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.
