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.