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.
