Sunday, December 29, 2013

Self control

I read something yesterday that hit me like a bolt of lightening. From The Power of Now. The single most important,vital thing we need to do to achieve enlightenment is to stop identifying Self with Mind. The mind is a tool. The self is awareness. What we talk about when we talk about self control is usually mental control. We struggle and we struggle to control the "self."  But the problem is that the thing we're trying to control isn't actually the self. It's the mind. The self is awareness.  If we give more power to awareness, awareness of the body, of the present moment, of the mechanics and habits of the mind--our most powerful tool-- the "control" falls into place. Because we've simply restored control to the self.  As long as the mind is in control, which is what happens when we fall into the delusion of seeing it as "self", we'll never have the control we need and crave. It's like we're trying to get a grip on a rope with which to pull ourself up with but it's not attached to anything solid. So we're tangled up uselessly tugging at this untethered rope and falling down again and again.  Awareness is the solid thing, the top of the rockface.
  Putting awareness back in control is the start and the end goal of meditation. It helps us clear up all the distracting habits of mind that keep us from cultivating true vitality. It helps us notice when the mind isn't really serving us and helps us reshape it so that it does.
  I've known this thing instinctively, and I've probably read it many,many times, but for some reason I forget it and it's only really sticking with me right now. Perhaps because the quality of my mind is not always great, so I fall prey to this delusion again and again.
  My goal this year is to really focus on improving my mind.  I'm a writer, it's my tool.  It needs rest.  It needs more reading and less television.It needs meditation woven into everything I do, writing, eating, exercise, reading. But at the same time, I need to recognize that it's not me. There may always be bugs in my mind, poor short term memory, the consequences of a lifetime of bickering and emotional squalor. Maybe I have a tool that will never be quite right.  But this tool is not my self.  My self is awareness and that is always there when I need it. Always working well.  I can always come back to that.
  I will always come back to that.  

Sunday, December 22, 2013

If not a friend, then at least an interesting companion

It is five in the morning, the Sunday before Christmas.  The year is coming to a close. And I think I can safely say that I have grown.

I feel a different energy in me. Something more sustained and sustainable that I've ever had.  I sit quietly from time to time and just feel it, in my heart, in my gut, in my brain. Sometimes it's warm, sometimes it's magnetic, sometimes it is liquid and sometimes effervescent.

I hope to be in constant conversation with this energy all my life. Creativity I'm beginning to believe is a state of conversation.  Sometimes we go off and have this conversation with ourselves, taking great care to make sure that our contribution to the conversation of civilization is the best it can be.

Sometimes we just blurt it out. But what's important is that we show up, seeking to understand and be understood.

Today, I just want to rest in gratitude for this wonderful year.  Last year it ended with money.  This year with some stature.  An award and a great writing credit.

Next year, I have to score a book deal if I'm going to continue writing.

But that's just writing.  If I'm going to continue being happy, sustaining the mild happiness that is so essential to writing, I'm going to have to keep meditating.  I'm going to have to continue cultivating compassion.  I'm going to have to work on going to bed early in my tidy home.

Above all I'm going to have to continue believing that my happiness is of greater benefit to the world than my misery.

Monday, December 16, 2013

So, yeah, overexcitement

So yesterday I hit the international stage. Opinion piece in Sunday Review of New York Times, many retweets, some important followers. Pressure to make the most of this opportunity.

Now I want to hide because I know how vulnerable I am to overexcitement, the near enemy of joy, according to Pema Chodron.  The question is can I use overexcitement as a support for practice?  Can I train my mind, brain, heart to dial it down naturally? The answer to that is yes.  Now the question is how.

Well I am in this moment, as soon as I finish this statement, going to just be present with the overexcitement.

Did that for a few moments, shifted to open awareness.

But I'm back again relentlessly reviewing my success, every word in my article, all my dreams and plans for ego gratification.

Breathe.  Breathe. Breathe.

Listen to my Tulpa.

He says I need to spend fifteen minutes tidying my bedroom.  It's a mess.

So I'm going to go do that.




Saturday, December 7, 2013

Challenges of Success

So the success is ramping up. I have an Op Ed piece coming out in the Sunday Review of The New York Times. Not this week because I was bumped by the death of Nelson Mandela.  But more likely next week.
 Already I'm finding it hard to maintain the hour of practice.  I feel the creeping presence of the delusion of a self overburdened with responsibility. I'm not as alone as I think or I wouldn`t have been able to do this piece.  I had my Tulpa with me prodding me.  But it`s like I keep forgetting that he's there. It's easier to be conscious of him when I'm alone.
  I try to stay focussed on the fundamentals.  If I'm having problems keeping to a particular focus in my standing practice, I just try to do open awareness. I try to wear my sense of presence like a watch. Consulting it regularly to see if I'm on, or wandering off.
  Above all, for the next few weeks, and the next year, I need to see myself as someone interconnected and well supported. Someone who is open to life and not in a constant, chronic state of resistance.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Standing for Success

So I`ve had some success.  On the advice of my damon, I finished up the draft of a New York Times Op Ed, submitted it. And from what they tell me , it`s going to be published in a couple of weeks.

This is good news, but I`ve learned to always be a little circumspect when I hit another level of my writing career. It`s easier to stand during a stagnant period, than a busy one. A little bit of success, and the next thing I know I`m being driven by all kinds of desires and aversions that derail me. I don`t want to lose the vitality I`ve developed in the last few months.

Especially when I`m experiencing success, I need to keep to at least an hour of meditation.

One thing that might be worth trying is tracking all my practices with my Insight timer. Right now I`m clocking a daily average of 98 minutes.  If I clock the time I spend in formal mediation, but also put in writing and cleaning.  I should be getting closer to four hours.  If I bring awareness into what I do, success is inevitable.

I agree with ET that you cannot become successful.  You can only be successful.

Bring high quality attention to most of what you do, and the odds of achieving wordly success are good.  But so what. The pleasures of high quality attention is a reward in itself.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Psychic Body

I've had an interesting insight in the last week.  For many years I've felt this magnetic energy rise in me whenever I've maintained a one hour standing practice for a sustained time.  I always thought that this magnetic energy was a pleasant end point to my practice.  Only recently have I considered the possibility that this feeling is a different kind of block.
  The magnetic energy now feels more like a remnant of a more stressful energy, in my forehead, in my chest.  Once it dissolves I feel a warm, liquid wet feeling more frequently.  It's a wonderful feeling, but it doesn't really make me want to write.  Words feel so solid now.
  Another cool thing that's been happening is that I feel this sort of empty body.  Like the magnetic force field of a body, that I find I can almost detach from. Like my physical body can detach from the magnetic traces of this other body.
  I know that sounds a little garbled.  But it's like there's this still Juliet, who is present, but not in skin and bones.  But skin and bones Juliet can move around and leave still magnetic energy Juliet in place.  This feeling of disassociation is a pleasant feeling.  Nothing scary really.  I can fit my physical body back into my psychic body and it feels stable and peaceful.
  For lack of a better term right now.  I'm going to call this my psychic body.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Tough with myself

A week of two steps forward, one step back.

My daimon is more a flickering presence in my life than it was a few days back.  Maybe because I've been disregarding his advice and peeking at television.  Ah, The Good Wife.  Such sweet trangression.

But seriously. I don't want to keep drifting back into bad patterns. I want to really cultivate this daimon and achieve my dreams of happiness.  I have a son and he needs to know that happiness is possible.

My first psychotherapist once brought my attention to the difference of being tough on ourself and tough with ourself.  When I think of what tough with myself means, it means that I need to be truly willing to see reality. And then once I've achieved that willingness, I need to want to see it. And I need to prepare myself for the inevitability of some pain and change along the way as I see that reality.

For instance.  I need to get more sleep.  I'm in a bad cycle that impacts my creativity, energy, happiness hugely.  But for some reason I don't want to look at that.  For one thing, because to get a good sleep I need to probably go to sleep before Ben. That's going to mean a change of routine. Probably some arguing.  And then I may end up giving in.

That routine needs to change. There's no point beating myself up about it.  But to really make that change, there's going to be some difficulty. There's going to be some nights where I'm not actually able to get to sleep that early. There are going to be some nights where I have to sit with my financial anxieties. But they are made worse by lack of sleep.

So, how do I start to change this routine in a way that is tough with myself, but not tough on myself?  I need a nurturing voice that is also able to tell me what I need to hear.  Compassionate, but also tough.  Something that says, yes you have natural intelligence, openness and spirit, but you can't let television and poor sleeping patterns muck with that.  You can't because the consequences are incremental and really serious over time.

Tonight is Daylight savings time, a return of the clock back an hour. It's a good night to start this because Ben will actually be more primed for an earlier bedtime. And maybe I can sneak a half hour of meditation in in the morning.  

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Dictation

This week I am no longer alone.

I've noticed of the course of many years of practice that if I manage to maintain a one hour meditation time for more than a couple of months that I start to feel an intelligence in my life. A voice starts to speak to me, to reassure me, to guide me, to bring my attention back to the present again and again. At times I've thought of this as my muse.  But from now on I'm going to think of it as a daemon.

Not a demon. A daemon, in the Greek sense of the term, and energy that drives the soul.  Thomas Moore, the Jungian psychologist, writes in Original Self, that the daemon is to the soul what the ego is to the self.  If we are to live from the soul, from chi, from kundalini, from whatever vitality we've chosen to cultivate, having that intelligence that keeps us on the path is an essential drive.

Ben's been studying the Renaissance this week at school. So I'm conscious of this shift we made several centuries ago as a civilization to place man at the center of the world instead of God. What we ended up placing in the center was the ego. If we could shift again what would we place at the centre? I would like to think it would be the soul.  Perhaps consciousness.  Whatever this energy is that transports us to a better place, a more peaceful place, a more joyful place.

This week I have felt it become more central to my life, not just because of my daemon emerging.  I've started to feel this kind of double body. Almost like double vision, but it's more like double feeling. Sometimes I see my heart as a green energy pulsating a little bit outside of and to the right of my body. Sometimes I  just sit with waves and the rythms of the universe.

Last night I did a long meditation.  Almost two hours and felt the undeniable deep warm coil of energy. Not the whole flow yet,  distinct parts in my neck and my upper abdomen.  Nothing imagined there.  This was a physical energy.

Daemon has instructed me to stop watching T.V. and Netlix, so I don't have much else to do but to become aware of it.

The adventure continues.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Enough is More

My practice has started feeling dry this week.  I think it might be because I've been expending a little too much effort trying to recreate some DMT experience.  I've been trawling around the internet and books and I've become interested in the pineal gland and the concept of "The Blue Pearl," a visualization experience.

It's not really working.  I have had some new experiences, a sense of clarity last night that was interesting, and an increased feeling of dissolving.  But this morning I'm feeling more drained than nourished by my practice. 

The other thing I've been working on this week is the cultivation of a tulpa.  I read about this in The New York Times this week, and it ties in to what I've been feeling this week about needing some kind of presence in my life, and about some of the thinking I was doing a few years back about muses. Tulpas are part of Tibetan meditattion. They are thought forms that cultivated over time take on an emotional presence in the meditator's life. 

A few years back, when I was regularly meditating an hour a day, I started to feel this presence and this voice coming from a part of me that seemed more peaceful, intelligent and insightful than I usually am during ordinary consciousness.  I began to think of her more as a muse, but maybe for now tulpa would be a more practical term.  When I consulted my tulpa this morning (who for the time being sounds a little too much like me), she said that I needed to just stay with the basic feelings and stop putting so much energy into out of body experiences or seeing light.  

Keeping to the Joy of Living Practice is hard for me. I'm so needy. I want to go whole hog and love the universe not just my son and neutral people.  I want more all the time, and it's one of the reasons I'm having all these financial problems. 

I've been re-reading The Soul Of Money, and I'm struck once again by the wisdom of trying to free myself and this world of the three toxic myths, that there's not enough for everybody, that more is better, that this is just the way it is. 

If I am to believe that there is enough for everyone then I have to first start believing that there is enough for me and enough for Ben. I need to create a good life out of what I consider is enough.  

I need to feel the sense of abundance in that word.  

And one place to start is to stop being so greedy for spiritual experience. 

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

The Spirit Molecule

Last night I watched a documentary on DMT, a molecule that opens our brains up to psychedelic experiences. It's called the Spirit Molecule, if I understand correctly, because it opens up the pineal gland to experiences of the universe that seem to be transcendent and transformative.

I suppose I've become interested in this because my practice seems to be entering a new level lately. I feel this core of stillness in me that I want to maintain, and that feels more and more like a presence in my life. It has stirred in me a desire to see what might be out there, beyond my own body.

I want to be careful though that I'm not just doing this to experience some kind of altered state. I want to do this because it may be a new level of reality that is important to my growth.

The way I think I can best access this is by developing the pineal gland, which corresponds in some religions to the "third eye".  When I feel any kind of energy, I adjust slightly so that I can "see" it.  This doesn't mean see it in the same way I see trees. But more to perceive it as though it were a visual thing. For instance when I feel the warm energy of my Tan Tien, I see it as what I think it would look like, orange liquid warmth. As I feel the magnetic energy entering my crown, I see it as lucid, highly focussed light. In time, I hope, if there is anything to see, I may even be able to see it.

Last night I'm almost sure I felt flashes of light above my head, but I'm not entirely sure.

This morning I woke at dawn and did this practice. Visualization makes things easier to focus, so the hour felt much shorter.

I saw gratitude in my heart.  I saw the pulsing desire of compassion. I saw my basic goodness.

And seeing is believing.


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

The pharmacology of standing

There's a stillness that's growing in me and the more that I cultivate it, the more I feel a familiar flow.  I'm pretty sure it's the body's natural flow of oxytocin.  I've written about this before, a couple of years ago, but it seems to be something that's easy to forget.

This week I'm still meditating on lovingkindness.  This involves first tapping into the natural feelings of love and tenderness that we feel towards others. I feel it most naturally for my son,  Ben, so he comes up often in my practices.

Eventually as I merge this lovingkidness practice and the flow of vitality I get from standing, I start to feel a very concrete and palpable feeling of wellbeing. As immutable as though I took some kind of drug that's going to keep it flowing until it wears off. I know this feeling from breastfeeding. It's oxytocin, and it comes from the pituitary gland.

So let's say that standing meditation combined with loving kindness increases the steady flow of oxytocin. This raises two questions. First, can it be cultivated in such a way that oxytocin grows more steady and habitual until a daily flow of it is becomes standard.  And second, would this have the same negative effects that taking a drug would have?

Guess I'm going to find out.

Monday, October 7, 2013

The Dream

Being connected to the vitality that arises through standing meditation feels more and more like what I use to feel when I was experimenting with lucid dreaming. There is this level of consciousness that is pleasurable, alive, lucid and powerful. But for some reason we are caught up in this constant stream of empty thought forms that are our worries, plans and obsessions.

The watch I spoke about in the last post is like a mechanism by which we remember to get back to this more powerful, creative energy available to us any time. Throughout the day we remember to wake up from this bad dream in which we feel powerless over the circumstances of our lives. And when we wake up we are back here in the place where we know we have all this quiet, perceptive energy to help us.

In this place we don't have to think and effort ourselves towards a better life. Our instincts, clear of all the muck, make the right choices naturally from a place of abundance, courage and confidence. First, it recognizes that this is the better life. Second it uses thought to deal mostly with practical matters, not spinning fantasies.

And then it works recursively to build and increase the energy, the insight, the power. It does this with compassion and kindness.

It does this as effortlessly as breathing.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

The Watch

Mingyur Rinpoche has a great metaphor for how life changes when you become aware of awareness. Without awareness one is like a man who has a watch but doesn't know it. He misses appointments, he isn't able to keep a job, he is living in poverty. And then one day someone points out to him, you have this thing on your wrist called a watch.  Suddenly his life changes, he's able to connect with others, become more productive, live a decent life.

We are like people with watches, but no real sense of time.  We live in the past and the future, but don't know how to get to the present. Being aware is quite simply being able to tell time by knowing whether or not we are present.

It seems so simple, but it's hard for us, I think, because we don't know how to enjoy this feeling. We are so driven by wanting, that we don't really know how to tell time in a world where we have what we really want, the ability to be happy about being happy. We are driven by the next desire, or the next regret.

To be present, and to remain present, is hugely dependent on our willingness to enjoy the present and to the enjoy the feeling of being aware.

My standing practice is only as strong as my willingness to enjoy the constantly increasing energy that it gives me, and the joy I feel in using this energy for the benefit of others. And it's only as strong as my motivation to continue enjoying it.

I tell time now less and less by time, but more and more by sensing how happy I am.

Monday, September 30, 2013

Joy of Living 2

Just finished a weekend retreat and the second part in Tergar's Joy of Living.  The course was led by Tim Olmsted, the director of the Pema Chodron Foundation. Tim is a dynamic, powerful teacher who reminds me a little (from the nose down) of the actor William Devane.

Structurally I find a lot of similiarities between the Tergar meditation program, and my Zhan Zhuang program, in that the first part is about cultivating a center of calm energy, while the second part is about cultivating power, the ability to do something with that energy.

The second part hinges on four "immeasurables": love (or loving kindness at it is usually used in westernized forms of buddhism), compassion, joy and equanimity. It also introduces certain intermediate meditation practices like tonglen, the practice of breathing in the suffering and stress of others and breathing back out the energy, love and power that we've cultivated so far.

After the first weekend, I remember vividly (or as vividly as I could), how sleepy I was at the end of the weekend.  How all that calm energy was sending me into unconsciousness during my meditation, and how hard it was.

At the end of this weekend, despite the fact that my downstairs neighbour had kept me up most of the night with a birthday party, I was energized.  I was ready to go out and take on the world, start meditation groups, build a whole new movement. Tonglen especially was a revelation, although I agree with Tim that this is not something you would want to teach to a beginner.  You need to have that base of calm energy before you know what it is you're sending out.  But once you've built that base of energy, tonglen is like a shot of espresso.  Rather than spend your day, as we usually do, ignoring stress and suffering, tonglen encourages you to suck it up, in a healthy, not repressive way.  Suck it up and send it back out into the world as a peaceful vitality.

An excellent metaphor for tonglen, is the powerful process by which trees take all the pollution and dirt and muck of the world, and send it back out as fresh air.  As Tim pointed out, it's also worth noting how the trees themselves are enriched by this process.

We think we are doing nothing in meditation, but if we are using it to open our hearts and transform misery into healthy energy then what we are doing is radical and essential. As radical and essential as anything on this earth.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Faith

It's still hard.  After all these years, after so much evidence for how much a deep and abiding connection with this energy improves the quality of my life, I still have a hard time with faith.

Having a hard time with faith, means quite simply, having a hard time; because faith is the foundational power of practice. If you don't believe you won't come back to it. If you don't believe, you get distracted by delusion and the constant dullness and emptiness of ordinary consciousness.

The other night I was watching Richard Dawkins on Jon Stewart.  To him, faith without evidence is dangerous.  And I can't say I disagree with him. I do believe in scientific method. And by and large in Zhan Zhuang, masters seem to stay away from visualization, and practices that might prime you to see of feel things that aren't there.

But I do have evidence. I have the evidence of how this vitality feels as it grows.  I have evidence of how it seems to unleash my creativity, my confidence, and shape my instincts.  I have evidence in the peaceful reprieve it offers every time I'm drawn back into the cycle of trauma in my painful, despairing childhood. I have evidence, in the power and strength it fills me with when I run. I have evidence in how it shapes my effortless movement.

I have evidence.  And I have little doubt that one day we will have the instruments to measure this energy. But right now the only and best evidence is our body.

My problem, perhaps, is that I want the evidence to be external.  I want to see money, and success, and the markers of happiness that society sees.

And maybe there's nothing wrong with that. Except that the search for  these markers of success can often distract us from the magnetic energy of the interior world.

Ideally, these normal markers of success would flow from a regular practice.

So, I offer now the rest of my life as an experiment.  I maintain a practice for at least an hour, ideally two hours a day, and then see how and if I can direct the energy I cultivate into the exterior world.

Not for six months for the next thirty years.

I do this for my happiness. For Ben's happiness. For my parents and my brother. And for the happiness of all.


Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Here's What's Happening

The suffering is dissolving.  As the energy in me rebuilds, the deep entrenched habits of stress and suffering in me begin to dissolve naturally.  I feel it happening, the pain arising, sometimes physical, sometimes emotional, sometimes sexual, sometimes just a deep dullness.  It comes up and I watch it and then gradually it gets washed away and dissolved by this liquid magnetic energy that is filling me up mostly from the top down.  But sometimes from the bottom up.

I don't assume postures anymore.  I stand in wu wei, first position.  Usually after about five minutes my right arm begins to rise on its own.  Sometimes I feel my arm start to dissolve.  Sometimes I feel my head get looser on my neck.  My lower spine begins to stretch as I relax my knees and sit into the gravity.  Then at some point I start to feel a natural warmth in my gut, or at the back of my neck.

When I start to feel the warmth I remind myself to feel gratitude.  Of all the techniques there are to iterate the energy, the one I believe works the best is to get it spinning emotionally, because we do this to be happy. And happiness is both the goal and the fuel of unleashing this energy.  The gratitude keeps me focussed and lightly harnessed to the energy, especially when I feel my mind drifting off to ordinary awareness.  Love keeps me coming back far more naturally and effortlessly than will.

Today I had three experiences of suffering  that convinced me I'm on the right track.  And ickyness that I know is usually a resistance to pleasure.  Pure aversion, that once dissolved is usually a gateway to healthy joy.  A deep sadness that came out of nowhere that felt as though the energy had simply hit a part of my brain, in the same way a neurosurgeon might probe it during open heart surgery.  And then this deep pain in my neck and shoulders that made me realize that my alignment was being corrected by the more natural flow of energy down my spine.

I had two brand new experiences of pleasure.  For most of the stand I let my left arm hang limp.  But towards the end I felt a bracelet of energy, as though a hand was taking my arm around the wrist.  Gradually this bracelet pulled my arm up in a floating motion.  I felt such fluidity in my body that when the energy began to move my upper torso towards my right I felt like I might actually be able to twist all the way around.  In fact I almost did.  I stood there for I'm not sure how long, feeling the energy work its way around my spine. And then gradually I turned back.  After that I was able to just stand in pure quiet, pond like energy, as though most my body had dissolved.  There were still some remnants of suffering, and I was almost happy to have them there as markers.

This is always such a challenging place to be in, this peace.  Because there's no direction.

But there will be.  A different energy will eventually fill me.  It will fill the best parts of me, the parts of me that lead me to happiness, not to more pain.  And my good habits will have double the energy they had before. My talents will be more focussed and effective.  And the people around me happier.

To be filled and guided by this energy and power.  This is joy.

Monday, September 23, 2013

The immutable calm and power of the tan tien

There are so many experiences I am grateful for this morning it`s hard to know where to start.

I`ll start with the most recent and perhaps from that I`ll find the energy to move back.  I`m sitting here this morning with a full belly of calm and vitality.  About ten minutes ago I felt the right side of my tan tien open up and the warm vitality begin to flow like water.  Earlier in my practice I felt the urge to concentrate my energy there, like a ball of sun.  Like the shining pink sun of dawn over the pond at Fortunes Rocks.

I felt solid.  Like there was this solid core of stored energy that would last all my life.

No let`s switch that. I knew I was solid. I knew there was a solid core of energy that would last me all my life. I knew this. I was grateful for it.

I knew that this was happiness. That it was mine to have and to give, and that I would have access to this for every day of the rest of my life. I might lose my way, but I would inevitably find my way back.

With this knowledge of happiness, it is inevitable that I will find the outside circumstances to support it.   The community of people who know this happiness to be true. The resources to live in a decent home, eat good healthy food and have leisure activities that energize me instead of drain me.

With this knowledge of happiness, I have an entirely different sense of self. The self that I felt at the end of the 10K I ran yesterday. With little training, I was able to hook into a web of energy in the last 3K. I felt people pulling me towards the end. I was running fast and effortlessly harnessed to this communal energy.  I was a node in the universal energy that propels us all towards joy, and healthy and wisdom.

I am privileged and deeply grateful for these experiences and this life.

Now I let this calm flow into the more conditioned channels of happiness, the urge to keep a clean house, the vision and confidence to keep the flow of money happening. To clear up my debt and see this power and energy expressed as the usual markers of happiness. To express and use my creativity towards the books that will help people unleash their own power.

May all of our wisdom shine together like the morning sun.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Happiness Unleashed

Time passed quickly during this morning's meditation.  I set my timer for 80 minutes and the first time I felt the urge to look, there was only ten minutes left.

I felt the pulse, though not as strong as yesterday. Maybe it's the waning moon. Maybe it was a different room.  Don't know.  But the pulse is not the thing I take from this morning's meditation.

I had a realization that my biggest challenge in meditation is maintaining it when things are good.  When things are stressful.  When I'm worried about money, or there are toothaches on the horizon, I become an expert meditator. Suddenly, I'm able to see with such clarity where happiness really lies.  But when things are good, it's like all my conditioned beliefs take over, and meditation is secondary.

This hasn't been as true this year, in large part because of Joy Of Living.  My meditation hasn't been based on the fluctuations of fortune, but has followed a steady path.  So I'm grateful for that.  Still, to be as happy as I want to be I need to maintain at least an hour a day.  Twenty minutes is not enough to connect me to the deep sense of peace and power that makes me as useful and creative as I want to be.

Last night was a harvest moon.

During my practice today, I had a strong sense that I was receiving a tremendous amount of energy and power, from the universe, from Mingyur Rinpoche meditating right now wherever he is meditating. I think I'm starting to feel the bounty of a good strong regular practice.

May I be strong enough to receive it and use it well.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

The Pulse

This morning of a full moon I had an interesting stand.  For the last couple of days I've been feeling a fluttering just outside my gut.  Almost as though a bird where trapped in porous concrete and I was feeling the brush of wings. Then this morning that fluttering turned into a pulsing energy to the right of my gut that felt like a separate entity.  I can still feel it if I stay still.  It's as though I can now feel the pulse of my gut in the same way I would feel the pulse in my wrist or my neck.  That feeling that assures you that your heart is beating without your conscious effort like a separate entity from your brain.

Now what?

I dunno.  I'll keep you posted.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Joy

This morning during my stand I felt joy.

There was peace, there was vitality, there was all the quiet energy I always feel when my standing practice is at the one to two hour commitment.  And then underneath it I started to feel some of the numbness I've been feeling over the last couple of years begin to dissolve.  And there it was.  Natural joy.

In the past when I've reached this place I usually have some kind of neurotic reaction that goes something like this.  Oh man.  All that time wasted doing whatever it was I was doing when I could have been cultivating this happiness.  What's wrong with me?  Why can't I do the right thing all the time?  Why do I let myself get sidetracked.  Why do I undermine myself?

But recently I've understood something.  It doesn't really matter what I did, or didn't do last year, or the year before.  All that really matters is how I'm feeling right now, and what I'm doing right now.  And when I'm in the place, really in that place, and truly committed to that place, I don't look back over my life anymore as a series of failures.  My biography is simply the record of how I got to this good place.  And how I got to this place is a steadfast habit of returning to it.

This place is my true north.  I will always return to it inevitably, so I really need to let go of the remorse and the regret.

You can't hold on to natural joy.  But you can return to it.

Again.

And again.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

This is it

A few years back I started an experiment. I would stand an hour a day for six months and see it this would improve my life any significant way.  Mostly, I was hoping, I think, it would yield some magic insight that would solve all my financial problems.

My life did improve. I wrote a lot. Made friends.  Had fun.  Had some success. My money situation didn't change. But I look back on it as a happy time.

I'm setting out on a new challenge now.  Two hours a day, for as long as I can keep up a commitment to two hours a day.  But I'm setting out with different expectations.

I just want to be happy now.  And tomorrow.

I don't think Zhan Zhuang will solve my money problems because Zhan Zhuang is not a money making thing. At best Zhan Zhuang will allow me to be happy enough making whatever sacrifices I'm going to have to make to improve my financial situation.

If it comes to that. There's always a possibility that an increase in creativity and right brain activity will make me rich. Or at least solvent. But that's not my motivation for this two hours.

My motivation is to develop the ability to rest happily in happiness.

This is remarkably difficult for me to do. About as hard as sitting quietly on a tightrope.

At one point during my mediation today, I could feel the energy in my right brain begin to grow. I could feel it. I knew that it was going to lead to well being. And yet I struggled like a cat in water. At though, somehow, this happiness could only mean bad things on the way. Disappointment, disillusionment, failure. All the price of happiness. Something in me is rock hard solid sure about this.

When the well being came, I felt a distinct sense of  "huh? Is this all there is to happiness?  Could it really be this ordinary."

Then I became conscious that I was standing in a room, staring into a ball of solid magnetic energy, having just half an hour before, felt the disappearance of my ego, and the presence of some kind of spiritual being.
And remembered, "oh yeah.  This isn't really very ordinary." In fact it's so lacking in ordinariness, that I am afraid to share it as something ordinary.

But it is ordinary, this amazing, unlimited, sustainable, gorgeous, vital energy. It is so ordinary. And such a tragedy that so few people in the world seem able, or willing, to feel it.

I am deeply blessed to have it, even for one day.

So I will not set a goal to grasp it, or make it permanent. Just take this day by day.

And continue to be grateful.

And continue to be amazed that this is it.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Two Hour Stand

This afternoon I did a two hour stand.

I'm not sure if I've ever done this before.  But I hope I'll have the stamina to do it again.  And to do it regularly.

The goal of this stand was not to experience any altered state of conscious, although I knew that would be inevitable.  It was really to be able to stand with this energy in an open and warm way and explore the fears and blocks that would arise as I did this.

I left with one profound insight.  That the erratic love I received from my mother, sometimes warm and deep and generous, sometimes cold and cruel and manipulative, is tightly wound and tangled and that many of the problems I'm having in my life have to do with my difficulty maintaining any natural, and consistent warmth and affection towards myself.

My father I remember as a mostly distant figure, sometimes gentle, often angry and hungover, and sometimes violently angry.  Later in life he underwent a period of remorse that led to him reducing his drinking, cutting off ties with his old drinking buddies. He became warmer and more loving towards me, but also isolated and dependent.

Nevertheless my parent stayed together, and my relationship with them is an exhausting and ongoing project. And probably won't be getting easier as they age.

Where does standing fit into this.

Standing gives me that stable nurturing that I have such hard time softening to. That's the stable nurturing I'm going to need if I'm going to be able to take care of myself and my son.

If I'm ever going to get rid of this fear of being loved, it's going to happen through this.

Today I could feel it happening. I could feel this gentle energy slowly softening my deepest pain. At one point, I cried like a baby, remembering the deepest, worst moments of loneliness when I was pregnant. Recognizing how alone and afraid I still feel sometimes. At other moments I could feel it playfully loosening me up and getting me ready, physically and emotionally for happiness.

Sometimes it felt sexual.  Sometimes it felt like a really nice, long lunch date.  I tried as much as possible to keep in simple and gentle.  That's what I need right now.

But two hours is the kind of deep, transformative commitment that I need right now.

May I care about myself enough to make that happen.





Sunday, September 1, 2013

Wholeness

I had terrible, weird, vivid dreams last night. Dreams about the most disturbed people I've ever known. Violent dreams about sexual torture. Strange dreams about art shows with wooden pterodactyls flying across a room.

My fear is working its way out of my body and mind. But first I need to become more aware of it. That's hard to do with all the clutter I'm putting into it with the internet, and t.v. etc. I need to break the loop. This week I started a habit of fasting two days a week to get rid of some excess weight I've been carrying.  I wonder if I spend two days off the internet and TV what would happen. Two information fasts a week. Sunday, lets say and Wednesday.

Sundays are hard because its all my favourite shows. But I can catch up at another point. I don't need to see these shows at the same time as everyone else. And it's important to me to wake up feeling clear and calm on Mondays. Not tripped out by whatever hyper dramatic show had captured my mind. Also having a clear calm mind will help me better weather the discomforts of the food fast.

I need to do this because I know my writing is suffering and this book has to be good and near completion by the end of the year. I'm way behind what I wanted to be. But I can't get impatient with myself, because impatience is the root of writer's block. I need to keep that fine balance.

So what will I do on this day of digital fast? I'll meditate often. I'll centre my mind at that spot where I know that I am whole, that I am connected to a power far greater than this feeble sense of "self." I'll give my mind space to store up on confidence and calm.  I'll think about my book, so that on my food fast day I'll be primed for a busy work day. I'll read a lot. And I'll continue to weaken this cycle of fear. I will tap into my stores of insight.




Sunday, August 25, 2013

Hockey Stick Moment

I've decided to stop.

In his introductory video to meditation, Mingyur Rinpoche tells the story of being thirteen years old and still gripped by the panic disorder that had been haunting him since childhood. After years of half-committed meditation, one day he asked himself a question. Do I want to stay this way?

The answer was obviously no. So he decided to take the disorder and use it as fuel for practice. He committed to three days of solitary meditation in his room, away from his practice community. After the three days the panic disorder was gone.

I overcame a panic disorder in my twenties. I worked through a nervous breakdown in my thirties. In my forties I turned the crisis of single motherhood into an opportunity for more self awareness. Now starting my fifties, I have a new challenge. I want to liberate myself from this chronic misery, and financial stress. I want to use my writing to bring something valuable to the world.

Because of the responsibilities of parenthood, I can't do a three day solitary retreat. But yesterday I made  decision to turn away from the tv, the internet and other distractions and sit as much as I possibly can with this fear.

Re-reading the JOL I came across something that for some reason had never made an impression on me before. It is a description of how we develop "the emotional body." When our thalamus perceives an object that causes us fear, a tiger, or even just a mental image of something that frightens us, it sends a red alert messages to the amygdala and the neo-cortex. The amygdala is closer, so it gets the message first. It tells our body to run or fight. And our body immediately responds with heightened heartbeat, and adrenalyzed muscles. The neo-cortex however, only receives the alert after out body has started responding.

If we don't run or fight, the neo-cortex assesses the situation, and sends the message back to all the body parts, that all is well.

This is what meditation, fundamentally is. The decision not to run or fight. The decision to retrain our responses, so that only the real threats, not the feedback delusions that we've been conditioned with, get through. The decision to tell our analytical brain that we are fine.

We are making the conscious decision, for ourselves, and for all that we are capable of influencing that the recursive cycle of fight and flight is over. That we want peace.  For ourselves and for everyone in the world.

Running and fighting, however, are no longer really fleeing from tigers, or entering armed battle. For the contemporary urban dweller it's more usually running towards a source of distraction, or bickering with family and people on facebook.

If I make the decision to stop for a day or two. If I make the decision to sit with whatever is gnawing at me, I send an important message to myself.

I am well.

No matter what happens in the next six months.  I am well.

This wellness, I hope, will allow me to open my mind and see the way out of my problems.

This wellness, I hope, becomes the ice that I skate on, on a frozen pond. From there I have that hockey stick, exponential graph, progress.

And then I'm out of this cycle.







Sunday, August 18, 2013

Lovingkindness

I feel vulnerable writing about love.But I'm learning this week that it's that very vulnerability that is our greatest source of power.

Pema Chodron writes about locating that tender spot and using it as a crack to let the energy of bhodicitta enter. Earlier this week I listened to a talk by Edward Kelley on Tergar. When he asked Mingyur Rinpoche how it is his life seems to unfold so effortlessly, Rinpoche said "motivation." I know that the happiness of all beings is his point of motivation.

If I use this point of vulnerability as my motivation, and turn it into an omnipresent desire to build happiness for myself and everyone, then perhaps my life will unfold with more ease.

It all seems so simple, but we spend most of our lives running away from that vulnerable point.The trick is to find a way to lock in to the fear, loneliness and alienation in a way that the lovingkindness becomes second nature. Becomes something that our brain produces without thought.

I will approach this slowly, like open awareness. Rest in lovingkindness for moments throughout the day.

This is a good day to start this practice. My son's thirteenth birthday. My desire for him to be happy is already naturally strong.

May this be the foundation for both our happy lives.

Monday, August 12, 2013

Where is it coming from?

Yesterday I went to a mini-retreat at the Tergar Centre.  It's the last small retreat before the Joy of Living -level 2 weekend retreat. It was sort of a free for all retreat. We went back over basic concepts, like open awareness. And watched a DVD on the concept of retreat, the outer, inner and secret. As we practiced on this inner retreat, Minyur our Tibetan meditation leader, encouraged us to start some light analysis of our practice.

The question she encouraged us to keep asking ourselves, as we accessed the deepening calm that grows with a diligent meditation practice, is "where is this coming from? Is it coming from inside me, outside me?"

I've been struggling the last day with fear. A job I thought I would have in September doesn't look like it's going to materialize, so I'm struggling with financial anxiety. During the retreat it seemed to be okay.  I sat quietly with my fear, even felt a little energized by my ability to just sit with it. But last night I felt like I was in its iron grip.

This morning I seem to be able to access my calm again. It's like the fear, which I know comes from my desire to be happy, is a sort of nucleus, and the calm awareness is this protective outer layer. When I ask where it's coming from I remember that I sense this awareness that is both in me and outside of me.

Physically I can feel it in my middle forehead. I've always been able to do that. But I've never labelled it in quite the same way I do now.

Where does this come from? From now I'm going to call it storage. The storage of all the goodness in me and in the world. I forget, but I have access to this storage when I need it.

And when I want it.

One of the the most challenging aspects of this meditation practice is to stay close to my desire for happiness. It's so easy to get caught up in the other desires. But if I stay close to this, I will cultivate the habit of calm awareness that is the foundation of happiness, of love, and of strength.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Shining Wisdom

After five months following level one of the Tergar program I'm starting to feel the fruits of my practice. I've weathered a challenging week with a difficult person, and managed to come out of it with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises.
  The pond outside my bedroom shines with morning sunrise, and I recognize this as the wisdom that we all have access to if we can only cultivate the skill of being.
  Last night, I happened to flip to my favourite clip from the Karate Kid 2010, the one where they see the nun mirroring the snake. She controls the snake because her mind is still, and as Jackie Chan explains "there is a big difference between doing nothing and being still."
  One of the most profound insights I've had this week is that all the irritation and controlled rage I feel when I'm around my mother is really just my desire to be happy. These are strong feeling because my mind is so strong. But that same strong mind that has these uncomfortable feelings is the mind that is capable of happiness and wisdom, of profound and sustainable peace. This deep and joyful comfort and wisdom that I have moments, minutes, sometimes hours of, is really just the flip side of all the pain and discomfort.
  Yesterday morning I saw a beautiful painting by the 19th century America painter William Homer.

When I first saw it, I believed it was sunset. But this was painted at Prout's Neck, not far from where I am right now, so I know it must be sunrise. Beneath all that turbulence and the signs of an upcoming storm, beneath the blood red beginnings of the morning light, there is a calm. 

There is a beautiful day on the horizon. 

Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Perfect Pond

I'm in Maine this week, at a cottage my parents have rented. The place is so idyllic it's almost a cliche. Outside my bedroom is a pond with lily pads under old arching trees.  In the distance on the other side of a very thin peninsula is the ocean.

This morning I meditated at sunrise. You'd think it would be easy to achieve that blissful connection in such a setting. But what I find the more beautiful and perfect the setting, the more I feel that stress inducing urge to grasp at it. To start thinking, how can a now, knowing such a beautiful place, be happy in my old place of meditation with its morning traffic and beeping street light for the visually impaired.

The first trick  is to get to the twenty minute mark, the point at which the silt of our normal stress begins to settle. I know I've reached it when I have that familiar restlessness, and boredom, an almost psychic itching that makes me want to leap up and out of this pose.

Then I do what Shinzen Young calls recycling the emotion. Take the restlessness, be with it and wait for it to pass. It's basically a recursive function applied to emotion.

Eventually I reached the insight that there is no point grasping to keep this place. The best way I could use it to deepen my meditation, was to rest my awareness with the same lightness as I would on any other day, in any other normal place.

Once I did that, the whole space opened up.

I am here this week to realize that I do have power in dealing with the emotional complications of my family. Part of that power is realizing where I am powerless, and where I should probably remain powerless.  I cannot stop my parents from fighting.  I cannot make them more loving with each other. They don't want my mediation.  I  only have the power to decide whether or not I want to trigger a fight, or step away from a fight that I have become involved in.  I do not want to start any fights. I do not want to continue any fights this week. Nothing,absolutely nothing, is worth fighting over in the beautiful place.  So if my mother acts irrationally, or unfairly, I don't have to protect myself.  I don't have to play the vulnerability card. I'm simply not as vulnerable as all that. I am more than this little node of selfness that lives in my brain. I am also everything that I'm connected to.

I will step away from all fights this week. I will not be drawn into them.  I will not add to them.  I will not involve myself in the fights of others.

The decision has been made.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Joyful Wisdom

This month I'm practicing specifically with feelings.

I start a formal practice in open awareness then I shift into being aware of whatever feeling comes up.  I try and notice the story lines and the images. If a feeling is really overwhelming I see if I can drop some of these story lines, images, and thoughts associated with it, so that I can be, in compassionate abiding, with the root feeling. No matter how difficult, eventually it passes.

But it's hard. Very hard for me, because I grew up in such an emotionally complicated family, so I become very easily lost in my feelings and memories. One thing I've been trying is from an old book I've had around for a long time, The Power of Mind. I try to remember the first time I ever had that feeling. I find this really helpful in locating the emotion in the body. It doesn't necessarily lead me to some cathartic feeling where I let go of that feeling forever. But it gives me some space to see the feeling more objectively, and to see the feeling as an object that I am creating, and diminishing.

Yesterday, I felt like I had some kind of flu. It was vague, I kind of knew the feeling before from doing a food detox.  I was feeling heightened irritation, impatience depression, and a heightened sense of the resistance I feel to these uncomfortable feelings. At times I felt just the resistance, which I guess I could describe as the kind of icky feeling I've sometimes experienced when doing mushrooms, or any kind of psychedelic. It's a feeling of poison entering, or sometimes exiting your body.

It's an uncomfortable feeling, but I've come to greet it with anticipation because I know that it usually means I'm on the cusp of letting go of some suffering, and experiencing some kind of deeper more sustaining joy.

Today when I did my meditation, for the first time in a while, I felt that deep joy. I guess I'm going to call it joyful wisdom. It's the feeling I have when I have connected with a universal energy, but now that there is more than just this moment of connection.  I feel the pleasure and the awe and the gratitude.  But I also feel the decision I have made to experience this feeling regularly and often throughout my life. At some point I made a decision to cultivate this practice. At some point I made a decision to deepen this practice. I did it.  And now there is no going back.  It is the joyful reward I feel at the commitment I made and kept and will always keep.

All that remains is to build and work the technology that increases this joyful wisdom for myself and brings this lasting happiness to others.  This "technology" is lovingkindness and the wish to continue cultivating this feeling for myself, for my loved ones, for my neighbors, and even for my enemies. For all. The more I wish this, the greater my JW grows.

It has just hit me that these are my initials.

And that's the thing. We think that we are just our crappy, imprisoning feelings. We base our selves and our sense of self on those feelings and on the repression and eradication of those negative feelings. But we aren't those feelings.  We are actually this infinite, huge, always available, fundamentally joyful wisdom. That is what we really are. Not the prison part.

Recognizing this should be easy. But we're used to the prison. It's our home. We're very attached to it.  Sometimes the only way we get out of it is when something burns it down.  But that's probably not the best way. The best way is to make the decision to leave, and then slowly and surely we move more and more stuff out into the better world.

Into the light. Which is our real home.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Alternating

This month I'm working on my feelings as objects of meditation. In this practice the idea is to alternate from the intensity of a feeling to the release of open awareness. Almost like a toggle. As I practice this, eventually the feeling begins to diminish on its own.

One of the things I have a tendency to forget when I'm doing this is to alternate. I'm good at staying with the feeling.  I stay with it until the feeling passes on its own accord, or something distracts me.

This is okay with small feelings.  But bigger feelings--angers, anxieties in times of crisis, deep sadnesses I've been avoiding--still seem to have a lot of power over me, and it's easy to end up back on the ratwheel of bad habit that I've developed to deal with them.

So this month I want to work on divide and conquer.  When I'm feeling the big emotions this month (and life is really good at presenting you with big situations for this practice, which I won't go into now) I'm going to do formal practice.  Open awareness.  Feeling. Open awareness. Diminished feeling. Open Awareness. Whisp of a feeling.

And then move on to some constructive action or work that is improving my world and the world around me.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Enjoyment

In Eckhart Tolle's vision of a New Earth, enjoyment replaces wanting as the driving force. I want to be a part of that new world, so I'm trying these days to focus on what I enjoy, and to allow that to be the thing that organizes my decisions.

I enjoy the same things most people do, interesting experiences, conversations, travel, delicious food.  But if I had to answer the question what I enjoy more than anything, it really is the feeling I get when I'm meditating. Feeling that vitality in my gut, the warmth at the back of my neck and down my spine, that gravitational beam when I assume a natural posture that connects me with the universal force. Without that, all that I enjoy is merely craving and escape.

If I'm going to move forward in life, I have to give myself permission to enjoy this state of being as often and as fully as I want.

The crazy thing is that I often don't want it.  I often don't want to do this thing that I truly enjoy.

Maybe that's because I'm still in the state of wanting.  I keep thinking about all the things I don't have and want. To be a successful writer able to make a comfortable income. To be an influential teacher, able to inspire people towards a better way of living.  To be a better parent, able to raise a son who will want to contribute something to the world.

I won't be able to do any of that if I can't enjoy life.  If I can't enjoy the feeling of being alive.

To be motivated by enjoyment rather than want is a decision.  It's not a hedonistic decision, because I'm not being motivated by pleasure.  I'm being motivated by the joy that arises from being at peace in the world. And there's a lot of pain to be faced and worked through to get to that enjoyment.

But I'm going to do it.  The decision has been made.


Sunday, June 30, 2013

Leaning in, Sinking down

Last night I had one of the best stands I've had in a long time. I'd just finished the first day of a two day conference (Montreal WordCamp) and I was feeling that emptiness I sometimes feel when I've been around a group of people. Maybe I'm an introvert who feels drained around other humans. I don't know. Though I want human company, I often feel this profound feeling of depletion and despair afterwards.

Too often in the past I've dealt with this problem with distraction. I come home feeling empty. Then I fill the emptiness with food and television,which just makes the emptiness worse. And then I go into these social situations, that I want, from a feeling of vulnerability.

Last night was different. I've been working with thoughts and feelings in my meditation practice, and last night I decided to divide and conquer. I did some standing with my loneliness (made a little sharper by the fact that my son left for two weeks with his father.) I alternated this with a feeling of open awareness. I did some standing and sitting with smaller feelings, my aversion to cleaning the kitchen that I left a mess this morning, my frustration that my son had pulled out all the cable, internet connectors in an attempt to take his Playstation, etc.

I stayed with this feelings and felt the thinking feeling in my forehead, as I do more and more. Later in the evening I found the motivation to really stand for well over an hour.

I felt the warmth of this universal energy that is always available to me. I felt a voice telling me that I didn't need to choose this energy anymore. The choice had been made. I am this energy and I have chosen myself. The feedback loop is now a core part of me. No decision. It's just maintenance.

As I stood, the warmth began to sink and grow. But towards the end of the stand I began to notice different kind of energy. There was, not so much a numbness in my forehead, but an energy close to a neutral sense of being. Not the usual tension I feel there. Or the sense of relief when i've stopped living in that part of my brain. Just an energy, a presence.

Later I wondered if maybe this was what it felt when thought was in the service of awareness/attention, and not the other way around.

This morning as I was standing, I found myself getting distracted and pulled into the stream of thought. I reminded myself, as I've been doing the last week or so, to lean into this energy and then alternate it with open awareness.  But this time it occurred to me to lean in and then do what I'd always been doing in Tai Chi, sink down. Or rather position myself to allow the energy to sink of its own accord.

Lean in, sink down. I realized that this could be a very effective mantra for bringing my attention back to deeper core awareness.

When I sink, or position for sinking, I start to feel all the deeper parts of my brain, all the other lobes below and beyond this frontal cortex. I know my brain is getting deeper and stronger. And I know I'm becoming deeper and stronger as a result of this practice.

As I continue this, I will feel this strong desire to bring this connection to other people.

And then, as the end of a day or a conference, I'll feel less and less drained. More and more energized.

The loop, once blocked, is now open.




Sunday, June 23, 2013

Scattered Mind Insight

Earlier this week, I watched a talk given by Shinzen Young at Google. He said something that hit me as a writer.  Insight when you have a scattered mind tends to be superficial, personal, and psychological. With a focused mind insight has more depth and spiritual weight.

I've never really considered how important the quality of the mind is to get insight to stay.  That sounds crazy now, because it's so obvious.  But I've tended to think of meditation as something I do for me, not something I do to make my insight more transmittable to the world.

Of course, because my mind is so scattered, I haven't been able to focus on the problem of focus, so it's a kind of a recursive problem.

Add to this the problem that I grew up in a family of scatter brains and suddenly I feel like I'm in "mid-mountain" with this meditation project.

Mid-mountain is a term I learned yesterday reading Malcom Gladwell. It refers to a famous transportation project in nineteenth century Massachusetts that ended up in massive cost overrun because they thought that it would be a lot easier to blast through a mountain than it was.  they known how much it was going to cost, they never would have gone ahead.  But had they not gone ahead, Massachusetts would not have been able to ship its goods so easily to the expanding West, and would never have become as wealthy as it it.

If I'd known how long it would take to get my mind in shape, I'm not sure I would have started this meditation project. If I'd known what I was eventually going to realize about myself, how truly out of control my mind really is, I wouldn't have had the courage.

But I'm here now with this meditation practice that I've been cultivating for years.  And I know there is a lot of insight there ready to be shipped out.

One day I will look back and know that the cost was worth it.


Sunday, June 16, 2013

Thought

This month in the Joy of Living program I'm working with thoughts. I'm glad I've taken the previous two months to work on sound and objects, because at their most basic level thoughts really are sound and objects internalized.
  Not that I seem to be able to remember this in meditation.  I'm constantly drawn into the content of my thoughts. And the content of my thoughts are usually problems.
  Thought is a technology.  We developed it to solve problems, to create shared memory.  Eventually we became ennamoured with the beauty of thought made manifest, and that became art. Thought is mostly about problem solving and if we let it run on its own without slowing it down, checking it, letting it rest, we are in constant problem solving mode. We'll find problems where they don't even really exists.
  Meditation slows this down so that we can shift our brain outside of problem solving mode for a while. So that we can just be.  So that we can fulfill our purpose.  We're not actually here to solve problems.  We're here to witness and feel and experience this beautiful world, and to love each other and make life an experience full of awe and wonder.
  So, for the next few weeks I want to be like the father of  information theory, and seminal cryptologist, Claude Shannon, and act as though the meaning of the content is irrelevant. I'm going to listen to the sound of my thoughts, I'm going to watch the images, and feel the sensations.  Just follow along.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Objects

I had a crucial insight this week.

In Tergar's Joy of Living program we're meditating on neutral objects.  Mingyur Rinpoche suggests something in the distance like a patch of color on a wall.  He also describes a process by which our sense of distinction between self and object dissolves after a while.

I wasn't sure what he meant until I experienced it myself. For one meditation I picked a boring white square pattern on the apartment building outside my window. I steeled myself for what I was sure would be the dullest meditation I'd ever experienced.  But in time something happened.  I began to see the contrasting bricks and then the bricks that were diagonal to it. In time, I saw that pattern as a symbol of myself.  Solid, negative space around me, brick upon brick, held in place by gravity but able to hold people up way above the ground. The next day I had a similar experience with the excess cord on a clothesline.  I saw myself in time as that piece of cord, suspended in the sky.  Not heavy enough to fall.  But strong enough to stay in place.  I saw the perfect tension of the clothesline as the tension I need to maintain in my practice.

If I  see myself in nondescript objects, then surely I must see myself in everyone I meet.  If I'm feeling vulnerable and stressed and angry and closed hearted, then I'm going to see everyone as that.  But if my mind is strengthened and renewed by compassion and gratitude, then I'm more likely to see everyone around me as compassionate and generous.

Now the dedication I do at the beginning of my meditation makes sense. This meditation really is work I do for all beings. I'm more likely to see the good in people as a result of this practice, and in seeing the good in them, I'm more likely to feel good.  It's a positive feedback loop that in time develops its own momentum.

One day I will not have to work so hard at this.  And when I say I work for the welfare of others I will mean that I "work," in the sense of I function mechanically how I'm supposed to.  Like the clothesline, like the bricks, which I rarely notice, but for which today I am deeply grateful.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

An Adventure in Standing Always

Yesterday I read an article by Susan Orlean in The New Yorker about her new treadmill desk. It sounded a bit eccentric.  But she directed me to an interesting researcher at the Mayo Clinic, James Levine, who believes that much of the obesity epidemic is rooted in what he calls "sitting disease."

We live in a society in which we are cued to sit all the time.  We sit to work, to travel, to eat.   As a writer, who has very few meetings, I'm especially sedentary in my life.  As more and more people telecommute, as we use e-mail rather than face to face meetings, we quite simply move as little as possible. We are inactive, and our complex brains have less and less connection with gravity.

This research has hit meet like a lightening bolt.  So much of my life has been about standing. But while I can get up every morning and maintain a standing practice, I actually do very little standing throughout my day.  This makes it hard to maintain the energy I need to do the things I want to do: run a 10K with Ben, write a book, get our life into a place of financial stability.

So I've made a decision.  In the way that Buddhists weave formal and informal practice throughout their lives, I will weave formal and informal standing.  Standing is my mindfulness. Standing grounds me, gives me inner strength, vitality, clarity.  When I am standing I feel differently about myself.  I feel motivated and connected to the world.  So I will now begin a practice of increasing the amount of informal standing I do throughout my day.

I tried it yesterday.  Managed to spend most of the day standing, with a few exceptions for some sitting meditation.  By the time I stopped, around 8:30 p.m. I was exhausted.  It was like I'd run a marathon.  It seems like a small adjustment in life, but it's something that could have a major impact on my life, and on the lives of more people, if standing were to become a more habitual practice.

I don't see myself getting a treadmill desk.  But I do see myself writing while standing, or the very least thinking while standing.  I see myself eating breakfast and reading the new york times while standing.  I see myself doing my morning writing while standing, and maybe, eventually all my writing while standing.  I see myself reading book while slowly walking around my apartment.

There's something about standing that biases us towards action.  And something about sitting in a chair that biases, or can bias us towards inaction and isolation.  A decision to stand, is a decision to act. I'm not sure yet where those actions are going to take me.

I'm excited to find out.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

This is my home

Last week I moved.

I remember back in June of 2011, I wrote a post on learning that my landlady was thinking about taking my apartment back.  I knew I was going to lose my lovely spot beneath the willow tree.  But I also knew that my home was not an apartment or a place, it was a space inside of me. A solid place of calm and wisdom that I had been cultivating over many years.

That said, it was still a traumatic experience losing my apartment.  And the move has been difficult too.  I procrastinated the packing and the decluttering, so it went on days beyond what it should have.  I'm still only half unpacked.

But I'm in a new home. And there are many things I like about my new place.  It's very bright, and for the first time I have a really open and inviting workspace. It's urban, which suits my style.  And visually it's very private.  In the mornings I have a balcony on which to stand that faces a brick wall. The morning sun rises above it.  I can look out onto a tree lined street. And passers by, if they looked up would see me.  But no one is in a position to stare at me doing this strange, still meditation that is still so unusual in our culture.  So I feel less self conscious.  I am outside now.

As the morning unfolds though, it does get a little noisy.  It's on a big busy street, and many of the tenants are young guys in their thirties.  So there is music sometimes, and pot smoking on the balcony.  But it's not party central.  Just guys dealing with the stresses of finding their way.

And I'm learning that moderate noise can be kind of stimulating. I've discovered some background noise apps that I'm experimenting with. It's a matter of feeling connected to the busy world again. I feel like I did back in the 90s, when I was living in The Plateau with all my hipster friends.  I'm starting over.

Regardless of where I live, however, I have another home.  This blog.  Here I have a record of peace and comfort that is a harbour during whatever storm I'm likely to face in my life. Here I generate calm and confidence, always available to me.

This blog is my ground. This blog is my tree.


Sunday, April 21, 2013

No news is good news

This month, in the Joy of Living program, the focus is on the body. We move from open meditation to object meditation, with the specific object being the bodily sensations. Mostly my meditation this week has been a body scan starting with the forehead and moving down to the feet. In Tergar, before we move on to more potentially distracting objects like thoughts and emotions, we spend a month with the body.

It's good for me to stay with a structured program for a while. Especially as I work on something as challenging as a book. I know I've felt stuck in this intermediate stage for a while, and sometimes the way out of that is to go back to beginner's mind.

One thing I became very conscious of this week is the effect of charged information on my mind.  Last Sunday was the Boston Marathon, and this week has been a manhunt. I found myself, like many people, drawn into the spectacle of seeing this young younger brother, captured. Despite everything he'd done, I felt a tremendous empathy for him. It seemed from his story that he was a dependent younger brother caught in the web of a dominant brother, and a terrible ideology. I couldn't stop clicking the New York Times site. I got into stupid Facebook arguments about whether he should be read his rights in the interest of public safety.

I felt my whole body tense and manic.

Last week I read a very interesting opinion piece about the toxic effects of following the news. It seemed a little extreme at the time, but I'm starting to open my mind to the possibility that he's right. There's not much I can do for this young man, other than hope he escapes the death sentence, and that his story in some way gives us insight into how fanatics are formed. But following this constant flow of factoids make us feel powerless, jumpy, helpless and distracted. News is the information equivalent of sugar. I wonder how much of the depression I struggle with is related to it.

I would probably be just as well informed if I read good magazines and recently published books, and my mind would be clearer.

If I want to write high quality information, I need to consume high quality information. And I need to believe that there is purpose, meaning and wisdom in doing this. I'm not going to feel this way, or believe that this pursuit is meaningful if I spend the rest of my life hooked up to the news machine.

This week I lean into this and keep to a resolution to not to follow this case anymore. And while I'm at it, I'm going to give news a break. I'll read about it eventually in the New Yorker, once the facts and the details emerge.  I don't need to be kept abreast of every detail.

And truth is I don't need to be kept abreast of every detail on anything. I can stay informed without being up to the minute. And in that way, I hope, I can stay more in touch with the present moment.


Sunday, April 14, 2013

Happy Feet

It's been said that the eyes are the window to the soul. In Zhan Zhuang, it seems, the feet are like the door. Today and for the next while, I intend to focus on what Lam Kam Chuen calls "the pump."

This is an area of your foot that in martial arts transforms chi from a source of well being to a source of explosive power. It's accessed by shifting your attention from the mid-foot towards the ball of the foot and two triangles that can be visualized with the ball of the foot as an important point. The triangle formed by the ball of the foot, the big toe and the little toe.  And the triangle formed by the ankle, the ball of the foot and the big toe.

Master Chen suggests experimenting by shifting the focus between standing on a full triangle created by the heel, the big and the little toe, and then shifting to the smaller triangle created the ball and the toes. The first emphasizes health, the second, power.

Either way, bringing attention to the feet creates a tremendous sense of stability to your practice.

It's challenging. Today as I stood, I foccussed on trying to rest calmly in the energy that arises when my attention is on the ball of my foot. So much natural alignment springs from this focus. The knees are drawn slightly, but naturally towards each other, which enables the hips and the lower spine to settle into a natural seating posture. The Tan Tien then falls easily into triangle with the soles of the feet. Eventually, a warm energy begins to flow. With arms in first position, I feel a stable magnetic energy throughout my entire body.

In two weeks I move. It's a stressful time of change and lots of tedious work. It's easy to fall into habits of anxiety and procrastination. The practice goal this week is to bring my attention often and regularly to my feet, hoping that the grounded energy will keep my mind calm and my power flowing and stable.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

End of Cleanse

So my three week cleanse is officially over.  Right in time for Easter Friday tomorrow.  I hadn't even planned this as a lent thing, but it feels like part of a natural cycle.  Maybe I'll repeat this same time next year.

I've lost a few pounds and I'm motivated to continue avoiding sugar, caffeine and white bread. I feel significantly less compulsive about food now.

But the journey is far from over.  Without this built in cycle of physical hunger, I'm confronted  with the different kinds of hunger I avoid: emotional, spiritual and a feeling that I'm still not connected to the world.

Next weekend I do a mini-retreat at the Tergar center on the subject of boredom.  So much of the root of boredom is hunger. The hunger for things to happen, for love and affection.  And what I'm noticing this morning, a kind of numbness around that hunger. I don't want to feel it.  I want to pretend it's not there.  But if I don't feel it, I can't start to address it with the kind of life and kind of habits that will eventually satisfy it.

The healthy cycle that will keep it well fed starts today.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

In Between State

Sunday morning practice and I'm feeling very much the strains of being at an in between state. I feel the energy, but I am also conscious of a lot of financial and professional anxieties that make it hard to keep a stable focus.

I'm alternating between a free floating awareness and dividing my anxiety down to the core emotional response. I'm trying to be patient with myself.

I'm also moving into an awareness of my environment, how it affects my sense of stability. Doing some house cleaning,and for the first time in a while feeling motivated to do that.

I wonder if this motivation is coming from the cleanse.  Is it that I have more energy? Or is it that I'm more conscious now of my well being and the way that having a messy, chaotic house undermines that?

The important thing is to be aware of how I feel as I give up self destructive habits.  I would never go back to smoking.  It would be wonderful to reach the state where I would never go back to eating poorly, allowing my home to fall apart,  give my mind up to a television screen or spend money foolishly.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Open Energy

Day 16 of the cleanse.  Today I found a way to combine open awareness with my regular standing mediation.  I make the chi part of the openness. I don't try to direct it, I just notice it.  Almost immediately this morning I felt the energy in the right side of my body.  I felt, and still feel the pleasant tingling in my tummy and up my spine.  It's not so much that it felt more solid as it felt more sustainable.

I know this has much to do with the change in my diet. I'm remembering more and more how it felt that year when everything seemed to fall into place back in my late twenties.  Having developed the habit of rice, beans and dark brown bread, I had virtually no food cravings.  I felt tremendous energy. I felt healthy, and I felt it was easy to stay healthy.  It was no effort at all.

I'm going to get back to that state.  Even after the cleanse I'm going to keep to a whole food diet, with very few cookies and white flour treats.  I'm going to try and gradually get Ben to that.  But the main thing is to keep myself to that diet. And to keep up my meditation and my relationship with this healthy energy.

And also to find a way to use my financial stress as a support for my practice.  I read today than we we are in periods of exceptional stress our decisions are over optimistic.  I need to get myself to a level of average stress, where I'm able to make wise decisions.

Above all I need to know that there is wisdom in me, and that I can count on it.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Open awareness

I'm two weeks into this cleanse now.  Last weekend I did a two day meditation workshop at the Tergar centre in Montreal. This was the closest I've ever come to a meditation retreat and I'm feeling calm, focussed, ready for six months of Tergar style practice.  This is a very light, secular form of Tibetan buddhism. The basic practice involves alternating between object oriented meditation and open awareness. Mingyur Rinpoche, the leader of Tergar calls it shinay. He describes it as the gentle feeling of peace one gets just after a vigorous run, the end of the work week, or any activity that results in a moment of "phewf, now I can rest."  This feeling is the seed of rest you want to feel when you do shinay.
  I'm feeling calmer and lighter. I am lighter.  I've lost a few pounds on this cleanse so far, and it's nice to feel so much less compelled by my addictions. I feel the urge to eat a cookie, but I don't have to struggle with that urge.  I did have a sliver of apple pie on the weekend.  But I was happy with a taste and didn't feel deprived when I didn't eat more.  It's nice to feel in touch with a basic sense of power. A natural power, not a willed power.
  Mingyur Rinpoche has a really nice framework for practice: using your resistance or suffering as support for practice.  When I feel a resistance to a routine I want to instill, usually a cleaning routine, or a healthy eating routine, instead of struggling to over come it, I simply rest in my awareness of this resistance. I allow myself to become curious, to breathe, then to watch what happens to this resistance as I continue with the action I've chosen.  In this way, almost any routine I'm trying to establish becomes a meditation. I've always known this, but it helps to know that there will be a community to support these small, but important observations.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Lightness

I'm on day 11 of this cleanse.  Today I had a good stand.  Better than yesterday.  It was interesting that I started in first position and then almost right away I felt that energy in my right arm. I decided to just go with it.  Be aware of the energy and follow the path.  Over the course of an hour it started to build in my Tan Tien. I felt a warmth up my spine.

But I'm still feeling a little anemic.  This may have something to do with the heavy bleeding.  So I'll see if I can find any good solutions in vegetarian diets for that.

My sense as I was standing though, is that there was some stuff being cleaned out. Some really old body memories along with the other toxins.  Maybe the fatigue is part of that.

In general after this stand, I feel a certain lightness.  Maybe it's lightheadness.  Maybe it's even hunger.  Maybe my body is shutting down in starvation mode.  I'm not sure.  But I'm going to be patient and see what happens.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Information consumption

Feeling bleary this morning and wondering why.  I've been eating well, I'm over my cold.  Shouldn't I be feeling more vitality and concentration?

It hit me towards the end of my mediation that I was tired because I'd been up late, net surfing, watching DVDs.  Harmless stuff.  But enough to keep me up too late.

Once I've let go of my food addictions, I'm not going to have much choice but to confront my digital addictions.  And once I've done that I'm probably not going to have much choice but to face the things that my addictions protect me from, anxiety, resentment, regret.  All those things that hit you at middle age.

Patience.  That's all there is sometimes.  Just patience.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

A step back

My cold kept me up all night, so this morning I'm feeling deflated.  But I'm going to be patient with myself.  I know that the energy is going to start building in me as I progress with this cleanse. So I'm not going to beat myself up over a low energy day.  Sometimes it's natural to take a step back.

This weekend I'm signed up for a Tergar meditation workshop.  Level one is about cultivating a warm affection towards yourself, and a constant determination to cultivate happiness.

I'm impatient.  I feel after all my years of meditation that this should come naturally to me, and yet caring about myself is daily practice.   And a very difficult skill to develop.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Growing

Note to self: never go back to unhealthy eating habits.

I feel very good.  This despite a cold, a very heavy period, and whatever else may be going wrong in my life.  I feel this core of healthy energy almost effortlessly available to me whenever I need it.
I feel awake, alive, warm inside. Vital.

This morning I woke up early and had a half hour stand.  Then I followed pretty much the same routine as yesterday.  Some first and second position to get the energy going. Some exercises to open up the channels a little more.  And then first position and just watch what happens.

Pretty much the same as yesterday, just stronger.  I feel the energy growing on the right side of my body, lifting my arm to the point where I can easily just allow it to support me. I fell it intermittently flowing up my spine. Sometimes I get distracted by some recent obsession.  But now when that happens, I shift into making the obsessive energy the object of my awareness.  Pretty soon I feel a natural compulsion to return to the more pleasant flow of chi.

Because I've been following the Tergar program, I'm also trying to bring in some compassion.  At one point I started to cry.  It struck me how much of my life had been a turning away from chi, from God, from natural, harmless health and integrity.  I felt like an errant child who had spent my whole life foolishly misbehaving, and harming myself and others.  I cried it out.  All the while still holding on to the energy.  And then I just decided to forgive myself in the same way I would forgive Ben.  I'm not sure I feel this deeply yet.  But it's a start.

Today they start the process of electing a new Pope.  I haven't been a practicing Catholic for many years, but I'm going to pray.  I deeply hope they elect someone who can reconnect the church to people so that it can awaken that powerful global network of love that I believe the Church has the potential to bring forth.

And I hope that I can continue this journey with the same devotion and with the same faith that I once had to this guiding spirit.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Breakthrough

The sciatica that was keeping me up all night is now gone.  Turns out I was pre-menstrual. Usually on the first day of my cycle, I would feel drained and exhausted.  But this morning I'm feeling a really nice core of vitality and clean energy. The kind of energy that is going to motivate me to keep this cleanse up for the whole three weeks.  I'll break a little today for lunch with a friend.  But the cleanse is about "avoiding" those things.  So I'm sure I'll find things on the menu with some healthy greens.  Maybe I'll eat something first so that I'm not over ordering.

I had a very pleasant stand.  Twenty minutes of second position.  Then some exercises to open the channels.  Then I just stood in first position, felt the energy in my belly and allowed it to create its own direction.  It started moving first in the right side of my body, lifting my arm, filling my leg and eventually moving up to my head.  The left side of my body seemed to become completely empty. I "leaned"in a way on the right side energy.  Allowing it to simply take me over and hold me up.  Then eventually the left side started to fill up too.  As my palms became parallel, I could sense the energy moving back and forth between them, like a ping pong ball.

I'm going to keep to that practice this week.  Just let the energy do its thing.  And watch what happens.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Liberation

Last night a broke slightly from the cleanse.  Went out for Indian food with friends.  Had a spinach paneer with some cheese and vegetable biryani.  One onion bajhi.  But overall, compared to what I would have normally eaten--butter chicken, fried stuff, big beer--- it felt good to go out and not overeat.  At the end of the meal I really had a strong sense of satiety, not just foodwise, but psychologically.  It feels good to see the possibility of be liberated from all these compulsive food choices, motivated to eat by authentic, not emotional hunger.
  Had some insomnia last night because I'm still having problems with the back pain.  I'm not sure if this is because I haven't been running as much, or something to do with the cleanse.  It could also be this large uterine fibroid I recently discovered.  It's part of the reason I'm keeping up with the cleanse. I wonder if bad habits have built up to grow this fibroid.
   I know I've always stored a lot of tension in my back.  It may be that now my body is going in to deal with that.
  Here's hoping it will pass. While I feel these aches and pain, I'm also feeling a growing energy.  It's as though this energy now allows me to deal with the foundation parts that have always been too weak.
 Time to rebuild.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Over the hump

I read yesterday that day four is usually the "hump" day in a cleanse. If you get past this day, then the rest is easier.

It was the most difficult day.  I felt back pain, bloated, blocked up. Almost flu-ish.  This morning I'm tired and I still have a backache and I feel like I'm still waiting for the sludge to clear.  But I definitely feel more energy and a more solid sense of what I need to do to keep this cleanse going.  Eat smaller portions of beans, for one thing!  Maybe keep them to one meal.

Last night I felt some cravings. I felt that sense of emptiness and disconnection that continues to haunt me, even after all these years.  I couldn't eat, so I stood.  Obviously I felt much, much better from standing than I've ever felt from parking myself with some food in front of a video.

This morning it was so clear to me how I have literally been feeding my suffering. Whenever my suffering calls out I give it a snack.  No wonder it's so big and powerful.

If I could reprogram this loop so that my suffering is greeted with natural opiates instead of food and distraction, then logically is should just gradually diminish on its own without me trying to work so hard trying to diminish it.

Let's see.

Friday, March 8, 2013

The Crappy Feeling

Day 4.  I was not expecting this.  Yesterday, it really seemed that I was going to have this relatively painless transition to a clean body and brain.  And then last night something started to hit me.  It started with back pain, and full body cramps.  This morning I feel bilious and vile.  As though I'm now paying for every pizza I've ever eaten in my life.
  One possible explanation for this is that I'm not drinking enough water to flush out the "toxins."  So today I'll drink some water and try and remember to put a lot of chia on things for water retention.  Maybe it's the peanut butter?  Am I possibly allergic?  I don't know, but I'm going to cut it out.
  At the same time, I'm feeling a good building energy behind this crappy energy.  Something that's telling me that it's worth it to live through this. And I'm also noticing that I'm a little less addicted to food.  That when I feel a craving it feels a little more manageable. Not so compulsive.
  For now, though, dark day of the body.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

The Silky Feeling

Day 3 of my cleanse. Yesterday I started with some stiff muscles and not much else. Slowly over the course of the morning, however, I began to feel glimmers of a natural energy. My friend Jeff Warren wrote a piece for the New York Times about an intensive retreat he did. He spoke of a day, after a particularly dark night of the soul, when he started to feel this "silky" energy all around him.  I've started to feel that.  But it's intermittent.
  I feel it for an hour or so, this feeling that I'm back in touch with my natural opiates, and then I get a headache, or fatigue sets in.  Yesterday I dealt with the fatigue by putting some chia seeds in a smoothy.  Today, as I drive my parents to the airport for their trip to Israel, my adrenaline will probably be coming from my lack of sleep. Woke up early this morning around 3 a.m.  Monkey mind crawling around.  So I meditated for about forty five minutes. Then read some Pema Chodron. It was a chapter about the in-between state.  The place that meditators have to live in for a long time until they grasp that the uncertainty is actually a stable resting point.
  I feel right now that this cleanse is something of an in-between state.  I feel ready to start giving up my addictions and facing my suffering.  As Chodron writes, pizza and videos are no match for suffering. So better to just face it and let it build the strength and wisdom it can nurture.
  Around 6 a.m. I went back to meditating.  It went better than yesterday.  I do feel a certain energy building, a sharp feeling in my gut that if both painful, but also a familiar starting point of natural pleasure.  And around me, the "silky feeling".
  It's the tender place that Chodron talks about. The place of bodhichitta  It's the place I want to protect and cultivate, for myself and for everyone in my life.