Happiness as default mode

I've made the switch.

This month I prepare for level three of Tergar's Joy of Living program. As part of the preparation we do an insight meditation called The Mirror meditation.  After preliminary relaxing of the mind, we "see"  everything in the visual field as though it we were looking into a mirror, as though everything that seems solid is really just a reflection.

The more I practice this perceptual mode, of looking at the world as though it were not as solid and real as it seems, the more I start to feel, at an experiential level, how transient my suffering is.  It feels as solid as a chair, a building, a city. But really it's not.

In ordinary awareness, and often in meditative awareness, I conceive of life as heavy, overwhelming suffering with transient moments of happiness and lucidity. That is the narrative my brain spins without any direction. That unfortunately has been, as it is for many people, my default mode.

But this week I am reversing this. This energy, this vitality, this state of being, this happiness, this warmth, this effervescence in my soul,  this is the solid ground.  The boredom, the anxiety, the lethargy, the despair, these are what come and go.

What is keeping that suffering rooted is my subconscious belief that the suffering is immutable, inevitable.

My intention this week is to catch this belief in action. Gently correct it and then get back to the default mode that I want to have.  The default mode I know have.

Joy.

I've Had A Dream

Last night I dreamt that I'd turned a corner, both literally and allegorically.  I dreamt that I now had the power to be happy, that depression was permanently behind me, like a very bad life long cold. From now on I was just on a permanent path of emotional health, joy, the ability to love and be loved, work hard and thrive and everything that comes with that.

I also dreamed that there was a new invention. It was 3D goggles that children wore in the car that would make the scenery look more interesting.  Make it look like they were driving through the best, most interesting city in the world.  I could see the world through the eyes of a child wearing these goggles. But what she was seeing was Montreal, the city I now live in.

I realized that what other people can only have through technological innovation and re-creation, I have naturally.

All I need to do is live my great life and appreciate it.

It's interesting that I have this dream during a week where I've been very much seeing my consciousness practice is a way to see what goes on in my head during the day as dream like.  Meditation trains you to wake up regularly throughout the day from the dream like stream in your head.  It helps me to sit for a moment and remember what it is I'd like to do if I had the power to do it.  Just like I do in lucid dreaming.

To wake up and regain my sense of purpose.

Faith

As my energy sinks farther into my core, I am forming some different ideas about faith. I used to think of faith as more of a thought form. Something you believed, in your head, and you stuck to out as a matter of committed principle. More and more these days  faith feels like an energy in my body, like a power. People who have faith, in a path, in themselves, in the society around them, have a kind of psychic energy. We respond to that energy because we want that faith.  We need that faith.
  Over the years I've cultivated faith in this meditative practice. I seem to learn slowly, but how else can you learn faith? You can embrace it as a hypothesis, but deeply rooted faith only develops once it has been tested again and again. Cultivating energy in my core has paid off for me again and again. Resting in my faith feels natural, if I let myself do that.
  But I still struggle with my undermining doubts. Recently I've started using a technique recommended by Martha Beck. Sit with that doubt and feel it as false. Then sit with the faith and feel it as true.
  In meditation this morning I let that true feeling sink into my gut. I can root that feeling and make it such a core part of me that I will have to devote less and less energy into believing in myself.  That belief will be locked in. And as I use it to nurture belief in others, it will only grow.
 

Sinking into my gut

I've spent a long time, during this process of letting my energy sink, resting in my heart. There is so much numbness in there, so much work that still needs to be done,  that I haven't wanted to leave. Yesterday I had an emotional/physical insight into hatred.  I could feel a layer of hatred in my heart, and then underneath, in an actual physical place, I could feel the desire to be free of that hatred.  I could feel that desire to be free, my compassion, in a place deeper.  And that's when I knew that the hatred would never last.  Things sink, and one day that hatred would simply dissolve into my much deeper desire to be free of it. I would like to continue this project of mapping out the heart.  Locating feelings, especially the positive ones when I feel them. And perhaps I will.
  But I sense that my heart is telling me it's time to move on, and move down my body into my tan tien. Moving down into this place feels like a rooting process.  I'm allowing this energy of an open heart to now move down my body into the earth of my liver, of my lower body. That's where the blocks dissolve, that's wear the toxins get cleansed. I'm going to take my time.  I'm going to take it slow.  Resting in my Tan Tien is a very intense experience.  Alot of feelings will emerge.
  But here lies wisdom.

Writing from the heart

Feeling this new, growing energy in my heart, means I feel more compelled to live from my heart. I trust that if I sit with this energy in time I will feel a place of completion, joy, reverence.  A state of being.

But how do I write from this.  Last night I was watching a television show with that standard scene, which we've all pretty much seen a milliion times now.  A piano teacher tells a student that their playing is too perfect, too intellectual.  They need to feel the pain and play from that.

I've tried to do that in my writing, but it never seems to work. My heart feels numb and self-conscious when I do that.  But I suppose naming the numbness and the self-consciousness is a start. My own heart is so muddy and chaotic it feels like, and my environment continues to reflect that even if I know I've made a lot of progress.

Like it or not, there is squalor in my heart.  Light squalor, but squalor nonetheless.

In the television show, the character worries that he has no pain to draw from.  He lives with loving, politically correct, lesbian parents.  Meanwhile, he's forgotten that his father is an embarrassing, lonely alcoholic, who had has distanced himself from.

I sit with my heart  and feel years of numbness.  And I worry that I will never unfreeze all these blocks.

But that numbness is there because of pain.  A lot of pain.  I will never have to worry about not having pain. Pain is good.  Suffering is bad. The resistance to pain, the mechanisms by which we dull the pain.

I don't want to feel that numbness.

A few years back, I found places in the energy centre in my head  that were full of depression and anxiety. Now I'm feeling them in my heart.  Or not feeling them, but I know I'm working my way there.