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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Collecte des déchets à Paris
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?