This is an exercise in living. My Ideal Day:
I wake up profoundly well rested from a deep, dreamless healing sleep. I rise, in a feeling of grounded peace and equanimity. I meditate for an hour in a state of pure lucidity the energy rising in my from my core, like the sun. I miss Ben, but when I wake up there's a sweet e-mail with a picture from the wonderful life that he's having. I don't know what it is yet, but I know I can trust him. I am driven on this day, like most days with a sustainable feeling of faith and gratitude. I dedicate my meditation to every being. May all our suffering be transformed into peace. My all our hearts be open. May all of our wisdom shine from within.
I walk into a clean kitchen: dishes put a way, tables and counter tops wiped down, grime gone, floor swept and mopped. I feel like a very different person and my environment is the first and foremost clue to how much I' changed.
I weigh myself, and the number is data on a healthy life with well chosen indulgences and plenty of exercise.
Breakfast is healthy and delicious, green apple and cheese on baguette, or stone cut oatmeal, berries, cream and sugar. My gut feels really strong and full of a diverse pack of bacteria.
I love my home, bright, quiet, well located. Near the mountain so I can run. After reading the newspaper, I write for an hour. The ideas, feelings, images, insights flow easily from a clear vision. Why not, they are coming from that place that is me and also everyone. I am remembering my life with some pain, but also joy. I breathe in all the despair and loneliness and alienation that I felt for so many years, and breathe out candour and humour and hope and power. A power that lifts up everyone who reads my words.
I look around my home, so clean and comfortable and fun. Having the money for a cleaning lady, helps, but I'm also effortlessly tidy and I still stick to the basic routines that got me there. I have cultivated the cleaning habit and it's not going anywhere, ever.
Phone rings. It's a fascinating new friend. We're having dinner with our other fascinating friends later on. Cool friends, not narcissists. Real laughter and warmth and reciprocity. I can't believe I have the money to buy them dinner, but I do. Yesterday I got another great residual cheque. My debts are gone I have a stable writing career. Martha is happy and so is my NY publisher.
I've finished that book tour, which went so well. It's such a wonderful feeling to look out into a crowd of people who feel enriched by my writing. And I'm researching for my upcoming trip to Africa.
I have lunch and read for a while, as I've always done. Do a little editing on some of the work I've done recently.
Around 3 p.m. I head out for a run. I feel great. I'm at a healthy weight. I'm running effortlessly and strong. Still doing a little parkour. Ben still thinks I'm hilarious. Only the occasional aches and pains. I return home, settle into a bath, get into my comfy dressing gown. Watch a bit of T.V. Thank God the Trump administration is over! What a relief that people finally shifted the balance of sanity back. Probably won't have quite the same restful sleep tonight after a rich meal. But I'll adapt and find my way back the next day, or the day after that.
Door rings. It's my boyfriend. I'm getting dressed and offer him a drink, but he wants to fool around first, and so do I. I'll get back to this later...
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Spiritual Capital
I've always felt a connection to some kind of spiritual power. Ever since I was young and throughout some pretty empty times I've felt more connected to this power than I often do to people. Or at least groups of people.
I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm probably not much of a party person. I like the food, and I like the laughter, but still I don't usually feel nurtured by these encounters. And I don't usually feel that I'm doing much for others by keeping the conversation going, pleasant as it might be.
What if I were to put my energy this year into what I care about most, what's out there? What I can feel out in the universe. What would I lose, really?
I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm probably not much of a party person. I like the food, and I like the laughter, but still I don't usually feel nurtured by these encounters. And I don't usually feel that I'm doing much for others by keeping the conversation going, pleasant as it might be.
What if I were to put my energy this year into what I care about most, what's out there? What I can feel out in the universe. What would I lose, really?
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Hugs
I'm back to standing.
I've been reading Christopher McDougal's book Natural Born Heroes, and I've re-discovered my fascia, the weblike elastic casing that is stronger than any muscle. I suppose I've wandered off the path for a few years with running and sitting, but it's time to come back to this root practice.
Sitting has helped me to build the emotional component of my standing practice. This morning while I was holding the ball, I felt a connection to what we feel when we hug someone we love, and what we feel when we are hugged.
This loving kindness is woven throughout the fascia which is all memory, all awareness. Like the membrane of the fetal sack, it's the thin border between our soul and the world.
I've been reading Christopher McDougal's book Natural Born Heroes, and I've re-discovered my fascia, the weblike elastic casing that is stronger than any muscle. I suppose I've wandered off the path for a few years with running and sitting, but it's time to come back to this root practice.
Sitting has helped me to build the emotional component of my standing practice. This morning while I was holding the ball, I felt a connection to what we feel when we hug someone we love, and what we feel when we are hugged.
This loving kindness is woven throughout the fascia which is all memory, all awareness. Like the membrane of the fetal sack, it's the thin border between our soul and the world.
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Faith
Faith is power.
Without it there is no freedom, just constant grasping for the ground, a feeling of never finding a balance in life. Faith is knowing that there's a centre to be found even in the tiniest of footholds.
I have been so fortunate to have found these footholds along a very emotionally unstable life. From the first yoga book my mother abandoned in which I discovered for the first time the practice of sitting still. Through my four minute tai chi routine from a woman's magazine. Gradually I have become aware of this solid, abiding awareness. This self.
I have many unhappy memories, but through that always this place of true refuge. This freedom. During the worst of times, and when I needed it the most, the best of times. Today in morning meditation I began to see it, the continuity. When I looked at my life, for a moment I didn't see the long history of disappointments and heartbreak. I saw the long history of this lovely, strong, loving self that I've always been able to depend on.
It's still a challenge, but the challenge is what keeps me strong. The challenge is not whether I can keep this up all my life. That I know with more certainty every year. It's whether I can keep it up today.
Can I know myself today.
Without it there is no freedom, just constant grasping for the ground, a feeling of never finding a balance in life. Faith is knowing that there's a centre to be found even in the tiniest of footholds.
I have been so fortunate to have found these footholds along a very emotionally unstable life. From the first yoga book my mother abandoned in which I discovered for the first time the practice of sitting still. Through my four minute tai chi routine from a woman's magazine. Gradually I have become aware of this solid, abiding awareness. This self.
I have many unhappy memories, but through that always this place of true refuge. This freedom. During the worst of times, and when I needed it the most, the best of times. Today in morning meditation I began to see it, the continuity. When I looked at my life, for a moment I didn't see the long history of disappointments and heartbreak. I saw the long history of this lovely, strong, loving self that I've always been able to depend on.
It's still a challenge, but the challenge is what keeps me strong. The challenge is not whether I can keep this up all my life. That I know with more certainty every year. It's whether I can keep it up today.
Can I know myself today.
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Thanksgiving
Canadian Thanksgiving.
Much to be grateful for this year. More money, more work. A stronger connection to my basic goodness, intelligence and warmth.
I have a healthy, fit body. I have an expertise that's valuable. Gratitude is the emotion that enriches and accelerates whatever good habit I've been able to cultivate. It's important to give thanks for all that has been given to us. But also for the goodness that we have cultivated through our own efforts, decisions and commitments.
Gratitude makes us feel safe. It signals to the body and the brain that we have enough and that we are enough.
More than enough .
Much to be grateful for this year. More money, more work. A stronger connection to my basic goodness, intelligence and warmth.
I have a healthy, fit body. I have an expertise that's valuable. Gratitude is the emotion that enriches and accelerates whatever good habit I've been able to cultivate. It's important to give thanks for all that has been given to us. But also for the goodness that we have cultivated through our own efforts, decisions and commitments.
Gratitude makes us feel safe. It signals to the body and the brain that we have enough and that we are enough.
More than enough .
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Letting go
I'm letting go of old patterns. Stale, destructive habits that don't serve me anymore. Overeating, unhealthy eating, procrastination, over consumption of information and entertainment, squalor. Above all the belief that I don't have the energy and strength to let these go.
The first step to letting go is being aware of them in the first place. And being aware of what purpose they serve. Those habit shield me from vulnerability and fear. I don't want to feel how unbalanced and unsafe I feel. I don't want to feel that tender place in the arch of my back that is throwing my whole posture slightly out of line.
But that's where the safety is.That deep, magnetic energy that I get when I sit and when I stand. It's down in that place that I don't want to go.The root chakra, it's been called.
Letting go of old habits is a twofold process. It's the letting go of the fear, but it's also building the new habit of feeling safe and accepted. Of feeling how stable and balanced I feel when my spine is rooted in relaxed, grounding energy. When I can not just see, but feel the indigo of awareness and the red of the sun rising from the earth.
I have so many good, strong and positive habits in my life. It is time now to let go and surrender to them. And know that I am safe.
The first step to letting go is being aware of them in the first place. And being aware of what purpose they serve. Those habit shield me from vulnerability and fear. I don't want to feel how unbalanced and unsafe I feel. I don't want to feel that tender place in the arch of my back that is throwing my whole posture slightly out of line.
But that's where the safety is.That deep, magnetic energy that I get when I sit and when I stand. It's down in that place that I don't want to go.The root chakra, it's been called.
Letting go of old habits is a twofold process. It's the letting go of the fear, but it's also building the new habit of feeling safe and accepted. Of feeling how stable and balanced I feel when my spine is rooted in relaxed, grounding energy. When I can not just see, but feel the indigo of awareness and the red of the sun rising from the earth.
I have so many good, strong and positive habits in my life. It is time now to let go and surrender to them. And know that I am safe.
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Patterns
Today I'm doing a self-directed retreat.
My life is in a state of transition as I work more, succeed more, and take on more responsibility. The old patterns of fear and reactivity emerge. I remember my professional family, chaotic, stressed, feeling enslaved to so many forces. Samsara. The ordinary whole catastrophe.
Sometimes when I head into a retreat, I have a hope that somehow I can make this all go away. But a kinder, more viable plan is to simply see the pattern and look at where I have a tendency to let things spin out of control.
It's okay to be anxious and feel overwhelmed. But it's also okay to be calm, lucid, focused and resilient.
This week as I prepare for my half marathon, I've been working on resting in the relaxation that emerges from a fit and vital body. Resting in that relaxation creates a positive loop of relaxation.
The same thing happens in loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The more habitual these qualities become the more they grow. For many years I have wrestled with their shadows, attachment, over excitement, pity, passivity. But I feel less desperate and greedy for the fruits of meditation these days. I am deeply grateful for the insights and perceptions that have evolved as a result of this practice. And I am excited in a very real way for them to take root.
My life is in a state of transition as I work more, succeed more, and take on more responsibility. The old patterns of fear and reactivity emerge. I remember my professional family, chaotic, stressed, feeling enslaved to so many forces. Samsara. The ordinary whole catastrophe.
Sometimes when I head into a retreat, I have a hope that somehow I can make this all go away. But a kinder, more viable plan is to simply see the pattern and look at where I have a tendency to let things spin out of control.
It's okay to be anxious and feel overwhelmed. But it's also okay to be calm, lucid, focused and resilient.
This week as I prepare for my half marathon, I've been working on resting in the relaxation that emerges from a fit and vital body. Resting in that relaxation creates a positive loop of relaxation.
The same thing happens in loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The more habitual these qualities become the more they grow. For many years I have wrestled with their shadows, attachment, over excitement, pity, passivity. But I feel less desperate and greedy for the fruits of meditation these days. I am deeply grateful for the insights and perceptions that have evolved as a result of this practice. And I am excited in a very real way for them to take root.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Focus
This week I've been working on focussing my eyes. Or rather resting my eyes, and thus my mind while |I meditate, run, live.
It's so easy to forget this simple, but powerful practice. The mind wanders around as if in a dream, and all we need to do bring is back is simply rest our eyes on a still object: a tree in the distance, a favourie coffee cup, an orange, our hands.
Resting my eyes is the first step, then sensing my body and the space around it, then resting in the outbreath, and finally feeling the inevitable relaxation and flow of pleasant neurotransmitters. Such a simple and powerful algorithm.
Resting the yes on a single point creates focus. This grounds the imagination, and sooner than we realize, we can start dreaming the dream we want to dream and stop being caught in the random dream generator.
It's so easy to forget this simple, but powerful practice. The mind wanders around as if in a dream, and all we need to do bring is back is simply rest our eyes on a still object: a tree in the distance, a favourie coffee cup, an orange, our hands.
Resting my eyes is the first step, then sensing my body and the space around it, then resting in the outbreath, and finally feeling the inevitable relaxation and flow of pleasant neurotransmitters. Such a simple and powerful algorithm.
Resting the yes on a single point creates focus. This grounds the imagination, and sooner than we realize, we can start dreaming the dream we want to dream and stop being caught in the random dream generator.
Monday, August 22, 2016
An experiment in space
This morning I read an interesting little article on how to curb spending. Look at the space between stimulus and response. Be aware of this space and from awareness move towards expanding it.
There are of course so many different ways one could use this insight: food, anger, information and cognitive over consumption.
I've been using it to some extent over the last week in focusing on recovery and rest in my running practice. I used to just run without much thought to transitioning in and out of running with joint exercises, stretching, using my days off to cultivate a more limber nervous system. I've tried to create some space by having an offline time at around 7 p.m.
My life has become much busier of late. It's good because I have some more money, but it's challenging for that same reason. I have to make sure that this money goes towards debt and savings, not just transient stuff. And I need to make sure that I have the energy to accomplish the work that I've committed myself to. And that I take some space in that work for creative pursuits so that I'm renewed and not resentful.
There are of course so many different ways one could use this insight: food, anger, information and cognitive over consumption.
I've been using it to some extent over the last week in focusing on recovery and rest in my running practice. I used to just run without much thought to transitioning in and out of running with joint exercises, stretching, using my days off to cultivate a more limber nervous system. I've tried to create some space by having an offline time at around 7 p.m.
My life has become much busier of late. It's good because I have some more money, but it's challenging for that same reason. I have to make sure that this money goes towards debt and savings, not just transient stuff. And I need to make sure that I have the energy to accomplish the work that I've committed myself to. And that I take some space in that work for creative pursuits so that I'm renewed and not resentful.
Sunday, August 7, 2016
The logic of loving kindness
In Tibetan Buddhism loving kindness is one of the four immeasurables. It is a quality associated with happiness and in cultivating it one prays for happiness and the source of happiness. But it is a quality that is in us, whether we realize it or not, so what we're really praying for is the constant awareness of the lovingkindness that lives in each of our hearts. From that seed of awareness it can be cultivated beyond any measurement.
The traditional loving kindness prayer is something of a sleight of mind, because happiness is there, always. Even our awareness of this desire for happiness is always there. What we often lack is the awareness of this awareness. To be happy in a sustainable way, first you need to know that you want to be happy. A surprising number of people don't know they have this unconscious longing, or won't admit to having it. Their lives, they say to themselves and others, are about more important things than happiness. Or they know they want happiness, but they confuse happiness with the object of happiness. They fall into the delusion that their happiness is dependent on the having a loved one, or the making that loved one happy. This is why we say that attachment is the "near enemy" of loving kindness. Why family relationships are such a tangle, because we can't separate the healthy longing to understand ourselves better, and the unhealthy longing to have and control others.
It's the ability to remain curious and rest in the longing for happiness that is the one most significant cause of happiness. Rest in that and happiness quite simply is.
And soon, within moments really your prayers are answered because happiness is familiarity with the healthy desire for happiness. We have what we're asking for all along.
The traditional loving kindness prayer is something of a sleight of mind, because happiness is there, always. Even our awareness of this desire for happiness is always there. What we often lack is the awareness of this awareness. To be happy in a sustainable way, first you need to know that you want to be happy. A surprising number of people don't know they have this unconscious longing, or won't admit to having it. Their lives, they say to themselves and others, are about more important things than happiness. Or they know they want happiness, but they confuse happiness with the object of happiness. They fall into the delusion that their happiness is dependent on the having a loved one, or the making that loved one happy. This is why we say that attachment is the "near enemy" of loving kindness. Why family relationships are such a tangle, because we can't separate the healthy longing to understand ourselves better, and the unhealthy longing to have and control others.
It's the ability to remain curious and rest in the longing for happiness that is the one most significant cause of happiness. Rest in that and happiness quite simply is.
And soon, within moments really your prayers are answered because happiness is familiarity with the healthy desire for happiness. We have what we're asking for all along.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Pity, Overwhelm, Idiot compassion
This week and for the next while I want to start working on those things that obstruct change, that obstruct my ability to feel and sustain compassion for myself and others.
I'm going to do this in a systematic way. This week look at the first near enemy of compassion: pity. According to Pema Chodron pity obstructs real compassion because it props up a story that we're better than someone. When we see another person as helpless, we don't see their strengths.
Another thing I might want to take a look at is self-pity. This props up the story that I'm less than others and that I can solve my problems by appealing to pity.
I'm going to do this in a systematic way. This week look at the first near enemy of compassion: pity. According to Pema Chodron pity obstructs real compassion because it props up a story that we're better than someone. When we see another person as helpless, we don't see their strengths.
Another thing I might want to take a look at is self-pity. This props up the story that I'm less than others and that I can solve my problems by appealing to pity.
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Core Stillness
I'm beginning to see how the subject of my life is competence.
Every book I've been grappling with seems to be about that. And every book I haven't finished seems to be about that.
But I still don't really feel competent, and maybe that's why I don't seem to be able to finish them.
It's like I'm missing some kind of core competency. Maybe that competency is the ability to feel competent. The ability to notice the small actions I take to make my life and my son't life better. Or rather the habit of doing this. Because I have the ability. We all have the ability to notice the small things that we do.
It's basic behavioural theory. To assimilate something you need to continue rewarding it from time to time. And one of the deepest and most effective rewards is simple acknowledgement.
One of my great accomplishments is meditation. But it's not transformative if I don't bring it into my daily life. I need to stop frequently, throughout the day, and notice that I'm doing that to keep my life, mind and heart centred and present.
Saturday, July 2, 2016
An Adventure in Running Still
In my running I'm trying to focus more on accessing that ease that comes usually around the 3K mark. The tendons and muscles loosen, my belly fills with oxygen, and that pole of energy keeps me in an effortless symbiosis with gravity propelling me forward.
I've also been using some slightly fluffy hypnosis tapes to imagine myself running freely with my pack of animals: horses, dogs, antelope. We're all galloping along in our prime.
The greatest challenge to this is shifting myself out of the obsessive, bickery mode I'm currently in because I have more work than usual and am feeling unusually stressed and overwhelmed. If I could see more clearly how anger cuts me off from my smarter more competent self, shifting out of this would probably be more intuitive.
And then my running would become simply a deeper more energizing meditation. Almost as through I were standing still, while moving.
I've also been using some slightly fluffy hypnosis tapes to imagine myself running freely with my pack of animals: horses, dogs, antelope. We're all galloping along in our prime.
The greatest challenge to this is shifting myself out of the obsessive, bickery mode I'm currently in because I have more work than usual and am feeling unusually stressed and overwhelmed. If I could see more clearly how anger cuts me off from my smarter more competent self, shifting out of this would probably be more intuitive.
And then my running would become simply a deeper more energizing meditation. Almost as through I were standing still, while moving.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Stream of Resilience
My running has been falling off track of late. This has much to do with temperature change. I hate running in summer heat. But also, I suspect, because I'm not clear on what my motivation is. That always becomes more or problem once I've lost a bit of weight. Suddenly the point of getting out there and feeling the aches and pains that I don't want to feel start looking very fuzzy.
If the goal of running isn't weight loss, then what is it? Today the only thing that got me through the 2 hr and 20 minute commitment I made was to feel that stream of resilience that starts to grow after I've been running for about twenty minutes. Maintain this stream of energy, which feels like a real magnetic pull, is a fun goal because it makes running easier not harder. The stream lifts me up and propels me forward. Much like it does in meditation. If I can cultivate the habit of relaxing into it while I'm running, everything will get much easier.
Or at least that's the theory. For this to work the stream needs to have its own momentum, because if it relies on me I'm not sure there's much hope for it.
One thing that worked today was to notice those things that took me away from the stream, the usual obsession, stories, problems I carry with me always while I run. Instead of trying to escape them I decided to investigate them, their power, and self-perpetuating energy. Lo, this is often the shortest path back to that clear, pure energy that makes my running a joy, or at least, a mildly pleasant experience.
If the goal of running isn't weight loss, then what is it? Today the only thing that got me through the 2 hr and 20 minute commitment I made was to feel that stream of resilience that starts to grow after I've been running for about twenty minutes. Maintain this stream of energy, which feels like a real magnetic pull, is a fun goal because it makes running easier not harder. The stream lifts me up and propels me forward. Much like it does in meditation. If I can cultivate the habit of relaxing into it while I'm running, everything will get much easier.
Or at least that's the theory. For this to work the stream needs to have its own momentum, because if it relies on me I'm not sure there's much hope for it.
One thing that worked today was to notice those things that took me away from the stream, the usual obsession, stories, problems I carry with me always while I run. Instead of trying to escape them I decided to investigate them, their power, and self-perpetuating energy. Lo, this is often the shortest path back to that clear, pure energy that makes my running a joy, or at least, a mildly pleasant experience.
Monday, June 13, 2016
The Taste of Purification
I seem to be processing a lot of insecurity this month. Doing a different job. Dealing with people who are probably more insecure than I am.
In the past my habit has been to try and find a way out of dealing with people whose insecurities only add to my own. Recently I'm trying to find ways to enjoy transcending their insecurities. But yesterday I realized on my long run that I'm still expending too much energy trying to wrestle with my own.
I don't need to wrestle. I have the ability to deal with my insecurities mindfully and let them lessen gradually through that process. I have few doubts in this process anymore. I've experienced its rewards too many times.
The hard part for me is to stay present in my own emotional problems long enough to feel them resolve. Or maybe the better word is often enough. I'm still having a problem cultivating the "short times, many times" approach.
So for this week my intention is to catch myself reacting or obsessing about other people's insecurities and just enjoying the process of letting that habit go.
In time, I hope, this habit will be replaced with the stream of lucid consciousness that I know is there, available to me always.
In the past my habit has been to try and find a way out of dealing with people whose insecurities only add to my own. Recently I'm trying to find ways to enjoy transcending their insecurities. But yesterday I realized on my long run that I'm still expending too much energy trying to wrestle with my own.
I don't need to wrestle. I have the ability to deal with my insecurities mindfully and let them lessen gradually through that process. I have few doubts in this process anymore. I've experienced its rewards too many times.
The hard part for me is to stay present in my own emotional problems long enough to feel them resolve. Or maybe the better word is often enough. I'm still having a problem cultivating the "short times, many times" approach.
So for this week my intention is to catch myself reacting or obsessing about other people's insecurities and just enjoying the process of letting that habit go.
In time, I hope, this habit will be replaced with the stream of lucid consciousness that I know is there, available to me always.
Sunday, June 5, 2016
Virtual Virtual Reality
I had an intriguing meditative experience this morning.
I've been experimenting with a tweak on The Mirror exercise that I learned a few summers ago in the advanced Tergar workshop. In that exercise you look at everything in front of you as though it were a mirror, and everything you see is really only reflection. While I was doing that workshop I had a dream that I was in a car and someone gave me a virtual reality headset to pass the time. Except that when I put it on, all I saw was a virtual reality representation of the same scene I would have seen without the head gear.
This week I was sent by CBC to write about a virtual reality exhibit. With a sense now of what this actually feels like, I decided to use this in my practice. Sit as though everything I saw and felt was a construction that could be changed in the same way I could change it if I were a virtual reality director.
I rested first in some uncomfortable emotions, some anxiety I'm feeling about my writing career, my usual concerns about Ben as he makes his teenage decisions about life. Then the ease and comfort that I now normally feel when meditate began to flow. I rested in this for a while, but then continued to apply the construct frame to that as well, forcing myself to step back a little from the positive, blissful feelings.
Suddenly I was in this somewhat unfamiliar place. A place of no thought and no feeling. And there like a real perceptual shift. Like everything in front of me took on a 3D quality, as though I actually was seeing it in virtual reality.
Today, I'm going to try to bring this perception into my tasks. See if it's a thread of presence I can maintain. It felt like a real and solid equanimity. A place in me that is there for whenever I need it, and that I absolutely want to return to.
I've been experimenting with a tweak on The Mirror exercise that I learned a few summers ago in the advanced Tergar workshop. In that exercise you look at everything in front of you as though it were a mirror, and everything you see is really only reflection. While I was doing that workshop I had a dream that I was in a car and someone gave me a virtual reality headset to pass the time. Except that when I put it on, all I saw was a virtual reality representation of the same scene I would have seen without the head gear.
This week I was sent by CBC to write about a virtual reality exhibit. With a sense now of what this actually feels like, I decided to use this in my practice. Sit as though everything I saw and felt was a construction that could be changed in the same way I could change it if I were a virtual reality director.
I rested first in some uncomfortable emotions, some anxiety I'm feeling about my writing career, my usual concerns about Ben as he makes his teenage decisions about life. Then the ease and comfort that I now normally feel when meditate began to flow. I rested in this for a while, but then continued to apply the construct frame to that as well, forcing myself to step back a little from the positive, blissful feelings.
Suddenly I was in this somewhat unfamiliar place. A place of no thought and no feeling. And there like a real perceptual shift. Like everything in front of me took on a 3D quality, as though I actually was seeing it in virtual reality.
Today, I'm going to try to bring this perception into my tasks. See if it's a thread of presence I can maintain. It felt like a real and solid equanimity. A place in me that is there for whenever I need it, and that I absolutely want to return to.
Monday, May 30, 2016
Sleep Retreat--Day 18
Almost three weeks into my sleep reatreat, and I'm feeling better. I fall asleep more easily. I'm starting to sense the mechanics of "sleep meditation." I make my goal to stay awake while I'm asleep, and soon enough I'm noticing when my brain starts to drift off to sleep. My only external aid now is a sleep mask and my white noise machine.
I wake up in the middle of the night, and I continue to try and stay awake, resting in the lucid calm after effects of a good first slow wave sleep. Sometimes I stay awake enough to get out of bed and meditate. Sometimes I'm so awake I end up watching Netflix. But eventually I fall back asleep and dream. My dreams are more vivid and I remember them better. But no lucid dreaming yet.
During the day I feel clearer and more energetic. More present in my activities. More connected to the "thinking substance" of life.
Every day I am feeling more ready to bring all this meditative energy into my daily activities. My goal, to be more present in everything I do.
I wake up in the middle of the night, and I continue to try and stay awake, resting in the lucid calm after effects of a good first slow wave sleep. Sometimes I stay awake enough to get out of bed and meditate. Sometimes I'm so awake I end up watching Netflix. But eventually I fall back asleep and dream. My dreams are more vivid and I remember them better. But no lucid dreaming yet.
During the day I feel clearer and more energetic. More present in my activities. More connected to the "thinking substance" of life.
Every day I am feeling more ready to bring all this meditative energy into my daily activities. My goal, to be more present in everything I do.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
sleep retreat--day 6
Tonight I had the sleep I'm aiming for: a four hour slow wave first sleep, followed by about an hour of calm, awake "repose," followed by a second sleep of vivid memorable dreams.
I followed this with an hour meditation to process the feelings that I remembered from the dream, shame (walking around in a t-shirt not sure I have underwear on) fear, vulnerability (discovering that someone has forged my signature on a personal cheque), excitement (I interrupt a mountain bike trip with the teenage son of a friend with an insane steep water slide) grief. (what happened to my friend's son, he seems to have disappeared into a space pocket, how will I explain this to her!!!) At the moment of the most intense grief I realized that I was dreaming and that I could bring the person I thought I had lost back to life just through this recognition.
Relief. Just huge relief.
I wonder if, in the end, this is the feeling that I'm really aiming for with all this. Relief. Relief to be finally able to sleep with some regularity. Relief at knowing that a better life is still available to me. Relief at knowing that I have a good chance of having that life. Relief at knowing that Ben has a good chance. Apparently this relief is prolactin. But whatever it is for now, bring it on. I could use some progress.
I followed this with an hour meditation to process the feelings that I remembered from the dream, shame (walking around in a t-shirt not sure I have underwear on) fear, vulnerability (discovering that someone has forged my signature on a personal cheque), excitement (I interrupt a mountain bike trip with the teenage son of a friend with an insane steep water slide) grief. (what happened to my friend's son, he seems to have disappeared into a space pocket, how will I explain this to her!!!) At the moment of the most intense grief I realized that I was dreaming and that I could bring the person I thought I had lost back to life just through this recognition.
Relief. Just huge relief.
I wonder if, in the end, this is the feeling that I'm really aiming for with all this. Relief. Relief to be finally able to sleep with some regularity. Relief at knowing that a better life is still available to me. Relief at knowing that I have a good chance of having that life. Relief at knowing that Ben has a good chance. Apparently this relief is prolactin. But whatever it is for now, bring it on. I could use some progress.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Sleep Retreat--Day 5
I have a theory now about sleep.
The only sleep we really need is the slow wave sleep that happens in the first two 90 minute cycles of our night. And even then it's the first cycle of SWS that's pivotal. This is the sleep period where our brain goes into deep repair mode, a sustained bliss that very few of us, except maybe some rockstar monks, are conscious of. The other sleep, the dreaming REM sleep is an important bonus, a delight, like art and entertainment. Our lives are arguably poorer without it, but it's not the essential element of a good sleep. What a good sleep routine does is maximize the probability that you're going to get those first cycles of SWS.
How do we know if we've had the optimal slow wave sleep? We wake up, a few hours after first falling asleep. But rather than this being a pathology, it's a pleasure. A part of sleep that is almost completely ignored by our culture is wakefulness. Nobody sleeps for eight hours straight. We sleep in five to six cycles and we always wake up during these cycles. Most of us don't remember this because we live in a society that crunches all our sleep together. But we wake up. The quality of our sleep is probably more contingent than we realize on the quality of these wakings. If we're startled awake, because we're not getting enough SWS, then the cortisol is probably starting its flow and the optimal SWS is unlikely. If we wake up naturally feeling content and rested, a few hours after falling asleep, then we know we've front loaded our sleep routine with good SWS..
My goal in these three weeks is to start having those contented awakenings. I plan to fall back asleep, into dreams. But I want to see if I can make good SWS a habit.
My friend Jeff Warren says this started happening to him around day 9 of his self-directed sleep retreat. I have a trip to Ottawa planned this week, so I don't know if that will be the right day for me. But I'm going to keep this up until it happens.
The only sleep we really need is the slow wave sleep that happens in the first two 90 minute cycles of our night. And even then it's the first cycle of SWS that's pivotal. This is the sleep period where our brain goes into deep repair mode, a sustained bliss that very few of us, except maybe some rockstar monks, are conscious of. The other sleep, the dreaming REM sleep is an important bonus, a delight, like art and entertainment. Our lives are arguably poorer without it, but it's not the essential element of a good sleep. What a good sleep routine does is maximize the probability that you're going to get those first cycles of SWS.
How do we know if we've had the optimal slow wave sleep? We wake up, a few hours after first falling asleep. But rather than this being a pathology, it's a pleasure. A part of sleep that is almost completely ignored by our culture is wakefulness. Nobody sleeps for eight hours straight. We sleep in five to six cycles and we always wake up during these cycles. Most of us don't remember this because we live in a society that crunches all our sleep together. But we wake up. The quality of our sleep is probably more contingent than we realize on the quality of these wakings. If we're startled awake, because we're not getting enough SWS, then the cortisol is probably starting its flow and the optimal SWS is unlikely. If we wake up naturally feeling content and rested, a few hours after falling asleep, then we know we've front loaded our sleep routine with good SWS..
My goal in these three weeks is to start having those contented awakenings. I plan to fall back asleep, into dreams. But I want to see if I can make good SWS a habit.
My friend Jeff Warren says this started happening to him around day 9 of his self-directed sleep retreat. I have a trip to Ottawa planned this week, so I don't know if that will be the right day for me. But I'm going to keep this up until it happens.
Monday, May 16, 2016
Sleep Tonglen
Day 4 of my sleep retreat. The plan to spend the next three weeks in bed at natural sunset and lie in bed until sunrise. No matter what. Beyond my sleep mask and my white noise machine, no sleep aids, no Netflix, or podcasts, or any of the other technology companions I bring to bed with me.
The first few nights I had an easy enough time falling asleep, maybe because I have a lot of sleep debt. But last night I was hit with the full tsunami of self-hatred that always has me turning to outside resources for relaxation. I was probably about an hour in before I came upon a solution: tonglen.
I am not alone in my self-loathing. I never was, surrounded by my self-hating family. But it's not a legacy I want to pass on. If I'm going to have a son who accepts himself, I have to accept myself first. So I fell asleep thinking of all the self-hatred I have, all the self-hatred of the people who pop up in my memory, and I decided to use my tonglen practice on them. Tonglen is the Tibetan practice of breathing in the suffering of others and sending out our pure natural energy to replace it. It's like a natural green technology of the mind. It's what trees do. The beautify of tonglen is that you not only purify others, you purity yourself with this practice. It's like having a super power.
It's interesting that no one has ever created a superhero like that. Someone who could just take away the motivation to inflict suffering on others.
But if I'm going to be able to fall asleep more easily and more naturally and have that four hours of slow wave sleep that I need, I'm going to have to find a way to release this self-hatred, or at least diminish it.
The first few nights I had an easy enough time falling asleep, maybe because I have a lot of sleep debt. But last night I was hit with the full tsunami of self-hatred that always has me turning to outside resources for relaxation. I was probably about an hour in before I came upon a solution: tonglen.
I am not alone in my self-loathing. I never was, surrounded by my self-hating family. But it's not a legacy I want to pass on. If I'm going to have a son who accepts himself, I have to accept myself first. So I fell asleep thinking of all the self-hatred I have, all the self-hatred of the people who pop up in my memory, and I decided to use my tonglen practice on them. Tonglen is the Tibetan practice of breathing in the suffering of others and sending out our pure natural energy to replace it. It's like a natural green technology of the mind. It's what trees do. The beautify of tonglen is that you not only purify others, you purity yourself with this practice. It's like having a super power.
It's interesting that no one has ever created a superhero like that. Someone who could just take away the motivation to inflict suffering on others.
But if I'm going to be able to fall asleep more easily and more naturally and have that four hours of slow wave sleep that I need, I'm going to have to find a way to release this self-hatred, or at least diminish it.
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Slow Wave
This week I'm working on sleeping more and better.
I've grown tired of being tired, and I'm serious about being happy. Sleep is the foundation to happiness. I know it it, but that's always been hard for me to manifest, because I don't sleep early or well. Wound up in my sleep disorder are my feelings towards my childhood, my loud, to often drunk and fighting parents. Just the expectation of being woke up. And here I am again in a place where I expect to be woken up.
I'm an adult now. I can control my environment. I can put industrial earplugs in. I can put my white noise on and my sleep mask. I can crawl into bed and maximize the chances that I will got that long slow wave, dreamless sleep that is the neurological basis of a well rested mind.
According to my friend Jeff Warren, it takes about three weeks to frontload your sleep so that you are getting that slow wave early in your sleep cycle. First sleep. More important even than the eight hours. That first four hours of good, solid, REM minmal sleep. Later you can drift into REM, into a pleasant restful state. But first the good sleep.
I'm curious to see how better sleep will effect my meditation. The first night I tried this I was as restless as a worm. Even this morning I had a hard time sitting still, though towards the end I was feeling that glorious magnetic connection at the crown of my head. I'm making progress.
I've grown tired of being tired, and I'm serious about being happy. Sleep is the foundation to happiness. I know it it, but that's always been hard for me to manifest, because I don't sleep early or well. Wound up in my sleep disorder are my feelings towards my childhood, my loud, to often drunk and fighting parents. Just the expectation of being woke up. And here I am again in a place where I expect to be woken up.
I'm an adult now. I can control my environment. I can put industrial earplugs in. I can put my white noise on and my sleep mask. I can crawl into bed and maximize the chances that I will got that long slow wave, dreamless sleep that is the neurological basis of a well rested mind.
According to my friend Jeff Warren, it takes about three weeks to frontload your sleep so that you are getting that slow wave early in your sleep cycle. First sleep. More important even than the eight hours. That first four hours of good, solid, REM minmal sleep. Later you can drift into REM, into a pleasant restful state. But first the good sleep.
I'm curious to see how better sleep will effect my meditation. The first night I tried this I was as restless as a worm. Even this morning I had a hard time sitting still, though towards the end I was feeling that glorious magnetic connection at the crown of my head. I'm making progress.
Friday, May 13, 2016
How To Be Comfortable With Everyone
Didn't get around to writing anything this week, but came across this inspiring post by Shinzen Young. So I'm reposting to keep it in the archives.
How To Be Comfortable With Everyone
It’s very common for people on a meditative or spiritual path to develop a kind of sensitivity to the poison and pain of others. Sometimes it’s formulated with the phrase “I pick up all this negativity.” Sometimes it’s formulated with the phrase“People drain my energy.” A closely related perception runs something like this: “Now that I've developed some spiritual maturity, I find it difficult to relate to old friends/family/ordinary people; they so cluelessly cause themselves unneeded suffering; I no longer have much in common with them.”
Regarding such sentiments, there are several things to keep in mind. First: They represent a temporary stage that the practitioner eventually grows out of. Second: When you do grow out of it, it’s replaced by its exact opposite: the more clueless and messed up people are, the more you enjoy being around them. You can make the transition from that temporary stage to its opposite by realizing this:
When we’re around other people, we pick up on where they’re at. If they’re in a bad place, we pick up on that. One might refer to that as exogenous discomfort. It's discomfort whose origin (genesis) is from the outside (exo), i.e., you’re feeling uncomfortable because of what is going on in someone else. The term exogenous contrasts with the term endogenous. Endogenous discomfort is discomfort due to our own stuff. The main point to remember is that the discomfort, endogenous or exogenous, typically comes up as some combination of mental image, mental talk, and emotional body sensation. To the extent that one can experience that sensory arising completely, to that extent it does not cause suffering. It doesn't matter one wit whether the source of suffering is exogenous or endogenous or some combination of both. By “experience it completely” I simply mean experience it mindfully, i.e., experience it in a state of concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity.When the discomfort is endogenous and you experience it very mindfully, it doesn’t cause much suffering, it “tastes” like you’re being purified. When the discomfort is exogenous and you experience it very mindfully, not only does it not cause suffering, but it tastes like you and the other person both are being purified. In other words, how your consciousness processes another’s pain subtly teaches that person’s consciousness to do the same. The other person may not be aware that’s happening, but you’re aware of it. You’re aware that you are nourishing that person, and that subtly nurtures you. That’s why you eventually come to enjoy being around clueless messed up people. Paraphrasing the Blues Brothers, you’re “on a secret mission from God.” You walk through life like a giant air filter picking up the psychospheric pollution and automatically processing it, extracting from it energy and then radiating that energy as positivity. You know your job and you love it: recycling the karmic trash.
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| By Kevin B |
Needless to say, it may take a while to work up to this, but everyone on a path should aspire to this perspective.
This situation contrasts in an interesting way with the goals of psychology. In certain therapeutic approaches, the goal is to get the client to the point where they can distinguish “what’s me” from “what’s them.” In contemplative-based spirituality, the goal is to get to the point where you no longer care about that distinction!
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Bias
Last week I got something wrong. I misunderstood idiot compassion as self-righteousness. But really Idiot Compassion is the pity we feel for people who are abusing us, which we use to justify staying in the abusive relationship. What I was really struggling with is the aggressive bias that is the enemy of equanimity.
I can barely imagine my life without some kind of opinion that I am aggressively hunting for facts to back up. This impulse drives my life. What would I be without it?
In Tibetan Buddhism, I would be the four immeasurables: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity.
This is the hardest attachment to break, the attachment to an aggressive defense of values.
My concern is that the alternative to opinion feels like indifference, the near enemy of equanimity. Or it feels like boredom. Giving up my strong opinions will be a very big change for me. The question I need to ask is: are they strong opinions, or merely aggressive opinions. Are the opinions about having a deeper more complex understanding about something, in a way that can bring about change? Or are they just about perpetuating anger?
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Idiot Compassion
This is a tough one for me. I've been working on compassion for a few weeks, and it seems to be working, but recently an obsession, a recurring pattern that has me on social media arguing for more compassion towards somebody than what the popular opinion supports.
Is this really compassion, or is this just my ego wanting to feel good about my compassion? I suspect the later. My opinion has very little effect on this person's life, and very little effect on other people's opinion. So this week I really want to work on idiot compassion, the tendency to confuse compassion with ego gratification, overindulgence, pity and self-pity.
Where is the line, really, between gentleness and overindulgence, compassion and self-pity. And how do I actively break this bad pattern?
I could start small. And start with idiot compassion towards self. For instance, I'm trying to lose weight in the next few months, so that I can enjoy my running more. I am overweight because I use food to feed and distract myself from painful feelings. Maybe the task this week is to be on the watch for bad habits that I justify as self-comfort and nurturing. Overindulgence is not nurturing, it's simply another form of abuse.
I can also look at how I practice idiot compassion towards my son, letting him off the hook for behaviours that are abusive because I feel sad or guilty about the life he's missing out on as a the only child of a single mother.
Wise compassion is honesty. It strengthens us. It doesn't weaken us.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Compassion for self
I'm in an angry and muddled place right now. Confusion. Caught in the middle of a teenage angst situation where I want to feel compassion for my son, but at the same time, I need to let him live the consequences of his decision. I'm never sure if I've prepared him well for life. Often it doesn't feel like it. But my job now is to take care of myself. And my mind is all over the place.
Time, perhaps, to get back to basics. Open awareness. Rest in it and listen to sound. Remember my basic goodness and Ben's basic goodness.
Begin again
Time, perhaps, to get back to basics. Open awareness. Rest in it and listen to sound. Remember my basic goodness and Ben's basic goodness.
Begin again
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Gentleness
Mingyur Rinpoche write of three stages of meditatve experience: the waterfall, the river and the lake. I'm starting to understand the river.
This is a stage where thoughts don't get stuck. My sense of self is not entirely determined by the rush of memories and painful images and feelings. Because I can watch them slowly move through my nervous system, a natural gentleness and tenderness begins to emerge. Lovinkindness, not as an exercise or a concept but as a natural quailty of mind; the first of what in Buddhism is called The Four Immeasurable Qualities.
The challenge this week is to develop the skill of resting in this state of being without becoming over attached to it. I don't want to turn lovingkindness back into a concept.
I would love to turn this gentleness into a habit. A habit that steps in when the other habits I'm trying to let go of--anger, envy, fear, pride--begin to overwhelm me.
The trick I discovered last week is to locate that part of me that still wants to be overwhelmed, that part of me that doesn't want to see what life could be, or could have been like if I'd lived with more gentleness. But if I can feel and live the gentleness, then I'm more likely to remember the gentleness of people who were more often than not harsh with me. I can see how their harshness came out of fear, and misery and had very little to do with me. I can forgive fully, not for them, but for myself. And maybe in doing so I can help them find the gentleness in their own hearts.
This is a stage where thoughts don't get stuck. My sense of self is not entirely determined by the rush of memories and painful images and feelings. Because I can watch them slowly move through my nervous system, a natural gentleness and tenderness begins to emerge. Lovinkindness, not as an exercise or a concept but as a natural quailty of mind; the first of what in Buddhism is called The Four Immeasurable Qualities.
The challenge this week is to develop the skill of resting in this state of being without becoming over attached to it. I don't want to turn lovingkindness back into a concept.
I would love to turn this gentleness into a habit. A habit that steps in when the other habits I'm trying to let go of--anger, envy, fear, pride--begin to overwhelm me.
The trick I discovered last week is to locate that part of me that still wants to be overwhelmed, that part of me that doesn't want to see what life could be, or could have been like if I'd lived with more gentleness. But if I can feel and live the gentleness, then I'm more likely to remember the gentleness of people who were more often than not harsh with me. I can see how their harshness came out of fear, and misery and had very little to do with me. I can forgive fully, not for them, but for myself. And maybe in doing so I can help them find the gentleness in their own hearts.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Wake up!
There is a place in my heart that wants suffering. That actually craves it. I've buried under a lot of numbness, but the truth is I want to be hurt. I want to fail at relationships, at my dreams, even at my aspirations for happiness. I want the transgression. And I want the harsh cost of the transgression. This may be in large part why I'm a writer. Because I love the suffering.
But I also want to be free of this. I certainly don't want Ben to live like this. And I wouldn't wish this endless cycle of dissatisfaction, shame and heartache on any one.
So how do I step out of this cycle. Maybe tonglen. Maybe think of all the people who crave misery, and choose habits and behaviours that loop them into it again and again. Love those people and feel the frustration of loving them and then realize that I am one of those people as well.
But don't just pray. Really feel the desire to be free. Know that it's in me to want more. Be awake to that desire.
If I really want to awaken the world, I really have to want to be awake. I really have to be awake.
But I also want to be free of this. I certainly don't want Ben to live like this. And I wouldn't wish this endless cycle of dissatisfaction, shame and heartache on any one.
So how do I step out of this cycle. Maybe tonglen. Maybe think of all the people who crave misery, and choose habits and behaviours that loop them into it again and again. Love those people and feel the frustration of loving them and then realize that I am one of those people as well.
But don't just pray. Really feel the desire to be free. Know that it's in me to want more. Be awake to that desire.
If I really want to awaken the world, I really have to want to be awake. I really have to be awake.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Hating Hatred
it's Easter Sunday. And I feel this morning like I have a whole new heart.
A few weeks back I had a meditation that was a tipping point away from the self-hatred that I've fallen victim to again and again in my life. This doesn't mean that hatred evaporated from my heart forever. Far from it. In many ways it has merely been the start of truly being aware of the shape and texture of this hatred that has lived in my heart like so many years like a psychic tumour.
I've continued to struggle with the kind of petty obsessions, resentment and contempt that rises from heart that is locked into the habit of hatred. But I did figure out something interesting a couple of days ago.
Mattheu Ricard recommends one antidote to hatred, shifting the focus of our hatred away from people and ourselves, and toward the hatred itself. Make hatred the object of our hatred.
When I do this here's what happens: My focus shifts away from the story that I'm telling to myself, or to the "other" person who I'm hating (who, let's face it, is often a stand in for myself), and towards the place in my heart that hatred comes from.
Hatred it turns out, it a de-iterative emotion. Anxiety about anxiety increases anxiety. But hatred of hatred, if you do it right, if you really wrap your hatred in itself, serves to dismantle itself. In time the hatred disintegrates and what is left in the heart is equanimity.
Equanimity is still strange to me, and believing in the power of equanimity is still not a belief that is solid in my heart. Spend some time with this equanimity and soon enough, I'm feeling anxiety.
A trick I learned this week is that it's easier to turn anxiety into excitement than it is to turn it into calm. So when I've been playing around with feeling excited about peace. What I feel when I do this, is very close to joy. I'm not sure yet why I hesitate to call it joy. Maybe because I want joy to be something that arises naturally in my heart, not simply a conceptual tweak.
But I know I'm close. And it's easter. So I will rejoice.
A few weeks back I had a meditation that was a tipping point away from the self-hatred that I've fallen victim to again and again in my life. This doesn't mean that hatred evaporated from my heart forever. Far from it. In many ways it has merely been the start of truly being aware of the shape and texture of this hatred that has lived in my heart like so many years like a psychic tumour.
I've continued to struggle with the kind of petty obsessions, resentment and contempt that rises from heart that is locked into the habit of hatred. But I did figure out something interesting a couple of days ago.
Mattheu Ricard recommends one antidote to hatred, shifting the focus of our hatred away from people and ourselves, and toward the hatred itself. Make hatred the object of our hatred.
When I do this here's what happens: My focus shifts away from the story that I'm telling to myself, or to the "other" person who I'm hating (who, let's face it, is often a stand in for myself), and towards the place in my heart that hatred comes from.
Hatred it turns out, it a de-iterative emotion. Anxiety about anxiety increases anxiety. But hatred of hatred, if you do it right, if you really wrap your hatred in itself, serves to dismantle itself. In time the hatred disintegrates and what is left in the heart is equanimity.
Equanimity is still strange to me, and believing in the power of equanimity is still not a belief that is solid in my heart. Spend some time with this equanimity and soon enough, I'm feeling anxiety.
A trick I learned this week is that it's easier to turn anxiety into excitement than it is to turn it into calm. So when I've been playing around with feeling excited about peace. What I feel when I do this, is very close to joy. I'm not sure yet why I hesitate to call it joy. Maybe because I want joy to be something that arises naturally in my heart, not simply a conceptual tweak.
But I know I'm close. And it's easter. So I will rejoice.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Immediate Pain
Pain is a great, maybe our greatest teacher. I know that joy is the reward and the goal of meditation. But the reward and the goal is only achievable to the degree that we are able and willing to experience the pulses of pain that our nervous system has been designed to send out to us a million different ways every day.
Suffering, if I remember my Shinzen Young equation correctly is pain multiplied by resistance. The path of reducing our resistance to suffering is our way to peace, and to natural joy. But paradoxically, we can't get there is we're not open to pain.
Life wants us to feel a lot of different kinds of pain because our brain is also designed to reward diversity and complexity. And most importantly, it rewards the discovery of the true and most immediate source of pain.
For instance when I'm running and I feel pain or exhaustion, I might tell myself that the source of this pain is the running, when really the source might be poor posture, poor fitness, bad alignment. If I persist and get to the source to correct it, my reward is the tremendous joy and freedom of having a fit oxygen absorbing body. As I know, the rewards of that level of fitness are massive. New brain cells, a stronger heart, a sense of power and vitality. Endorphins!
I have to know that pain has a cause, each variety of pain has a cause, and I have to know that it is discoverable. And that because it's discoverable, I can be happy and happier than I am now.
Suffering, if I remember my Shinzen Young equation correctly is pain multiplied by resistance. The path of reducing our resistance to suffering is our way to peace, and to natural joy. But paradoxically, we can't get there is we're not open to pain.
Life wants us to feel a lot of different kinds of pain because our brain is also designed to reward diversity and complexity. And most importantly, it rewards the discovery of the true and most immediate source of pain.
For instance when I'm running and I feel pain or exhaustion, I might tell myself that the source of this pain is the running, when really the source might be poor posture, poor fitness, bad alignment. If I persist and get to the source to correct it, my reward is the tremendous joy and freedom of having a fit oxygen absorbing body. As I know, the rewards of that level of fitness are massive. New brain cells, a stronger heart, a sense of power and vitality. Endorphins!
I have to know that pain has a cause, each variety of pain has a cause, and I have to know that it is discoverable. And that because it's discoverable, I can be happy and happier than I am now.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Immediate Joy
Meditation has changed my sense of self. I wouldn't say yet that it has stabilized it, but I'm not as prone to accept this tiny self that seems to live in a prison somewhere in my frontal cortex. There's this bigger, more fluid, more magnetic and powerful self that lives and travels throughout my entire nervous system. Pure awareness, not just a glimmer, but an increasingly present energy.
This week started out with a greater consciousness of the self-hatred that is beginning to break up in my heart, like that piece of ice from the Snow Queen. Now I find my self wanting to know what this more powerful self wants. What is this consciousness feeling in and through my heart?
One thing is wants is to run more. To feel that pure joy that comes after a long run. I've put the picture of myself and Ben that I took at the end of the 10K, to remind myself throughout the day how important that vitality is to my life. It's spring, so the nice fresh weather helps.
My higher self, if that's what we want to call it, wants to feel healthy joy. The healthy joy that comes from creativity, exercise, and useful, meaningful work. The healthy joy that comes from having a lot of love in my life and in my home.
Not overexcitement or grandiosity. Just that mild sustainable joy that comes from a life well lived.
This week started out with a greater consciousness of the self-hatred that is beginning to break up in my heart, like that piece of ice from the Snow Queen. Now I find my self wanting to know what this more powerful self wants. What is this consciousness feeling in and through my heart?
One thing is wants is to run more. To feel that pure joy that comes after a long run. I've put the picture of myself and Ben that I took at the end of the 10K, to remind myself throughout the day how important that vitality is to my life. It's spring, so the nice fresh weather helps.
My higher self, if that's what we want to call it, wants to feel healthy joy. The healthy joy that comes from creativity, exercise, and useful, meaningful work. The healthy joy that comes from having a lot of love in my life and in my home.
Not overexcitement or grandiosity. Just that mild sustainable joy that comes from a life well lived.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Absolute Love
A few years back I wrote a post about a pivotal moment in my practice, the night my depression died. This morning I write about another such moment. The morning my self-hatred healed.
The process started last night, in much the same way, with insomnia. To try to nudge myself asleep I listend to a Tergar meditation on essence love, a meditation where we forget about lovingkindness and compassion, and practice being, without concept, without cognition with whatever suffering we're feeling in its rawest, most present energy. Only there is transformation possible.
I followed that up with a Rob Bell podcast on grace and peace. Grace is that energy that allows us to receive the gifts of life, and its abundant rewards that are always available to us, whether we deserve them or not. I usually fall asleep half way through a Robcast, but not this night.
Finally, tired of every virtuous option available to me, I watched the last episode of Downton Abbey on Netflix, until eventually I drifted off.
This morning I was too dull in my brain to read or think much, so I meditated during the hour that I've been trying to devote to tidying. During this meditation, the completion of the triad I started two weeks ago with Absolute Joy and Absolute Self emerged. Absolute Love, the love that is always there, whether we see it or not, regardless of what we have done in our lives.
Then it came to me that before I assimilate this sense of Absolute Love, I need to deal with the deep block, such a strong part of me, so persistent a presence, I'm not even aware it's there. Self hatred. My legacy of years of rage, frustration, unkindness. That self hatred is like this lump of carbon in my heart. But it is also in its way the gem like flame that Walter Pater writes about in his famous essay on the Renaissance. It is love gone hard. But it is love.
My parents successfully maintained their hatred for over 50 years. And I wonder if this has been a great gift to me in a way, because al I need to do is turn it into love. I have the maintenance part down, I just need the antidote.
That night my depression died, did not mean the end of depression, but it did mean the end of depression having a death grip on me. It still visits from time to time, but it's never been as strong in me again. This has happened now with my hatred. I don't expect it to leave me, but it will never rule me in the way it once did. And for that I am deeply grateful.
The process started last night, in much the same way, with insomnia. To try to nudge myself asleep I listend to a Tergar meditation on essence love, a meditation where we forget about lovingkindness and compassion, and practice being, without concept, without cognition with whatever suffering we're feeling in its rawest, most present energy. Only there is transformation possible.
I followed that up with a Rob Bell podcast on grace and peace. Grace is that energy that allows us to receive the gifts of life, and its abundant rewards that are always available to us, whether we deserve them or not. I usually fall asleep half way through a Robcast, but not this night.
Finally, tired of every virtuous option available to me, I watched the last episode of Downton Abbey on Netflix, until eventually I drifted off.
This morning I was too dull in my brain to read or think much, so I meditated during the hour that I've been trying to devote to tidying. During this meditation, the completion of the triad I started two weeks ago with Absolute Joy and Absolute Self emerged. Absolute Love, the love that is always there, whether we see it or not, regardless of what we have done in our lives.
Then it came to me that before I assimilate this sense of Absolute Love, I need to deal with the deep block, such a strong part of me, so persistent a presence, I'm not even aware it's there. Self hatred. My legacy of years of rage, frustration, unkindness. That self hatred is like this lump of carbon in my heart. But it is also in its way the gem like flame that Walter Pater writes about in his famous essay on the Renaissance. It is love gone hard. But it is love.
My parents successfully maintained their hatred for over 50 years. And I wonder if this has been a great gift to me in a way, because al I need to do is turn it into love. I have the maintenance part down, I just need the antidote.
That night my depression died, did not mean the end of depression, but it did mean the end of depression having a death grip on me. It still visits from time to time, but it's never been as strong in me again. This has happened now with my hatred. I don't expect it to leave me, but it will never rule me in the way it once did. And for that I am deeply grateful.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Absolute Self
This week I move from cultivating my sense of absolute joy, that joy that is at the core of my awareness, undiluted and undiminished by all the cultural and family programming, to cultivating absolute self. This is the self that can pull back from all the monkey energy that I love even while it distracts me from the better life Ben and I could be having.
I'm going to try and experiment this spring break. I'm going to treat Ben as though he is operating from absolute self, even though his monkey mind is strong. I'm going to continue bringing this absolute self into tasks, writing, work, even T.V. watching. I'm definitely going to bring it into the dinner I'm having tonight with my parents. But I'm also going to look for and connect with the absolute self in others.
I'm going to watch out for irritation, judgement, defensiveness. I'm going to use tonglen as a way of loosening the grip of my monkey energy.
Above all, I'm going to keep watch on my monkey mind and monkey energy. Just keep watch. See it as my companion, my old friend, my child even. But not myself. I am not monkey mind. I am this strong, lucid, wise presence that gets stronger with every meditation.
I'm going to try and experiment this spring break. I'm going to treat Ben as though he is operating from absolute self, even though his monkey mind is strong. I'm going to continue bringing this absolute self into tasks, writing, work, even T.V. watching. I'm definitely going to bring it into the dinner I'm having tonight with my parents. But I'm also going to look for and connect with the absolute self in others.
I'm going to watch out for irritation, judgement, defensiveness. I'm going to use tonglen as a way of loosening the grip of my monkey energy.
Above all, I'm going to keep watch on my monkey mind and monkey energy. Just keep watch. See it as my companion, my old friend, my child even. But not myself. I am not monkey mind. I am this strong, lucid, wise presence that gets stronger with every meditation.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
absolute joy
This week I read an article in the New York Times about what the rich can learn from the poor about money management. It sparked an important insight about joy.
The article looked at a mistake people often make when calculating whether or not saving money is worth the effort needed to take advantage of the savings. People were asked if they would travel half an hour to save 30% on a 45$ purchase. Then asked if they would travel the same distance to to save 5% on a 400$ purchase. More people would make the trip to save 30% (10$) than they would to save 5%(20$), even though the 5% is actually more dollars saved. It's a wrong choice because more money has more spending power than less money. The actual dollar amount that you save is the absolute value, not the relative value.
This got me thinking about the goals of meditation. What is the point really, this constant work towards parsing absolute reality from relative reality? Absolute reality is like negative space. It's the background, it's the indivisible is-ness of things, it's the emptiness, it's the 0 on a time line. It's not something that exists in comparison to something else. Relative reality is all that arises from this background.
In absolute reality there is more "absence" of self-created suffering, because suffering needs things, sensations, thoughts, images to compare to to other sensations, thoughts, images, to stay alive.
Absolute joy, in this conceptual map, is the joy that we feel when we are conscious, and able to sustain our consciousness of absolute reality. But it's not an abstract concept because it's where we make the leap, psychically, to that place. Or perhaps as close to that place as we are able to be in this feeling, thinking, imagining mind of ours.
To dwell, to make a real home, in this absolute reality is to have easy access to absolute joy. And that is, of course, the most precious resource that we can have. People want money because they want joy. But money is only a tool, it is not joy in itself. It is not absolute. Were the economy to explode in your country all those absolute dollars in your bank account would be cold comfort.
The economy can't do much about absolute reality. And so it can't do much about absolute joy.
To achieve enlightenment it to not only see that, but to feel it, to feel it at the core of your being, to make it the ground up which your entire life is built.
It's to know that happiness is the only absolute value that really counts. And it's to strive to have as much of it for yourself, and for others, as you can.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Fear of Power
Over the last week I've been noticing how I feel when I choose to shift my sense of self from the powerless feeling of ordinary consciousness, to the more powerful feeling of pure consciousness. If I see myself as driven and created by this powerful psychic force, and I see the drives that diminish my energy--my ordinary sense of self, as puny in its face, it's inevitable that my life will change. And change for the better.
So what is this fear about? Well, change for the better means more work. It means greater risk of failure, or perhaps bigger more noticeable failures. It means risking criticism, envy, contempt. Having a dream, where I grew up, meant contempt if it wasn't the dream that was the dominant dream.
It means living up to your potential, and paying back the gifts of life.
It means the solid realization that the strongest most powerful part of me, the part I share with all beings, whether they realize it or not, wants to communicate what I've learned and what I'm learning to others.
It's an entire shift of my locus of control, and that makes me feel a little unbalanced. In the past it has made me feel extremely unbalanced, but slowly that shift to a different centre becomes more intuitive.
It's an interesting optical illusion because the "self" that I'm afraid of letting go of sees the locus of control outside myself. Whereas the "self" I'm trying to give more control of feels like it's outside of me, but is really the self that has the most inner control.
Patience.
So what is this fear about? Well, change for the better means more work. It means greater risk of failure, or perhaps bigger more noticeable failures. It means risking criticism, envy, contempt. Having a dream, where I grew up, meant contempt if it wasn't the dream that was the dominant dream.
It means living up to your potential, and paying back the gifts of life.
It means the solid realization that the strongest most powerful part of me, the part I share with all beings, whether they realize it or not, wants to communicate what I've learned and what I'm learning to others.
It's an entire shift of my locus of control, and that makes me feel a little unbalanced. In the past it has made me feel extremely unbalanced, but slowly that shift to a different centre becomes more intuitive.
It's an interesting optical illusion because the "self" that I'm afraid of letting go of sees the locus of control outside myself. Whereas the "self" I'm trying to give more control of feels like it's outside of me, but is really the self that has the most inner control.
Patience.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Half-Empty
This week, I'm going to spend some time with my heartbreak. The grief, the lost dreams, failed relationships, projects, deep disappointments, and harsh reckonings that have resulted from circumstances beyond my control, but more often from my delusions, ignorance, wishful thinking and naivete.
I do this because I've decided to let it go, and to change this pattern to the best of my abilities. But first I have to feel it, feel where it comes from, feel who is feeling it. My suffering is going to be transformed into peace. That decision has been made.
I'm doing this in large part because decisions about my book are coming in. I've received my first pass, and I'm steeling myself for others. Very few people even make it to the level where they have an agent shopping their book around, so whatever happens, I've still made progress. But I still have this sick feeling in my gut. The feeling that tells me that I'm only allowed to go so far in life. The feeling that tells me that success is just not in my cards.
But is that feeling really in my gut? Why would I have worked this long if it really wasn't probable?
This week I'm going to pay attention to exactly where this feeling is coming from. Is it coming from a place of wisdom? Or is it coming from a place of fear? Is it coming from a place that is going to help me stop wasting energy on things that won't impact my life, or anyone else's? Or is it coming from a place that is creating low expectations that are undermining my progresss?
The challenge this week is to feel this feeling out and sense just how reliable it really is. Is heartbreak inevitable in my life? Or will I find that path towards connection?
I do this because I've decided to let it go, and to change this pattern to the best of my abilities. But first I have to feel it, feel where it comes from, feel who is feeling it. My suffering is going to be transformed into peace. That decision has been made.
I'm doing this in large part because decisions about my book are coming in. I've received my first pass, and I'm steeling myself for others. Very few people even make it to the level where they have an agent shopping their book around, so whatever happens, I've still made progress. But I still have this sick feeling in my gut. The feeling that tells me that I'm only allowed to go so far in life. The feeling that tells me that success is just not in my cards.
But is that feeling really in my gut? Why would I have worked this long if it really wasn't probable?
This week I'm going to pay attention to exactly where this feeling is coming from. Is it coming from a place of wisdom? Or is it coming from a place of fear? Is it coming from a place that is going to help me stop wasting energy on things that won't impact my life, or anyone else's? Or is it coming from a place that is creating low expectations that are undermining my progresss?
The challenge this week is to feel this feeling out and sense just how reliable it really is. Is heartbreak inevitable in my life? Or will I find that path towards connection?
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Surrender
Achieving this state of pure awareness is getting easier as the days where I begin with one hour of mediation accumulate. But living, writing, being from this state is a different challenge all together.
How do I write from a place that is empty of thought? Who is doing the writing when I've let go of self narrative?
Running from this place makes sense. I just move my body. Cleaning house from this place makes sense, I just do the basic tasks. But writing? Writing is complex.
But is it? Maybe the problem is that writing from the place of self-generated suffering is complicated. And so I expect writing to be complicated. I resist the possibility that wisdom has something brilliant to say and that all I need to do really is listen.
I resist the possibility that this is enough.
Words are tools, my brain is a tool, my consciousness is a tool. Natural intelligence and creativity come through me and my brain and vocabulary and reasonable facility with language are the tool that it uses.
Letting go of this writing self is a process of familiarity. Feeling the tightness, the anxiety, the bad habit energy that sabotages my progress. It's all part of writing practice.
It's all part of living practice.
How do I write from a place that is empty of thought? Who is doing the writing when I've let go of self narrative?
Running from this place makes sense. I just move my body. Cleaning house from this place makes sense, I just do the basic tasks. But writing? Writing is complex.
But is it? Maybe the problem is that writing from the place of self-generated suffering is complicated. And so I expect writing to be complicated. I resist the possibility that wisdom has something brilliant to say and that all I need to do really is listen.
I resist the possibility that this is enough.
Words are tools, my brain is a tool, my consciousness is a tool. Natural intelligence and creativity come through me and my brain and vocabulary and reasonable facility with language are the tool that it uses.
Letting go of this writing self is a process of familiarity. Feeling the tightness, the anxiety, the bad habit energy that sabotages my progress. It's all part of writing practice.
It's all part of living practice.
Friday, January 22, 2016
Basic goodness as basic income
Equanimity is the most precious resource that I have.
Even six months ago, I don't think I would have understood that. Equanimity has always seemed something neutral, dull, baseline. It's only very recently that I've understood its true power.
To have sanity, the ability to care about ourselves and others, to feed ourselves enough, but not too much. To exercise our bodies when we'd rather sit on the couch and have our feelings mediated through the television, these are things that are essential riches, but it's rare that we see them that way.
Equanimity is the power that grows slowly and surely through attention to these basic things. It keeps the anger and obsessions in check. It allows compassion to trump envy and it allows for sympathetic joy towards people I would normally feel alienated from.
I've had a very emotional weekend re-connecting with an old friend who is in a lot of pain. My hope is that I can build and use this equanimity that I've been cultivating to help both of us.
I had a good insight yesterday while I was running. I often think of energy as something inside me, something I might not have enough of to make it through a run. But energy isn't inside us. It's all around us. We have the mechanism to convert that energy for ourselves and others. What we build when we run, when we love, when we connect with our bodies and others and the world, is the capacity to use that energy.
Whether we're able to take advantage of that comes down to belief.
Belief and commitment to that belief. That we have enough, that we will always have enough, food, housing, time, money to take care of ourselves and others.
This is how we generate a decent world for ourselves and everyone.
Even six months ago, I don't think I would have understood that. Equanimity has always seemed something neutral, dull, baseline. It's only very recently that I've understood its true power.
To have sanity, the ability to care about ourselves and others, to feed ourselves enough, but not too much. To exercise our bodies when we'd rather sit on the couch and have our feelings mediated through the television, these are things that are essential riches, but it's rare that we see them that way.
Equanimity is the power that grows slowly and surely through attention to these basic things. It keeps the anger and obsessions in check. It allows compassion to trump envy and it allows for sympathetic joy towards people I would normally feel alienated from.
I've had a very emotional weekend re-connecting with an old friend who is in a lot of pain. My hope is that I can build and use this equanimity that I've been cultivating to help both of us.
I had a good insight yesterday while I was running. I often think of energy as something inside me, something I might not have enough of to make it through a run. But energy isn't inside us. It's all around us. We have the mechanism to convert that energy for ourselves and others. What we build when we run, when we love, when we connect with our bodies and others and the world, is the capacity to use that energy.
Whether we're able to take advantage of that comes down to belief.
Belief and commitment to that belief. That we have enough, that we will always have enough, food, housing, time, money to take care of ourselves and others.
This is how we generate a decent world for ourselves and everyone.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Sufficiency
"May we be free of hunger and discord,
And have joy and a world at peace."
I quote the same lines as last week, because this week I want to focus on the second line. Last week I focussed on the hunger I feel, emotionally, spiritually as well as physically. And I've learned a few things. Like, when I'm angry, it's usually because I'm feeling emotionally hungry and needy, and that if i stop for a moment, I can trace that feeling back to the trigger, calm myself down and then focus on what I really need, which is not usually to win a fight or argument.
If I weren't hungry any more. If I had what I needed, and knew deep in my being that I will continue to have what I need until I leave this body, how might my life change? How might all our lives change if we knew that.
Or let's start a step back from that. If I spend more time focussed on what I have, on the fact that I have enough to eat and a roof over my head, and this month at least enough money to pay the rent, how would my life change.
I can have joy and peace now. Or at least many moments of profound joy and peace thanks to my meditation practice. I don't need to make that permanent for myself, and perhaps it's better that I don't if I want to spend a life in service towards a bigger goal of joy and peace for others. I want to feel the pain and anxieties and hungers of others. I want to feel it, so that I can understand it, and help others to understand it.
But I'm also most helpful as someone who can help others understand joy and peace, and how to get there. Being in that joy and peace, being someone who manifests that, maybe that's the best way for me to move people forward.
And have joy and a world at peace."
I quote the same lines as last week, because this week I want to focus on the second line. Last week I focussed on the hunger I feel, emotionally, spiritually as well as physically. And I've learned a few things. Like, when I'm angry, it's usually because I'm feeling emotionally hungry and needy, and that if i stop for a moment, I can trace that feeling back to the trigger, calm myself down and then focus on what I really need, which is not usually to win a fight or argument.
If I weren't hungry any more. If I had what I needed, and knew deep in my being that I will continue to have what I need until I leave this body, how might my life change? How might all our lives change if we knew that.
Or let's start a step back from that. If I spend more time focussed on what I have, on the fact that I have enough to eat and a roof over my head, and this month at least enough money to pay the rent, how would my life change.
I can have joy and peace now. Or at least many moments of profound joy and peace thanks to my meditation practice. I don't need to make that permanent for myself, and perhaps it's better that I don't if I want to spend a life in service towards a bigger goal of joy and peace for others. I want to feel the pain and anxieties and hungers of others. I want to feel it, so that I can understand it, and help others to understand it.
But I'm also most helpful as someone who can help others understand joy and peace, and how to get there. Being in that joy and peace, being someone who manifests that, maybe that's the best way for me to move people forward.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Hunger
"May we be free of hunger and discord,
And have joy and a world at peace."
This is a line from the aspiration I always start my meditation with.
Last year I became conscious of the amount of discord in my life. This year I'm going to focus on the hunger.
Not so much physical hunger because I rarely let myself get hungry. But the many other kinds of hunger in my life that keep me in a perpetual state of lack. Or so it feels sometimes. Trying to avoid feeling this hunger doesn't work. Just rewards it and makes it deeper and more entrenched. Denying it is why I'm so afraid of emptiness. Because in the emptiness of meditation I see and feel it.
Or so it seems. To paraphrase Tsoknyi Rinpoche. the feeling is real, but is it true? Am I in a state of actual need? Or is this feeling just the result of the constant narrative in my head that keeps me there?
This week I will just be with this hunger, and do Rinpoche's essence love meditation. Sink deep, deep into my gut where the hunger seems to live and see how love responds.
And have joy and a world at peace."
This is a line from the aspiration I always start my meditation with.
Last year I became conscious of the amount of discord in my life. This year I'm going to focus on the hunger.
Not so much physical hunger because I rarely let myself get hungry. But the many other kinds of hunger in my life that keep me in a perpetual state of lack. Or so it feels sometimes. Trying to avoid feeling this hunger doesn't work. Just rewards it and makes it deeper and more entrenched. Denying it is why I'm so afraid of emptiness. Because in the emptiness of meditation I see and feel it.
Or so it seems. To paraphrase Tsoknyi Rinpoche. the feeling is real, but is it true? Am I in a state of actual need? Or is this feeling just the result of the constant narrative in my head that keeps me there?
This week I will just be with this hunger, and do Rinpoche's essence love meditation. Sink deep, deep into my gut where the hunger seems to live and see how love responds.
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