

But back when we did live without words, as pre-language man, or as babies, we learned thing quite fast and amazingly. I wonder what happens to my brain when I am able to return it to this pre language state. Does it re-find its baby smartness. Will I be able to put learning into super drive again?

This is not consciousness driven curiosity. It's no doubt ego driven as I imagine all the remarkable things I could be capable of if this were true.

Too bad I'm not living like that anymore.

Surrender

The most difficult thing about standing is not standing, but surrendering to the energy that would enable me to release all the effort that goes into standing.

So the most difficult thing is not standing but not-standing.

This is difficult on several levels. First psychological, or maybe more appropriately, cultural. Surrendering to something bigger than ourselves is kind of against our North American programming. Or so we think. Of course we surrender to things more powerful than ourselves all the time. When we allow the government to manage civic affairs. When we allow the television to hypnotize us. When we participate in our market and consumption based economy, we are surrendering to something we have accepted is bigger than ourselves.

Why so hard to surrender to a pleasant energy? I know this is an energy that increases my well-being, and increases my quality of life. I've experienced its benefits over and over. Still, it's so hard to surrender.

Why does pleasure and health make me so anxious? Or rather, why am I anxious about increased pleasure and health? Why would I be anxious about well-being?

A little story came to me this morning while I was doing the dishes. One of the last conversations I had with my grandfather before he died. It was on the phone. He sounded happy and I told how happy he sounded. "That's what everyone keeps telling me" he said. "But I'm not happy. It's these morphine pills. I've been eating them like beans. They make me sound happy. But I'm not. I'm dying."

Because our only experience with altered consciousness is usually drugs, we worry when we experience it drug free. Like somehow we'll lose touch with our anxiety and be unable to see or express reality.

I don't think I'm really in danger of this happening. Last night I was watching T.V. and I started to feel anxious about the things in my life I should feel anxious about: My lack of stable employment, my debt, etc. I started thinking, what should I do to get rid of this anxiety. And then I realized, no I don't have to do that. I'm strong enough to face this anxiety. I'm strong enough to feel it and not feel the urge to run away.

This is the advantage of authentic well being. Not an escape from anxiety, but the calm strength to face it squarely.

I believe that if I surrender to this growing energy, that is what I will have.

Hippocampus

Read yesterday that there is a new study which shows that meditators develop stronger bigger hippocampus. This is the part of the temporal lobe responsible for long term memory and attention. What this could mean is that meditation strengthens your long term memory.
It's also an exercise in facing long term memory. One thing I realized this morning is that depression, desperation and powerlessness is my default setting. When I meditate in the morning, I become more conscious of this because I'm forming a different setting. The quiet energy of early morning meditation is really the opposite of anxiety and depression. So it would be great if what I'm accomplishing is changing my memory to return me to quiet and stability and a sense of well being.
I felt a very strong energy rising in me again this morning. And I felt that weird sensation of lack of symmetry. Even though I could see that my arms were symetrical it felt that my body was twisted into a different position. I love this feeling. It tells me that my brain is really changing somehow. I think that it means more energy is flowing into my left brain, perhaps to heal all the extra energy in the right brain from my depression?
Don't know. But I know it's a good sign of progress.

temporal lobe

Finished The Midnight Disease, a book about writing and the brain. Alice Flaherty has an interesting theory. Creative drive is closely related to religious drive and originates in the temporal lobe. Or at least the temporal lobe is more important to it than what we normally think. When TMS stimulates the temporal lobe we feel a presence. Artists along with religious devotees, tend to be the people who feel, or strive to feel this presence in life without the aid of magnetic stimulation tools.
Meditators also build activity in the temporal lobe. Whether or not the sensed presence is an actual presence may be somewhat immaterial. The skill of sensing a presence, sensing an invisible self other than your own may be an important skill in developing creativity, integrating the brain, and having more control over our sense of well being. Maybe this makes us less prone to all the stuff people are trying to sell as well being.
It makes sense in terms of our cultural metaphor of "inner strength". Perhaps this inner strength is temporal lobe strength. Perhaps what I am doing with I do standing meditation is gently and slowly building all the good things that come from the temporal lobe, primal emotion like joy, primal drives. Maybe there is a way that we can bring all the secondary emotions, processes, etc. back under control of the temporal lobe, but in a healthy integrative way. Not with the usual things we associate with the temporal lobe, like anger and lust and other primary drives.
Something to think about.

mid afternoon mania

Ah...now I know why I don't actually devote four hours a day to meditation. It's not necessarily that I don't want to. But when I start cultivating that good feeling a little too fast, I find my brain getting a little manic. Visions of filling the world with inspiration and wellness. Writing the Eat, Pray, Love of Zhan Zhuang. All my career and financial anxiety disappearing and narcissistic dreams come true. Next thing you know I'm talking to Oprah while I do the dishes.

Better to take it slow. Keep the afternoon meditations down to twenty minutes. Just enough to boost the good feeling of the morning med....Med, meditation, interesting slip.

Belly ball of well being

this morning I watched Mathieu Ricard give a speech a google on how to change your brain by changing your mind.
I've seen him give a shorter version of this speech as a Ted Talk. In fact that Ted speech which I watched a few weeks ago is what has motivated me to come back to this practice. I do believe that well-being is something that we can and should cultivate. And once we've cultivated it we must help others cultivate it.
So after I watched the speech I took a half hour to cultivate the pleasant energy that is begining to tickle my tan tien again. The tan tien is of course that part of your gut that fills with chi as you practice any of the chi based martial arts. For now though I'm going to all it my belly ball. I need to give it something concrete so that I come back to it everyday and throughout the day.
Ricard's speech brought to my attention again, how much love really is a skill that we need to cultivate. Not just a feeling that we should allow to come and go as it pleases. I found myself starting to take the words of the traditional lovingkindness meditation and turning it towards my belly ball. Sort of like "may my belly ball fill with a sense of well being", may I have this sense of well being available to me at all times.
And as I started to imagine my life with a feeling, a conceret physical feeling of joy and well being, I started to think of all those people struggling through life without that (myself included). Of course I want that for everyone. If we could have free happiness for ourselves, how could we not want that for everyone. How could we want to hoard it?

silence between thoughts

I have done this before. And when I did I gradually got to the point where the silence imprinted itself on my brain well enough that it became a presence throughout the day that would interrupt my thoughts.

Today as I stand here, the silence greets me like an old lover. Something I've known for a long time. Something unconditional that I have turned my back on. I don't know why. Why would I want to live without this silence, so gentle, so nurturing, so strong.

It's strength will become my strength. And my strength, I hope, will be a source of strength for others.

The fragrance of scattered maple leaves

Hit by the first rays of Indian summer.

Just that. One of the most perfect smells in the world.

return to standing

Fifty minutes of standing. One of the things that's difficult is that I'm conscious of how much tension and stress I've allowed to build up in my body. I feel the first pings of chi in Tan tien, a kind of cool carbonated feeling for now. I hit stretches where my body feels suspended by magnetic energy and I know that this energy will grow and that my body will eventually surrender to it. I then I won't think of it as "the energy." I'll be the energy. I'll just be floating there in the energy.
But I'm not there yet because I got caught up in other things for a day, a month, a year.
I'm back now. This time I will religious record all the good.
But there is sacrifice in doing that. I can feel the writing going on in my brain. I can taste the anxiety of striving in my body. I really can literally taste it, a metalic buzzing feeling, kind of nauseating fear that wants the good feeling so desperately.
I need to be patient and stand and record and stand and record and just do that and see what happens.
But I feel more confident and strong than I have in a while. That's because I'm connected to the strength of the universe, I guess.

Writing to improve well being

Read something interesting this morning. Alice Brand did a psychological study in which there is evidence that writing accentuated positive emotions and blunted negative ones.

So if I'm writing every morning and recording my progress, my good feelings while I do this practice, am I solidifying them? And will this help others?

I feel in some ways that I'm collecting these feelings, kind of like an elixir.

What will that do to my brain?

Is standing a technology?

I read something yesterday that hit me hard. Writing is after all just another technology.

uh oh...my son is up. Will have to stop writing for a bit.

Socrates was worried about the effects on memory that writing would have. Plato disregarded those fears by writing down his teachers conversations. Writing was to the Greeks in some way, what video games are to our era.

And in the same way that video changes the brain, so does writing. It can slow down our thought. It can help us remember. But it can also lie in a way that oral culture couldn't, or couldn't accomplish as successfully.

So, just for the sake playing with this idea. Is standing a technology? I mean I am cultivating energy and electricity, the same way any conductor does. Maybe it's an ancient technology that we've lost. It is a technology that brings power to our body and to our brain. It is a technology of consciousness.

We look to technology to bring us wellbeing. This is another way of bringing us that wellbeing. The question is also, perhaps, is it a better technology for bringing us what we really want? If what we really want is peace, well being, freedom, creativity, health, then this may very well be a more successful technology, than anything we've ever invented.

the habit of solitude

Most of my practice today I spent trying to quell my obsession with change. I want to change. I am doing this to change, all I can think of is change. I am so focused on change and what I hope from that change that I lose touch with the moment. With the quiet, with the quality of quiet.

So I put down my arms and just tried instead to cultivate the habit of being in this moment. It occured to me near the end of my hour, as the light started to rise, that all the great writers that I know cultivate the habit of finding this hour at the edge of the day. Either morning, or late night. But you need this hour, to write, to contemplate to be. But it is your hour with the universe. It is your hour with timelessness.

I tried today to kill the writer in me, but she keeps coming back wondering how this timelessness can sink into your writing, so that you make some classic and useful for a long time. Something that could be read at any time.

primary

I read something yesterday about Freud's theory of primary and secondary process in creativity. Primary is the raw images, material. Secondary is the abstract thinking, editing. I think that what meditation is doing for me is training my primary process, not just in creativity, but in life. We all get so caught up in secondary living, thinking.

Early in the morning like this, I am far more aware of how my mind drifts off to plans and dreams and conversations. Of course this happens whenever i'm meditating. But when I meditate at other times of the day, I'm going against the grain. I should kind of be planning and talking, so it's harder to have any real authority over my mind.

In the stillness of the morning, quiet is right. I have the authority of dawn working for me.

early morning stillness

Everytime I come back to this I remember that I've done it before. I remember because I remember the stillness. And I remember what it feels like the rest of the day to have that stillness to go back to.
It's hard for me to maintain this stillness right now. My mind drifts off constantly to my financial anxieties, my future plans, my desires, whatever i happen to be writing on. I'm afraid and in the stillness there isn't much of an escape. But I hope that means that when it's time for me to sit down and make plans I will sit down and make a plan.
But at the very least the stillness I am with in the morning changes my day. Makes me a little more focused, makes me a little more aware of when my thoughts or actions are drifting off beyond the control of that part of my mind that would be better off in control.
That part of my mind, I guess is my primary process. I was reading about this yesterday. My primary process is the Freudian process of concrete thinking. Abstract is secondary. I know that I spend most of my time in abstract. I want to find a balance between the two.

the question

So here's the question I want to answer by the end of six months.

Is E.T. right? Will making consciousness the primary purpose of your life bring more power to the secondary purpose of your life?

Let's see.

I'm going to change

I've decided to take Ringo up on this challenge. With one small amendment. I'm not going outside everyday at dawn. But I will be getting up every morning at least an hour before dawn (right now 6:15) to do some standing meditation.

And I will write a little bit everyday about the changes, positive, and perhaps negative.

But first I need a reasonably good description of where I think I am in my life:

I'm scared. I've been downsized in my work as a freelancer/book critic to a commitment that is below what I need to make to pay my rent and bills. So unless I find work outside of that I'm going into worse debt than I already am.

But I am also scared that this anxiety will force me into work that I'm not really suited for. For the first time in my life I have the luxury of time. I have a couple of book ideas. If I rush into training for a new skill, let's say teaching. Am I giving up this chance to start the kettle boiling on these projects.

I'm lost. So the plan for the moment is to focus on my inner purpose, as E.T. calls it. Awareness. Awakening. Letting consciousness flow through me so that I can make the best decisions towards my secondary purpose as writer and, perhaps, teacher.

For now my goal is simple. Get up early every day for six months. Stand, and see where this takes me.

Simple, but of course difficult.

Right now, just the beginning of an adventure.

This is My Purpose

I agree with Eckhart Tolle that allowing consciousness to flow into us is our inner purpose.

So why is it so hard to maintain the practice that allows this?

Why is it so hard for me to get up early in the morning? Why is it so hard for me to stick to my hour? Why so impossible to do a bit in the afternoon when I need that energy boost? Why can't a I do a little before I go to bed?

Why would I rather do all the distracting things I end up doing? If I know, If I believe that this is my liberation?

What do I need to do to commit to my inner purpose?

Well it's easy to commit. But what do I need to do to maintain this commitment? How do I marry my Zhan Zhuang? Because I do believe this is the primary purpose of my life.

I'm going to brainstorm 10 ways.

1. I think the first thing is to do as much of it as I want and can. The more I do it. The more I want to do it.

2. Do it at dawn. Be prepared to hear a voice saying it's too hard, saying I don't feel like it. Be prepared to override that voice at all costs. This is the purpose of my life. My life's mission. No more sleeping in. Believe Ringo. Every day at dawn for six months and "you will change."

3. Make this commitment to the universe. Not to me, but to all sentient beings. Ask the question, repeatedly: Would I be walking away from this commitment if I made it to someone else? Know that I am doing this for the world.

4. Do it like my life depends on it. Because it does.

5. Let Ben know that I'm going to be meditating in the morning from now, and that he has to accept that.

6. When I hear that voice that tells me I can do it later, answer "should I do it later?"

7. Do it as though an audience were waiting for me.

8. Cheer myself as though I were an audience

9. When I'm tempted to go back to sleep, watch the news, avoid my meditation time, advise myself as though I were advising someone else.

10. Know my mission: Who I want to be, What I want to do, What I want to have.

the chocolat cake that has changed my life

Years and years dedicated to standing in one place. So little thought going into my nutrition. I've never thought I needed a lot of thought. I'm healthy. I don't eat TOO bad I say to myself. But the truth is I rarely eat THAT well.

This has changed recently. A little over a month ago, mid July I guess, I came across a recipe for raw chocolate cake. So simple. Just some dates, some walnuts, some cocoa and salt, mixed up in a food processor. I loved it. But more importantly my son loved it.

I started googling raw foodist, and came across the Green Smoothie Challenge. This is essentially developing the practice of blending greens and fruit together every day into about a litre of liquid and drinking that daily. I did it. It felt good. Now I'm experimenting with eating as much raw food as I can reasonably tolerate.

I feel good. Better. Way better than I have in a long time.

In one raw foodist blog, the blogger sheepishly commented that eating raw food creating this pervasive psychological feeling of being connected to nature. It's true. I was walking in the park the other day and suddenly all the greens felt greener and I didn't have to struggle so much to be "mindful" of nature. I felt like I was part of nature.

So standing like a tree has now morphed into eating trees, or their smaller cousins. I'm very curious to see how this impacts my practice.

Which by the way has diminished considerably in the last month, as it always does when I go on vacation.

But glad to be back.

Ambition

When I stand religiously, I realize that this dissolution of self is just as much a physical process as an insight. Although the two work hand in hand. This morning I did a very light practice, but I realized that the process is allowing myself to give in to the energy. Let go of all the tension that comes from the illusion that I have to depend on my body to hold me up. The more I let go of the illusion of the body, the more I sink into the energy, the more powerful I am because I'm not me anymore. I'm this energy. And then I realize how silly ambition is. My job is to connect with this energy. It is the energy that is going to decide and guide my destiny. Maybe I'll be a great spiritual teacher. Maybe I'll just be a energy holder. Doesn't matter because we're all part of the same energy. I am that great spiritual teacher. That great spiritual teacher is just someone who connects everyday to the energy like I do. It's silly to wish that I be the most important part of the whole.

letting my body dissolve

I'm reading the Dalai Lama's book on Enlightenment. And coming aware of the importance of meditating on this illusion of separateness from the world. Dependence arising he calls it.

Here's what's happening in my Zhan Zhuan practice. I wait now until I connect with a voice that is mine, and not quite mine. A voice that comes from the center of my brain. It is authoritive, it tells me what to do. It tells me that I have to wait patiently and allow my body to disove into the energy that surrounds me. That the pain in my body is mostly my anxiety that the universe isn't supporting me. But once I realize that this is an illusion that thre is this magnetic energy surrounding me and supporting me, I can relax and the energy starts to flow in me.

At this point I have a concrete feeling of my connection with this universal energy. I realize, or I feel that it is true, that my body itself is just something I, as this energy, am inhabiting. I am the energy that surrounds me. I always have been and I always will be.

This could be just a "trick" of my parietal lobe shutting down because I'm in stillness. But intellectually there is some truth to the interconnectedness of things. And it is a wonderfully liberating feeling to feel part of the world, or an energy greater than your one little body.

My goal these days is to meditate four times a day. At dawn, in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening. I want to re connect with this feeling four times a day. And I can. I know I can, it's not just a "lucky" feeling anymore. I can connect with this voice now regularly, it's just a matter of waiting until that part of my brain opens up. I can teach myself now.

commitment

Feeling the struggle with commitment. Back to my seeing the ball exercise. And the insight I have today is to remember that this energy is committed to me. My job is not to commit to it, but to open up to its commitment to me. Such a hard thing to do. Much harder it seems sometimes than an act of will. To just be and allow the will of this energy to direct me.

I have a lot of work and a lot of responsibility coming up in the next weeks. A cover for Quill and Quire, sending Ben to Israel as he finishes school. My So You Think You Can Dance Updates. I'm worried that I'm going to let this practice go, right when I really need to be stepping it up so that I can make better decisions.

Writing helps me with opening up to commitment. The words form their own path for me.

The Ball

I'm feeling this week as though I'm in danger of drifting out of my practice.

Today I made it through half an hour. My mind is distracteded, and stressed. Argument with my son. Feeling mildly deranged.

The last couple of days I've been concentrating on the ball I hold to my chest. This focus started last week after my son had a session with his occupational therapist. They went to the park so Ben could show her the climbing course he's been mastering, a circuit of ropes, spiderwebs, bridges and other climbing challenges. She advised him that he should be concentrating on his hands and feet. Really looking at them, really looking at where they are and what they are doing in all of his activities.

I've been following this advice myself. Really looking at my hands in my practice when I'm holding the ball. I can feel this ball of magnetic energy, but right now I'm really focussing on trying to see it. Sometimes I can see what looks like waves. Mostly I see into the ball metaphorically.

This ball is like a ball of pure nurturing energy. It attaches to my heart and sends energy through that into the other areas of my body and into my brain. I can feel it, as though I'm hugging the universe.

Today this ball felt as real and as permanent as a rock. I began to see myself as a seeriels of polished boulders, sitting easily one upon the other. I felt that in time this energy would make a permanent change in my brain. Taking away this drifting addiction I seem to have to stress. Removing, making inactive all those circuits in my brain that lead me to unecessary, addictive stress. I could feel, really feel in my body the possibility that one day I could wake up and this commitment would not be such an act of will. But simply the way my brain now works.

Wouldn't that be good?

Getting my Practice back

This is hard. Harder than I thought it would be. So I'm going to start to re-build exactly the way I built this in the first place, five minutes at a time. It's actually part of the Zhan Zhuan discipline to start with baby steps. It's strongly discouraged to strike postures that your body might not be ready for, physically or neurologically. I second that. You can have some pretty intense experiences with this practice that you aren't physically or psychically. Take a challenging stance, like holding the balloon, and do that for five minutes the first week, ten minutes the next, building up to twenty.
Because I've built myself up to an hour before, and had all kinds of trippy peak experience, of course I want to start there. But I'm not. I'm going to pick a time, let's say 8:45, after I've dropped Ben off at the bus stop and do my five minutes this week. I'm going to add five minutes a week. In three months I'll be back to an hour.