In my first hour of meditation today I had this insight. Just as thought is impermanent, so is the consciousness and the life that is driven by thought. In my life, and I imagine in the history of humanity. We are, right now, in a society wrapped up in the neocortex, as though this were the only part of the brain. But the brain extends all throughout the body, and increasingly I believe that the most important part is the gut.
Certainly it's the most important part for physical health. And wisdom, for me, begins with the decision to do what I can to stabilize my physical health. So in hour two sitting with my Tan Tien was not the most comfortable feeling. The neocortex feels like a safe abstract place. But the gut is full of toxic, uncomfortable, sometimes weak feelings. No wonder everyone wants to hang out in their brain. Or at least that's where my habits bring me.
Hour three I decided to stand. But first I did a little reading from Bruce Frantzis Opening The Engergy Gates of Your Body. Somehow I seem to have skipped over the part where he recommends at least six months spent with an instructor, just on stabilizing the tan tien energies. Longer if you're doing it alone! Okay, well, I have spent about what now? Twenty years? I have made some progress. But I've got some work to do to make it really stable. I think this has something to do with the erratic parenting problem. But I need to believe that I will get the stable love I didn't always get. I stood for an hour and started to feel the hope that I can give myself this stable energy.
And then I can give it, to myself, to Ben, to my parents and my brother. There are according to Mingyur Rinpoche four Buddah nature blockers, the first two being self-hatred and the second being hatred, or contempt towards others. In hour two I started to feel the dissolution of my self-hatred, and finally in my belly joy. A really nice joy that I reconized from the moment I learned I was pregnant. This was a a creative, delightful joy, and if this is the kind of joy that tan tien generates than put me down for the next six month, or next twenty years.
Whatever, there is no time really. It's a fabrication, like sense of self. And this is what I played with in hour five. I love this freedom meditation that I learned in JOL3. Letting go of self, and time, and with it agency. Once I let go of that I can feel the chi charting its own agency. I got a big dose of self in the last 10 minutes, when I started to feel that familiar restlessness and craving. But I decided to let the chi deal with that, and like a lovely, competent parent, it soon distracted me with a blissful warmth. That is what will be driving me for the next twenty years, not my thoughts.
It's not that I won't have thoughts. But I volunteer my life to the path that this energy will open up for me.
