Tergar's JOL3 course has been something of a thrill ride.
A few days ago I was laughing hysterically about life in my "skin pocket." Today it's raining, I'm arguing with my son, and sifting through some of the same old annoying professional problems I've had all my life. Suddenly my life is feeling a little more mundane. But to be honest, I kind of like it here.
In one of the webinars our instructors suggested having a default practice. A practice we go to whenever things feel like they are hopeless and slipping away, and we're feeling lost again.
I'm thinking mine might be something of a take on Mingyur Rinpoche's making friends with his panic.
It's been a long time since I've struggled with panic. So, I wouldn't consider panic to be my best friend, or best teacher anymore.
The emotional situation that has haunted my life has been ambivalence. I grew up in a family of constant fighters and bickerers and that numb, muddy, lava like energy has haunted me all my life. In Robert Boyce's wonderful book on writing he identifies ambivalence as the most popular reason for why writers have a difficult time writing. They have ambivalence towards their writing, and whether they realize it or not, this is just an expression of their ambivalence towards life.
Recognizing ambivalence as my greatest emotional challenge, making very good friends with it and seeing it as a wonderful teacher may be my best and surest path towards greater, more sustainable wisdom.
Today I did a writing meditation that used this ambivalence as support for meditation. I started in open awareness, listening just to sounds and feeling the ground beneath my feet and bum. Then I felt that familiar ball of numb, tangled emotions in my gut.
I tried as much as possible to drop the storyline. I just felt the feelings. As it the habit of my practice, I moved from those feelings towards some compassion, towards the desire to be free of whatever in those feelings was causing me suffering. In time this energy rose into my brain and then towards the crown, where I start to feel my no more familiar place of selfless, timeless, spacious awareness. A place which offers not much for the ambivalence to grasp. Without time, without self, negative emotions can't stabilize. All that is left is relief, calm, warmth, intelligence and life.
If I can regularly connect with this feeling and rejoice in it, then I will have joy. And joy, mild productive joy, is the best place to write from. It's the place that readers want to be. They want to feel this kernel and current of joy in the book that they pick up. And I want to be a vehicle for that.
This seems to as good a default practice as I can get.
