I noticed in my JOL3 guidebook yesterday that I'm supposed to do a two day retreat at some point during my six months of practice. Because I'm actually at midpoint--14 weeks into it--and because I'm not sure I'll have the time again in the next few months--or ever--I decided to do it now.
I'm supposed to do at least six hours a day, each day. It's possible I've actually done that in my more enthusiastic stages. But I've never done that much meditation formally before. It's kind of like doing an ultra marathon of meditation. At first it felt incredibly daunting.
But I'm up to it. I've just completed five hours of meditation. I'll probably go out for a run, and then I'll do another hour tonight before bed. To make it a retreat, I'm staying away from news, internet surfing television, even as much as possible, imaginary conversations.
So far it's been an interesting trip. In the first hour, I felt a pleasant all over vitality that seemed to originate mostly in my brain and felt like what I would call, a sort of spirit molecule awakening, as though my body was heading into the either and was kind of connecting with all the awareness around me. Towards the end of this first hour though, I started to wonder if this was really happening, or this was just come kind of intellectual concept I was framing my experience in.
Hour two was more challenging. The excitement of starting a meditation retreat was starting to ebb, and I found myself sitting in boredom, restlessness, all the feelings I try as much as possible to avoid during a normal day. Doubt starting setting in about this path, about this decision. Shouldn't I be doing something more important with my life. It started to become clear to me how much I really do believe that happiness is a result of staying with the program, the job, the status, the security of a respectable life. I doubt myself, deeply, because I feel I've permanently fallen off that track, that debt will weigh me down and money problems will win out, and that this is my due.
Hour three I found myself a little happier. I felt a joy in my heart that I know has very little to do with money or status, and everything to do with my spiritual beliefs. Nothing wrong with money, an important job, power, status, respectablity, any of those things. But the joy in my heart that I've cultivated out of my spiritual practice is not something that can be bought, or given as a reward. It's there because of many, many hours of faith in this energy. So it felt good to get my faith, the ground of my practice and my power, back.
I broke for a light lunch and did a little reading of Rinpoche's book, and found myself drawn to a passage about Buddah nature as a nugget of gold hidden deep under a mountain of waste and mud. As I set into hour four, I had that story priming my mind, and I felt the energy move down from the joy of my heart to the discomfort of my gut. As yes, my gut, the mountain of waste in I hide, ignore and forget my most powerful feelings, the most powerful seat of my practice, the dan tien.
Hour five was really about explore the literal, experiential truth of gut wisdom. This insight is such a flickering fire fly, or so it feels like. Man I hate resting in my gut. But it's where the wisdom is, and if I don't accept that, I'm like a banana (or is it a cocoa) tree. The fruit of my practice gets cut down once a year, and everything has to start again. If I want my power to have staying power, even though I recognize that the fruits of that staying power will never be permanent, I need to really root myself back in my tan tien.
I need to keep working on that energy.
For mysef, and for everyone who might be open to this teaching.
