What I've learned from a decade of writing about stillness...

So, I've learned some things.

First that if you stand or sit still regularly for, on average, an hour or so a day--in one session, in shorter sessions, in a park or in a messy, cluttered room--you will change. Or maybe more accurately you will change back. You will recover a deep calm, and pleasurable sense of well being that is our birthright. For whatever reason, we unlearn it, but it is always there to re-connect with.

It has been my experience that this power transfers into other parts of my life, that it has given me the energy and cognitive tools to be a better parent, a better writer, a better activist, a better educator, and develop abilities I never realized I could have. It has slowly and surely lifted me out of poverty, and into a good, solid income. (To be frank, this journey has not been a cruise, but more of a white water kayak trip, often without a guide.  So I would never recommend meditation as the quick path to money.)

It is also my experience that calm, used well, is a motivating force, not a driving force.  I experience it, but I'm not addicted to it. Calm does not make me apathetic. It gives me the courage to feel more and do more. It protects me from the drives that would lead us to harm.

From the reliable and sustainable supply of calm and pleasure has come compassion, the desire to help others manage their displeasure and agitation and the build-up of suffering that comes from my desperation to escape the natural ebb and flow of sensation.


From this experience I've started to develop some beliefs.  But I recognize these as beliefs, not facts.

I believe...

That this is true for everyone, that it would be impossible for anyone taking the time to be still, every day, to not eventually recover the power and joy that arises out of stillness.  I may have beaten down a wider neurological path to it. But I have nothing that is not innate in anyone.

That compassion is our greatest tool. It is the fundamental technology that allows us to increase this well being for ourselves, for those around us, and if we get it right, to make this increase exponential.  The more and deeper calm we are capable of, the more it spreads to those we love, the more it comes back to us.

That the calm cultivated through meditation connects us to a palpable energy in the world. Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's the Tao, or Buddha nature, or the Holy Spirit or some other human attempt to describe it. This I don't know and I don't know if anyone will ever know. But I believe this deep and powerful calm gives us access to a kind of substance that has impact on our lives and on the world around us. And even if it doesn't exist, faith in this energy transforms us in powerful ways too important to discount as magical thinking.

And in this place of calm, we can cultivate perhaps the greatest and most liberating emotion of all, gratitude. If compassion is our best technology, then gratitude is our best magic.  Something happens in the grateful heart, a spark, a nudge, that over time becomes like compound interest.  Gratitude makes us wealthy because gratitude tells us we are wealthy.  Even in those moments when objectively we have nothing.

So at the end of this wonderful and ultimately lucky decade,  I feel tremendous gratitude.

I feel gratitude for gratitude, and above all for the fruits of stillness.

10 years

It's been ten years since I started this blog.

My life is different. Much better in some ways, much more challenging in others.  For the first time in my life, money is not an issue. I'm making ten times what I made when I wrote my first post. I have a great job as a director of a thriving non-profit. Meditation has helped me build the confidence and clarity it takes for this role.

I'm settling down from a whirlwind month, traveling across British Columbia, staying in hotels and eating airport food.  My lifestyle is not as healthy as it's been.  Trying to circle back to more sustained exercise, healthier food, earlier sleep.

This weekend I decided to do a self-directed retreat. Much sitting, some standing, and some napping. My spiritual energy is taking its proper place again. Awareness of awareness. The more I'm with that, the stronger my mind.

It's snowing out.  My son, now seventeen, is snoring away.  I could conceivably go out every morning at dawn. For six months.  And change.

What would I want to change?

I could still become more diligent with housework.  I could still be a more responsible parent.  It would be nice to finally finish a book.  I could become more values driven and goal-directed.  I could find a life partner.

But there is much that I wouldn't change.  Much that I am grateful for and want to build on. My meditation practice. Mingyur Rinpoche is coming to Montreal in June. I would love to meet him.  And maybe I will.

I am reading his brother Tsoknyi' Rinpoche's book Open Heart, Open Mind during this retreat.  If I take away one insight, it is this:  It is not the job of others to earn my trust. It is my job to maintain my faith in them.  People need to keep believing in themselves, and if I can help them discover that spark, I've had an impact.

My greatest power is faith, the ability to get up, despite all the indignities and faults and broken commitments, and keep at it.  Keep at something.  This is how I keep my life an adventure, not a trap.

This is how I open the door every morning and step out.

The Blink

This month I've been reading the new book by Daniel Coleman and Richie Davidson, Altered Traits. Their research supports the idea that in mature meditators many of the altered states they experience in meditation, over time, become emotional traits. The fidgety default mode seen enough times in meditation gives way to calm and clarity. 

I consider myself a mature meditator, and I can certainly say that I have felt neurological changes over time.  I am able to invoke certain states of calm and detachment far more easily now than I was able to ten years ago when I started this blog. 

This does not mean that I live in a constant state of joyful calm, however much I would like to.  Sometimes it means that I'm able to get down to deeper states of suffering.  And so it begins again. And of course the progress of life brings deeper states of suffering.  My parents are entering the last years of their lives, and experience all the grief that goes with that.  My son is going through those intense anxious states that I experienced at his age. 

Along with this I also have to ready myself for the challenges of success.  This month I sign a generous contract, not for the book I hoped to write, but for a job that I never expected to have.  I have spent all month travelling  through one of the beautiful places in the world, British Columbia, and I'll be making a great salary, at least for the foreseeable future. 

But I know from these journals that success is sometimes tough for me to assimilate.  Making sure I put aside the time for meditation, writing and reflection, will probably be hard, and if I can't do that I won't be able to enjoy what I've gained. 

One of the studies that I find most interesting in Altered Traits, is one in which subjects are asked to search for an object within chaos.  Once the moment of recognition happens, the brain usually takes some time to process its dopamine reward, and during that time the brain is not usually in a state to notice anything else that is happening. This is refered to as "The Blink," the time when the brain has a blind spot.  Mature meditators, recognize the object, but don't get distracted by the feeling of accomplishment. Their brains stay open and they are able to go back to a state of alert awareness with more ease. Their blink is shorter. 

One of the distinguishing features of the aging brain is that it takes more time to "recover" from insight.  The blink is longer. 

Meditation can correct for this.  And I hope it does, because my middle aged brain has a lot of learning to do in the next ten years!

Breaking up with bliss

I have often in my years of meditation fallen into the trap of mistaking the lovely effects of meditation as the goal of meditation.  This is doomed loop because simply the act of aspiration loses sight of the fact that we are already what we seek.  Beneath and in and around this suffering is the true clear self.  The more we grasp at this absolute self, the more we lose it.

This week I am experimenting with what Mingyur Rinpoche calls breaking up with bliss before it breaks up with you. My meditation practice is mature enough that I have frequent moments of clarity, non-conceptuality. Though less frequent, I also have moments of bliss.

I have a tendency when I feel bliss to do my utmost to extend it, as though I am going to increase it, like a lung span.  But perhaps what I need to do is the opposite.  See bliss as a cue to resting in suffering.  When I'm aware of suffering, I don't increase the suffering, I create space around it.  I'm not sure exactly of the dynamics of bliss. But I do know that if I'm courageous enough to feel my suffering, the lessening of it makes the experience calm and pleasure more frequent and more durable.

Bliss, Clarity, Non-Conceptuality

According to Mingyur Rinpoche in Joy of Living

Bliss is pure undiluted happiness. As it grows stronger it seems like everything is made of love.

Clarity is being able to see into reality. Everything makes sense.

Non-conceptuality is total open mindedness. No distinction between self and other.


These are the fruits of meditation

The first drips of bodhicitta

Earlier this week I had a night of insomnia.  Nothing I did could unclench my mind, it seemed. So somewhere around 2 a.m. I sat.

And I sat, and at some point, I had one of those transformative moments I seem to only have in these evenings of jittery desperation. It was as though my mind suddenly re-settled into my gut, and I found this forever loop of serotonin. I could feel the flow take center stage in my psyche.

Serotonin is known as the social neuromodulator.  It accounts for feelings of well-being, but also feelings of power.  Monkey studies show that alpha males have more of the stuff than beta males. Who knows whether serotonin makes you more powerful, or power unlocks the serotonin. But I know that in recent weeks I've become conscious that I have more of it in my belly. This may be the result of this month's intense retreat. It may be the increase in money and responsibility in my professional life. Or it may be the result of all the kombucha I've been drinking.  I can't say.  But I can feel a profound change.

This is I think, what might be meant by "Buddha  Nature."  That feeling that Mingyur Rinpoche describes as the feeling after a concerted effort. That feeling of competence, of success, or relief from whatever suffering was in the process of working.  It's not quite enlightenment. That I don't believe I've attained until I've come closer to absolute bodhicitta, the insight that everyone is not the jumble of relative qualities that we project. That everyone is as perfect in each moment as a newborn baby. We see each other differently because of conditioning, not because of any true immutable reality.

For now, I'm still on the path of relative bodhicitta, trying to simply like more people more, and take more action towards being and feeling like a better person. The intriguing truth of bodhicitta is that if I could see everyone as equal, I wouldn't have to worry about status.

Wouldn't that free a rather large node of working memory!

Pith fear

In my meditation this morning I revisited one of the most groundbreaking insights of last weekend's retreat.  At the pit of all my suffering is the fear that I won't get what I want.  But if I rest calmly in that subtle knot of fear, I connect with the deepest reward of living, that complex loop and flow of neurotransmitters in the limbic area of my brain, serotonin, dopamine and neuropeptides.

This is the mechanism of the grasping.  The reptilian brain fears that it won't get what it wants, the body responds with anxiety, the brain reaches for any of the multitude of options that exist in my current landscape.  And the next thing you know I'm eating cake and watching Game of Thrones.

More and more my formal meditation is about reaching down into my gut, feeling the displeasure and restlessness that trigger this fear, and sitting with it until absolute well-being sets in. The serotonin starts to flow from the source, my limbic system starts to loosen up and soon I'm sitting in the bright clear pond of calm and pleasure.

Of course,  then the fear sets in because my first thoughts are a) will I be able to make this feeling permanent b) if this feeling were to become permanent, would I lose the motivation to want anything? And the loop starts again.  I rest in the fear as the object of meditation until absolute well being starts to flow back again.

Will this absolute well-being become more intuitive?

Are there any reasons why it wouldn't?  Maybe the fear becomes deeper and more reactionary because I'm spending too much time trying to cram a lifetime of wellbeing into the painful hole of a life motivated more by depression.

Be diligent, but also, be patient.

Construction Retreat

A couple of years ago, I started Joy of Level 3 with a meditation that felt literally groundbreaking.  I forgot that the fire escape outside my window was being replaced, and ten minutes into my meditation I was meditating on jackhammers. Fortunately, my enthusiasm was such that by the end of my meditation it had become a blissful metaphor for a feeling of complete reconstruction and renewal.

I had a similar experience on this two day retreat, which I did while Ben was visiting his father in Israel.  I forgot about the ongoing construction that is being done on the road outside my house.  This is not jackhammers for half an hour.  This is screechy old backhoes, scrapping metal and massive road digging.  It was ceaseless and unpleasant, and I got through it with construction earplugs and white noise.  But still, it felt like a very powerful metaphor for what was happening in this meditation.   Nothing less than a complete rebuilding of the old and crappy roads in my mind, so that I can have a quicker and easier ride to absolute reality.

Mingyur Rinpoche defines AR as emptiness, a condition in which perceptions are intuitively recognized as an infinite and transitive flow of possible experiences.  Most of my life is still spent in relative reality, "the sum of experiences arising from the mistaken idea that whatever you perceive is in and of itself real."

And so I live with this entrenched fear that I won't get what I want or need to have the happiness that I believe can only come from the things my society says will bring happiness. It's not that these societal values  won't bring me pleasure or satisfaction, it's that because none of these things are inherently real, i.e. lasting, they can't be the basis of lasting happiness.

What lasts and what can only last is the flow presence, the flow of perception and also the emptiness and clarity in and around it. To recognize absolute well being more intuitively, I have to build a quicker, wider, better infrastructure.

Roads aren't built in a day, or two days.  But I believe this weekend I have made a very good start. I have come away with a better understanding of the onion layers of reactivity.  What I've been watching with calm abiding is not the pain, the thoughts, the feelings, but more importantly the mind's reactions to the pain, the thoughts the feelings.  I am cultivating a bare awareness of bare awareness, hoping to catch the thoughts, feelings, sensations as they arise, and then once caught, do nothing much more than greet them with equanimity.

Hey nice to meet you, self-hatred that is really fear that I won't have what I want, even, especially absolute well-being!  The more I recognize this fear, the more misguided it so obviously is. Absolute well-being isn't something you can have, hold, preserve.  Absolute reality is a flow, an unfolding of events.  The well-being is our ease with that flow.  Self-hatred is a major pothole.

The emptiness I experience when my thoughts and fears and reactivity has settled down is wordless and indescribable. It has always bothered me that something wordless is something that can't be passed on. If you can't share it, what is the use of having it? But then I had the insight that this wordless experience is like my spiritual capital.  The fruits are like the interest that grows from it. The fruits can be passed on. The joys and pleasure and transient things that I can enjoy more because I have the capital that is permanent, those I can pass on.  The capital is something that I can inspire others to have.  But I can't give it away.  Everyone has to earn their own. Or better yet, everyone has to realize on their own that it is simply there for the taking. But I can't make them see it, take it, or have it.

Definition of Happiness

"It's an experience of absolute well-being that radiates through all physical, emotional, and mental states--even that that might be ordinarily labeled as unpleasant."

I've been trying to convince my son, Ben, that there is such a thing as happiness. He has read Camus and believes that the rock is always going to be falling back on him.

So I started re-reading Joy of Living and came upon the above quote as something to work with in advancing my argument.  It's a tricky and interesting quote because it's easy to misread it and think that happiness is the absolute well-being.  In fact happiness is the experience of this  state of peace. It's not being in a continuous state of blissful calm that constitutes happiness, it's the intuitive knowledge that this state is there.

Many people who meditate, myself included much of the time, have an intellectual, conceptual grasp of this ideas.  Formal meditation, regular practice, is what makes it truly understood at the physical and emotional level.

But note, this definition also encompasses the unpleasant sensations.  Happiness can actual radiate from and radiate through stress.  This morning I read this really interesting article in the NYTimes on How To Be Better At Stress.  The theory is that perceiving the stress response as something that makes you stronger, as part of a thriving body, makes people both physically and psychologically stronger.

My goal in the next month, and in the next year (birthday on Tuesday) is to work on having an intuitive of how deep abiding calm and stress can work together to make me stronger and healthier.   The trick is to be able to experience both at the same time.  To be able to thrive from the benefits of both.

36 hours to joy

Good strong meditation this morning. I started when I woke up in the middle of the night with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment.  I sat with it and let it decompose into its granular bits of pain and agitation, and then slowly I dissolved layers of pain and agitation in my body until I settled into my gut, finally feeling the freedom of a forever loop of calm and pleasure. The opposite of disappointment. A profound feeling of hope and true power and success.

It didn't last forever, or I'd be sitting there now on waves of peace. But I knew that it could.

Shinzen Young says that we really only need to penetrate unpleasant emotional patterns a "few dozen" time for them to be released permanently.

If that's true, why am I watching Netflix?  I could be binge releasing unpleasant, unproductive patterns of feeling, coasting on true success, instead of watching one more disappointing season of House of Cards. Why do I self-sabotage? Or rather, since I don't really believe in "self" anymore, why do I sabotage these loops of calm and pleasure?

I suppose it's mostly because I keep forgetting that this choice exists.

If it is true that it would take me about 36 hours of work to release all this shittyness, and instead I'm putting in 10,000 hours of Netlflix, then my life has been on a sad trajectory.  But if it's true that I'm 36 hours away from freedom, then there's a lot to rejoice about.

Self, no-self

This week I’ve been thinking and reading about the self and about the idea of no-self.

Enlightenment, according to Shinzen Young is the paradigm shift where we see the no-self and never go back to believing in self again. He compares the shift to going from a tribe that believes that there’s a monster that eats the moon, to one that understands the solar eclipse. Enlightenment doesn’t mean that there isn’t darkness, it’s the understanding of the causes of the darkness.

The cause of much of the darkness in our lives is this attachment to self. I write those words and I feel a sudden despair that I will ever be able to write about Buddhism in any way that doesn’t sound dry and intellectual. What I want to convey is the sense that it is really living from this “self” that dulls the mind. The self is a flickering fire that is kept alive on the kindling of time, the slow burning past, the dry twigs of the future. It burns up so much energy. To live with non-self is to be a surfer on vast and powerful waves of abundant calm and pleasure.

 That’s what my meditations on non-self have felt like this week. Like, I have a choice.  I can live in this puny little sense of self. Or I can tap into this awesome power that’s always there for me. But there’s this life, as a mother, as a non-profit executive that pulls me away from my true ambition: to coast on waves of bliss.

 The trick I suspect is to make intuitive that each of these paths is a manifestation of awareness.  I’m not sure I would have been able to sustain any of these insights without a basic understanding of feedback loops that I got from programming, and that is what I want kids to know from a very young age, that they can build things--toys, bridges, selves--and then take them apart. That they can decompose problems and emotions down to the component parts of calm and agitation, pleasure and displeasure. That they don’t have to be caught up in all these manifestations from the past.  

 I can do both. I can be an executive of a flourishing non-profit and I can surf on the waves. The trick is to not get attached to the theory that I have to be one of these things.

Enough

Decomposing

So my innovative theory last week was that I might get somewhere by finding the pleasure in my hatred. But at a certain point I lost my willingness. I think that exploring the pleasure in hatred should be something brief, not a day long project.  It’s not the magical art of being tidy.

This morning my intentions shifted from “finding” towards “accepting. In decomposing my emotions, I’m resting more in what is, allowing the pleasure to emerge when it is ready.  Allowing the flow between calm, pleasure, arousal, displeasure to develop the force of the ocean.

I’m also becoming more aware of touch. It is the pleasure and pain sense, the one we take the most for granted, the one that can have the most impact if recovered.

That said, the biggest challenge this week is decomposing my exhaustion.  I’m not sleeping well or long enough and the exhaustion is draining my joy and wellbeing.  The pain of exhaustion is in my forehead and my face, my shoulders, my upper body.  Less T.V. more body scanning.  

The Pleasure of Hatred

I've come across an interesting theory of emotions that I've been experimenting with all week.

The psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett believes that emotions are conceptions we form during our life that work to explain four base sensations: pain, pleasure, calm, arousal.  Our brain only registers these four states, but it comes up with theories for why we are in whatever state we're in.

For instance we don't feel hatred. We feel pain and high arousal. Hatred is the theory we have for why we feel what we do. If I felt most of my early life in pain, and I was surrounded by hostility and hatred, then hatred becomes the default explanation for every bad feeling I have.  Not only this, but hatred then becomes its own driving force, and then indeed it is the explanation.

I spent the week trying out several paths to deconstructing this hatred. One is to just be with the sensations and deconstruct the feelings. I've had a fair amount of opportunity this week because I have a work colleague who sees me as an adversary, and things have come to a head.

She said something to me that has crawled under my skin and doesn't seem to want to budge. She says people are turned off by my dominating tone. It's true, probably, that I enjoy criticizing people. Hatred is always included a component of pleasure.  That's why we stay in the loop. There are all kinds of pleasure in hatred that I'm not acknowledging and if I don't, I will probably stay in that loop forever. There is pleasure in contempt towards others, or we wouldn't be so addicted to television. There is pleasure in hatred of self. Being with that pleasure is one of the most difficult challenges I can imagine feeling because it forces me to confront a self-image that I don't want to have.

It could mean that I take pleasure in causing other people pain.

Not a recipe for a good life.

But it comes down to the realization that we all want to be happy, and that hatred can become the default loop that brings us "happiness" in the form of pleasure, even a cold calm. Ignorance is the defilement that keeps it in place. The challenge is to become aware of this pleasure, and re-route it to lovingkindness and nurturing.

Awareness

Awareness allows me to see the impermanence of my thoughts and above all the impermanence of these stages where my thoughts are stuck in a chaotic jumble.  

Right now for instance, I am committed to becoming more aware of the effort that I need to put into my environment to keep the normal standards of cleanliness.  I am defining them now as a  few forever loops; keep the dishes washed and put away: keeping the kitchen floor swept once a day; wiping down the kitchen table and counters once a day; wiping the bathroom sink, swishing toilet, keeping an eye out for clutter; doing a five-minute room rescue.

There is a mathematics to cleaning.  If I keep those loops going forever I will be able to maintain a normal standard of cleanliness without too much effort.  And then my efforts will go into the deeper cleaning, rather than the restarting after everything has descended into chaos. I hope.  So that’s the method. But no method will keep the house clean.  Only cleaning will keep the house clean.  Only activity, not theory, will maintain the feeling of being nurtured and cared for.

I have had an easier time doing this with writing. Why am I keeping this forever loop of brief daily writings happening?  Because I want to make sure that my thoughts do not become a chaotic, frozen jumble, and that I am cognitively flexible. This is how I connect to awareness.  This forever loop of writing is and has always been the way that I connect to the awareness that is stable and unending that will be there as long as life is here. That life may and probably won’t be human life. We may very well be exterminated, or exterminate ourselves.  I don’t know. These are some morbid thoughts.  But I enjoy this kind of contemplative energy, even when it’s dark. This is how I keep my writing going. Keep on writing.  Just keep on writing.   

I don’t seem to be able to maintain the same daily commitment into cleaning. Or exercise.  Or into wholesome, healthy eating of greens and fiber.  And frankly, those things are more important to my happiness. Writing is not the cause of happiness. Awareness is the cause of happiness, not writing. Writing every day and being successful at writing is a secondary activity. It is not and will never be a prime cause of happiness. That is energy and power that results in sustainable happiness.  But a life of mild happiness with occasional, typically human, disruptions will produce creative writing. For mild happiness, I need a clean home.  I need a healthy body and mind.  So the primary forever loops need to be cleaning, eating healthy food, exercising and meditating, nurturing a sense of family and community.  The same old same old My secondary forever loops are writing, making an adequate living and political and cultural commitments.

And then there's the random stuff in between, and then there's the awakening to the awareness that is forever without my efforts or participation. I supposed we could call that the Tao.

Consciousness and intelligence

I've been thinking this week about the difference between consciousness and intelligence. As we veer into our new world with computers that are getting smarter every day, it seems like a good idea to be solid on what this difference is. Consciousness is awareness, and a particular kind of awareness that is not available to the machines we will be building. Unless we can build a machine that is capable of truly caring about another being's pain, it's unlikely that we will ever build computers that can replace us.

They can replace and even exceed our intelligence if we define intelligence as speed of processing and acting on information. They may even be able to replace and exceed our ability to liberate others from suffering, in that machines can be programmed to look at the facts and not be prone to faulty beliefs or perceptions.  It is indeed possible that self-driving cars will liberate us from accidents. But what machines cannot replace is our ability to care about or value life.  All life, not just human.

The technology that machines cannot replace is compassion, which I define here as the desire to liberate others from sufferings. Computers and robots cannot want others to be free of pain, cannot want others to be happy.

There are certain kinds of value decisions that computers cannot make. A machine will never be able to make the decision to be grateful for what it has, to hold life precious, to take to time to be struck by beauty rather than roam the world feeding a craving for more possessions, more sensations, more permanence.

And if we are able to offload much of our intelligence to computers, will intelligence continue to be valuable? Perhaps a natural intelligence will become more valuable as the more machine-like processes of intelligence are replicated.

The future is going to be harder and harder to predict because humans are more predictable in many ways that machines. As machines are given more control of the world it may seem that chaos will reign forever from now on.  But maybe not.  At a certain point, we may reach the limits of what machines can really do and we can come to a consensus on what to do with our newfound power.

Craving

Here is a journal that I wrote earlier this week:

I’m at the danger hour for craving 8 p.m. this is where I might normally plan what I’m going to eat while I watch TV. Instead, I’m going to describe the sensation of craving, the perceptions and the thoughts that hold it into place.

I start in open awareness. Resting comfortably in my sense of basic goodness. This is, of course, what I really want deep down, this feeling of being nurtured. But for some reason, I have mixed this up with an addiction to sugar, carbs and fat.

Now I recall it and quite quickly this painful feeling of dissatisfaction flows up to my head, and a voice now says, as I write this, “what’s the point, the craving is stronger it's going to win, it’s always going to win”  For the moment I’m not going to question this voice or perception. For the next few minutes, I rest in this craving, I rest in this belief and I consider the possibility that this craving is too far entrenched for me to change. I think of it as an old, dear friend, a spouse, a family member.  I consider how linked this craving is to my family, and how it feels almost like a betrayal to give it up. No, actually it does feel like a betrayal. It is a betrayal, there will be uncomfortable consequences if I walk away from it. Ben who is also addicted to junk food will be unhappy if I’m not a companion in that. My mother who needs validation through massive dinners. Then I think when I look at the odds, I’m probably not going to be able to let this craving go. Not in my lifetime, but maybe I can at least let it go tonight. Or maybe I can sit and feel a tenderness and warmth towards it.

That’s what I do, and here’s the interesting thing: the love and the warmth that I’m feeling toward the craving are the things I really want. Now I’m switching places, the craving is the loving force, and it loves that part of me that is pristine and free of cravings. At first pristine energy felt like a new friend, a guest, but actually I recognize it as well as a close and dearest friend, my parent, my legacy. Now it feels like both the pristine and the craving energy can merge. Of course, the pristine energy will win. How long is not within my control. Maybe another perception is maybe the pristine energy will win.

It comes down to a choice, being with the pain of craving, or being controlled by craving. It’s the same with all the other “defilements” I guess. Being with the pain of hatred, ignorance, envy, pride, or being controlled by them. But I like this process of liking them like old friends, or members of my mind family. Resistance towards them makes them hard and dull.

Right To Play

I sit here at the beginning of a work day watching my pride play. This weekend I gave a presentation with the Canadian-based NGO, Right to Play, and I’ve been thinking very much about the work-play balance in my life. Things are going well in my career, but as is so often the case I’m having a harder and harder time trying to maintain my self-nurturing rituals. I got on the scale this morning and, well….

I am an animal, and I know, according to the Sapiens books I’m reading, that once we didn’t think of ourselves as better than animals. But we do now. And we’ve created this crazy thriving mess of a shared story. Part formal religions, part quasi-religions, like humanism and capitalism. I wonder if at any point it will really alchemize into a promised land. I think of Pico Iyer after his years of traveling making the decision to spend the rest of his life sitting still in Japan. I think of my own exploits in consciousness. Sitting here feeling the energy play in my body. Expanding, contracting, floating around like a balloon. I am tired, but I’m also elated, in a grounded and creative way, not in some hypomania, trapped in my head way. I am surfing a very interesting spiritual dynamic in my body these days. For the first time in a while, I’m able to stop my thoughts at will. I’ve had this power in the past, but I didn’t think of it as a power and then I lost it. It is the power to think of the future and past as what they really are, wispy nightmares and dreams. And because of this the power to stop thinking of the past and the future.

This is not power in the way that we have defined it in our liberal humanist society as the power to cure disease and stimulate economic growth. It is power over our own mind. It is not the power to craft long-lasting stories about our historic achievements. It is probably closer to the way it has been defined by formal religions, as the power to maintain a spiritual balance in the body. As the power to nurture those things that may be truly sustainable and renewable, wisdom, kindness, compassion. May I build this psychic muscle, stretch it, keep in working. Throughout the nerves of my body. May I taste my self-aversion every day and I know that I can watch it dissolve bit by bit over time. May I spend the next while living off the fat of my body until I become lean and healthy. May I discover once again the pristine consciousness that is and will always be home.

The Forever Loop

This week I’ve been working on a tutorial for children that teaches them how to code with Scratch, a programming language developed by MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group. The rudimentary algorithm puts an animated cat into a loop that repeats forever, running back and forth across a beach.

This image is now etched in my brain and calls up memories from my many summers walking the mile long length of beach outside our family cottage. There was so much emotional chaos in our household, but once I started walking that beach I knew that no one would come and get me. So began my own journey in the forever loop of reparative escape. I’m feeling more and more, recently, that this escape is mostly giving strength and presence to the chaos. What does it matter if I spend two hours in a state of flowing electric bliss if I can barely muster the energy and motivation to do the dishes?

What would it take to switch the parameters and default settings so that I would be in a forever loop of thriving, growing powerful calm, like the ocean waves I assimilated on those walks? What would I have to repeat every day to be in a forever loop of focus, order, and peace in my physical and emotional environment? I know it’s possible, I know there’s a path there, but I can’t seem to stay on it. Why?

In the last week, I’ve been revisiting the practice of opening various “energy gates” in my body. The plan is to spend three days at each gate. There are too many to name here, but I’ve been working through the first two, the crown and the third eye area, and on Saturday morning I started meditating on the area behind the eyeballs. I did a bit of research on the anatomy of the eyes and learned that there are two important points, the macula, which modulates our sharp forward-looking focus and the optic nerve through which information travels from the eye to the brain.

Another algorithm I’ve been working for the kids is a reset sequence. Something that will return the Sprite to its default position whenever it goes off the grid or gets stuck. Center stage, eyes facing forward, 90-degree angle to the x plane. I don’t know the answer to the above questions, beyond pressing my own mental reset button, stabilizing my vision and starting once again.

Small actions, many times. That is the pith instruction that was handed down to Mingyur Rinpoche from his father, it’s one that I have a very hard time believing in, but when my life returns to the default state of chaos, it’s the only thing that helps me make my way out. This week I will go about remembering the one-two or one-two-three sequences in my life. Gathering, washing and drying the dishes. Choosing and clearing a hotspot. Setting a timer and picking up stuff off the floor. Perhaps the greatest challenge for me is to keep it small and to feel the moment of having finished.

Ignorance

One of my greatest challenges in life is maintaining an awareness of my ignorance. To some extent I do this "naturally" by feeling stupid and incompetent now matter how much I read and write, or how many people tell my I'm smart.  But feeling stupid is a different thing from being aware of one's blind spots, skills deficits and rationalizations.

This week in my insight meditation in on perception and reality at work.  Being aware of my ignorance, but also my wisdom is crucial as I go into some complicated  negotiations with a specialist from a schoolboard.

I know that I am still ignorant of how to stay awake, and avoid being at the mercy of my cravings and a lifetime of poor emotional and work habits.

And I feel that keenly as I see my son take on so many of my worst weaknesses.

Maybe that is the motivation I need to awaken and stay awake.

Easter 2017

So as I ask this question, "what do I really want," here are the paths it is taking.

Money, which when the question is repeated leads to a wanting a sense of security and also wanting a sense of adventure.  Ask it again and I'm lead to that place in my tailbone, which is apparently where our sense of security is either weakest or strongest.  And then from the energy awakening that would happen as it grows, the sense of adventure.

"What do I really want" also seems to be leading to "where do I really want." Do I want my desires to come from my head, from my gut, from my backbone?  These are all interesting questions.  Right now I'm feeling backbone.

Easter Retreat 2

Any sense of agency I have is illusory.  There is a self that has been programmed by my biology, my culture, my family.  I am stepping outside of it from time to time, but it is still driven by that programming and the central drive of that programming is anger.

I can feed the peace, the happiness and joy.  The mind is telling a story, a series of events.  If I watch it, there's a possibility it will settle into a different rhythm. The Buddhist story is that these are the natural and essential qualities.  I can't attest to whether this is true, but it's certainly a more pleasant story that the one where we are essentially angry and discordant.

In the meantime though, my most normal patterns are towards anger. And this anger is ultimately very rewarding, or I wouldn't keep going back to it like a rat on a wheel.  It's my quickest and surest path to dopamine.

After going for an hour long walk, my meditations are focussing on that energy in the tailbone. I had a couple of interesting hours sitting in this energy, feeling bliss, feeling my anxiety and aversion to bliss, trying to hold it in equanimity by shifting between the bliss and open awareness.  I started to feel that liquid warmth, even some uncoiling.

Is this what we lost from our Sapien past. This wonderful feeling around out pelvic floor back when we used to be more of a squatting sitting around species?

It didn't last. Eventually I started to feel a restlessness, a boredom, an urge to get it all done with. But the insight that remains is that this self really doesn't have as much agency as I want to believe. There is this self that is mostly motivated by angry parents, a greedy, hierarchical culture.  I will never know if humans are basically good or basically bad, but I do know that when I feel good I am more generous and kinder to others.

In one meditation today, I thought about my family, and felt such anger towards them. That dissipated and for a while I felt good. When I though of each and everyone of them I had an entirely different feeling towards them. When I was a different person, they were different people, I was willing to cut them more slack. My perceptions of people are changed by how I feel about myself.

Nearing the end of day 2.  I've watched a teaching by Mingyur Rinpoche on finding  basic wisdom in "defilements."  It feels like the entire weekend has been leading to this.  There are five defilements, hatred, craving, ignorance, pride and envy.  His meditation technique is to ask "what do I really want."  It's possible that the answer to this will often be surface and related to these states of mind, states he believes have been created by culture.  But if we keep asking we will find our true nature, our deep, true essence, which is pure, pristine, beautiful.  Down there we want happiness, love, peace.  And if we ask long, enough and deep enough we will get there  Don't grasp at it, just get there and be there.

This is what the last two hours of my meditation will be.

And after that, the insight.

Yes my superficial, man, woman or parent-made desires, are strong. Maybe even stronger right now than the desires of my wisest level of self.  But I am extremely fortunate to know that, and even more fortunate to have a reasonably well-worn path back to wisdom. I can look at my messy home and remember that this is happening because I'm letting my cravings take over again. I can sit with them and I can sit with my peace and get the energy and wisdom back that I need.  I can look at the scale and realize that I need to spend an extra hour a day sitting with my healthiest drives.  I know this.

And I know I can do it.

Easter retreat--day 1

I don't know where to begin.

This retreat is not unfolding as easily as it usually does. Maybe because I stopped doing my insight practice a couple of years ago.  But also some things in my life.

Easter dinner canceled because my parents had a blowout.  Ben doing poorly in school.  My work seems to be going well. Though little progress with my book.  Also, I've let my running really fall off in recent months.

The end result after hour four of meditation is that I feel like I've got a few tons of impacted anger in me. Hour one was nice. Hours two and three were bearable, if unfocused. Hour four is like sitting with a burning rock of coal in my tailbone.

Something's got to give.

Also, I've been reading Sapiens, a book about how destructive our species is, with our too often self-rationalizing stories. It's hitting me how much suffering there is in the world, and around me. And how much my own life has been a repeated effort to justify the narrative of progress, when there isn't much evidence that we are progressing. At least, according to Sapiens.

Apparently, Yuval Noah Harrari author of Sapiens meditates at least two hours a day and goes on a two-month long retreat every year.

Hour five was, again, more anger; but something interesting happened. It began to pulsate and grow and I could feel very clearly the pleasure that anger, particularly the anger I feel towards my mother was. Anger does give pleasure when we reach a certain state. If can make us feel strong and make us feel clear. It can alleviate fear. At least for a while.

In hour six I returned to this anger I felt towards my mother and had an interesting insight.  I see my mother as an object that I think I know, that I think produces these burning aversive feelings in me as a matter of course, as though she were some kind of poison rock that necessarily produces a particular side effect.  But of course, she isn't. She's a multiplicity of values, drives, states of being, sometimes hateful, sometimes kind.  I'm the one that is producing the poison in my ingrained reaction to thoughts of her and memories of her.  I don't have to feel this way if I don't want to.  I don't have to see her as one solid reality and I don't have to experience her as that.  This was very liberating and soon enough I started to feel that magnetic, solid feeling peace.  And then it got really interesting. I could feel myself rejecting the peace, as though some kind of aversion was magnetized into me to reject this peace at a certain point.  I could see how this was habitual and that if I were to choose to recondition my response I could live more easily and more sustainably with peace.

Later:  I sat in this repulsion place for a while, informally.  And gradually it seemed to shift from a repulsive energy to a magnetic attraction energy.  I know I'm sounding annoying new age, no doubt. But I suddenly felt all kind of new things could be possible if the core of my consciousness was pulling in peace and love, instead of repelling it.

Something to continue working on tomorrow.

Insight and writing

You'd think as I cultivate insight I would want to write more. But I don't. Maybe it's because insight practice moves you beyond concepts and writing is so conceptual.

Of course, writing doesn't have to be conceptual. And the best writing usually isn't. So maybe that will change as I settle more regularly into that place of clarity.

Woke up this morning at 4:30 and just sat in feelings of aversion, loathing, hatred.  Much bringing this on. A mostly miserable evening at my parents, which I probably contributed towards somewhat. I was supposed to show up for jury duty on Monday. Relieved to discover I didn't. Then found out that the reason the trial had been cancelled was because the court system was so backed up that the supreme court forced them to let go of the accused. He had been in jail for almost five years. Too long, obviously. But the case against him was strong. He had spent time in prison twice for spousal abuse and was on trial for slitting his 21 year old wife's throat.  It has hit me this morning how much work there is to do to make the world more livable for so many people who are suffering.

I've been sitting in aversion and grief and some sadness.  The sadness feels good. I don't feel it enough. But sadness is an essential ingredient of insight. Without it are you really aware of the impermanence of life?

That said I don't want to feast on death. I'm a human, not a crow.

Insight

It's time now to get serious about insight.

A few years back I did the Tergar workshop in cultivating wisdom. Since then, I've been cycling back through my compassion and mind calming practices, but the time has come to re-visit insight. I've been feeling stuck and I need a framework for getting back into the stream of vitality I seem to have lost.

This all started last week with an exercise I did on turning beloved activities into big, wildly improbable goals.  I love meditation, so the improbable goal I set for myself was to do a 10 day retreat in Montabello. Improbable because I don't think Ben is ready to live alone for 10 days. But I wrote it down anyways, and within a few days I was thinking about what it was I wanted from this retreat. I re-read this great article in the New York Times by my friend Jeff Warren, about his own crazy experience starting and failing  a month long one-on-one retreat with Daniel Ingram in Alabama, the Anxiety of the Long Distance Meditator.  And then I started reading Daniel Ingram's book of hardcore stream entry exercises.  I did some for a few days, but then it hit me.  I've already done this. I re-read some of my entries from my Tergar workshop and remembered what an awesome time that was.  How it lead to achieving other goals, like landing an agent. Why not go back to what I know. Insight is insight. I've had it before I can recover it again.

So I'm off.  Six months back on the path of wisdom.  I will, of course, keep you posted.

Equanimity: the Radical Permission to Feel

A repost from from awakin.org

Equanimity: the Radical Permission to Feel

--by Shinzen Young (Jul 05, 2010)

Equanimity is a fundamental skill for self-exploration and emotional intelligence. It is a deep and subtle concept frequently misunderstood and easily confused with suppression of feeling, apathy or inexpressiveness. 

Equanimity comes from the Latin word aequus meaning balanced, and animus meaning spirit or internal state. As an initial step in understanding this concept, let's consider for a moment its opposite: what happens when a person loses internal balance.

In the physical world we say a person has lost balance if they fall to one side or another. In the same way a person loses internal balance if they fall into one or the other of the following contrasting reactions:

• Suppression –A state of though/feeling arises and we attempt to cope with it by stuffing it down, denying it, tightening around it, etc.
• Identification –A state of thought/feeling arises and we fixate it, hold onto it inappropriately, not letting it arise, spread and pass with its natural rhythm.

Between suppression on one side and identification on the other lies a third possibility, the balanced state of non-self-interference…equanimity. […]

Equanimity belies the adage that you cannot “have your cake and eat it too.”When you apply equanimity to unpleasant sensations, they flow more readily and as a result cause less suffering. When you apply equanimity to pleasant sensations, they also flow more readily and as a result deliver deeper fulfillment. The same skill positively affects both sides of the sensation picture. Hence the following equation:

Psycho-spiritual Purification = (Pain x Equanimity) + (Pleasure x Equanimity)

Furthermore, when feelings are experienced with equanimity, they assure their proper function as motivators and directors of behavior as opposed to driving and distorting behavior. Thus equanimity plays a critical role in changing negative behaviors such as substance and alcohol abuse, compulsive eating, anger, violence, and so forth.

Equanimity involves non-interference with the natural flow of subjective sensation. Apathy implies indifference to the controllable outcome of objective events. Thus, although seemingly similar, equanimity and apathy are actually opposites. Equanimity frees up internal energy for responding to external situations. By definition, equanimity involves radical permission to feel and as such is the opposite of suppression. As far as external expression of feeling is concerned, internal equanimity gives one the freedom to externally express or not, depending on what is appropriate to the situation.

fear factor

Day 4 of this cleanse.

I started this cleanse in large part because I was becoming more conscious of my kidneys. I'm starting deep breathing into the part of the diaphragm that extends through my lower back.

I'm sure I've read many times that kidneys are as important as the heart in chinese medicine. But I've never really used my kidneys in a way that has made me conscious of their importance.  For the Chinese they are the source of vitality and the main filtration system not just for physical waste, but for fear.  I read this a few days ago in Bruce Frantzis's book, but I didn't really feel it until today.

Terrifying dream last night. I was on a bus with a group of terrorist/assassins.  Fortunately I was sitting with a woman with a gun, also some kind of assassin. She was able to shoot some of them, but we had to make a run for it. We ended up in some kind of building, maybe a school, maybe a YMCA, and we found ourselves hiding in a sort of long shower with sliding doors.  By this time my assassin companion was limp and naked. Now I had to take over and take care of her.  But it was hopeless. I was trying to take care of this woman, but there was no way I would be able to save myself if I didn't leave her behind. This was heartbreaking because she had saved my life.

I woke up feeling all the fear that could be felt in my kidneys.  I tried meditation, but could barely sit for twenty minutes.

It's still there as I write.  At the same time it's exciting, because I've never been so conscious of this raw fear and where it lives in my body.  It's so clear why I would want to do everything I could to numb this feeling. It's a particularly resonant feeling for me because I suffered from two kidney infections as a child, and I remembering how terrifying that feeling was. That lying in bed in agony.

I'm not in agony, now on day 4.  Rather, I'm in a place of awareness. Starting to understand how all the puzzle pieces fit together.

The Secret of Saliva

I'm on day two of dietary cleanse.

Started the day feeling the usual symptoms of de-tox, headaches, fatigue, muscle pain. And did the usual things to soften them, bath, water, standing.

Then I read something mind blowing.  I'm reading a book called Gut: The Inside Story of Our Most Underrated Organ. One of those Amazon Kindle 1.99 things, that makes me think back to that remaindered book on Zhan Zhuang I found almost twenty years ago.  It may be one of those books that changes things.

In 2006, it says, scientists discovered a natural pain killer in human saliva, opiophine, six times as strong as morphine. In studies so far it acts as both a pain killer and an anti-depressant. And if that weren't cool enough, it's non-addictive!

This makes so much sense in both my sitting and standing practices, especially in recent months when I've been experiencing what Shenzen Young calls "the taste of purification."  I've also known and sensed that the mouth and tongue have powerful nerve endings. The idea that our suffering can be relieved simply by becoming more in tune with our saliva is really exciting.

At any rate, in the last few hours that I've known this my de-tox symptoms have almost evaporated.

Fascinating!

Learning to expire

This week I've been learning something new to me, fundamental to Zhan Zhuang.

"They don't put much emphasis on breathing,"  my first anglo intructor Ron told me about the Tai Chi drop in school in chinatown, where I learned the basics of my practice.

And true, the philosophy of that school was that breathing would be something learned intuitively through the balanced movements.

There's something to be said for the simplicity of that bottom up approach. But it's possible that they simply didn't realize how much time we Westerners really need to spend to reform our breathing. If I had to do it all again I would have spent less time in the last ten years trying to achieve lofty standing goals like six months at dawn, and more time simply learning how to exhale.

I am convinced now that this is our worst and most destructive physical and spiritual habit, our bias towards the inhalation, and our unacknowledged anxiety that prevents us from truly exhaling all the carbon dioxide that allows for deeper oxygen intake that has more impact on our organs and overall vitality.

For the next few months I'm going to practice the whole body breathing that develops slow, long exhalations.

I have a theory.  In the same way that better exhalation leads to better inhalation, expiration leads to inspiration.  While we use the word inspiration to describe new and vital ideas, the word literally means in-breath.  So perhaps if one wants to live a more inspired life, one needs first to allow all the old ideas and low energy to expire.

Breath

In the ten years since I started this blog I have never written about the importance of breathing. I don't even have a category for it.

I'm thinking about it now because I've started exercises in longevity breathing.  I've decided that I'm going to follow Bruce Frantzis's energy arts program step by step.  There may be something to his theory that westerners  need a different program than asians. There are basic building blocks that we don't have, which Asians take for granted. One of them is attention to the gut and the importance of breathing, our intestines and in general the belly and lower part of the body.  Our culture takes this ability for granted, rarely considering how and why we lose our capacity as we age. We place a lot of emphasis on aerobic exercise to improve oxygen assimilation. But we can do more by simply training in expanding the diaphragm in a way that is natural and progressive.

I'm training this month in deep, expansive breathing and already I can feel the difference in my chi. My plan for the next few months, even half a year, is to stabilize this energy.  Six months of simply breathing and opening the are of my gut.

When I started, I believed that the goal I needed to change was six months of standing outside at dawn. Maybe the goal needs to be simpler and smaller. Six months of resting in my gut awareness.

Like Dan Harris says, if that makes me only 10% happier than I am, that's a pretty good return.

Year 10

In December of this year it will be a decade since I started this blog.

It certainly feels like a decade. And yet, here I am, starting another round. I started writing this with an inkling that zhan zhuang might be the purpose of my life. Then I promptly abandoned my three year practice, re-starting from a very humble place a year later.   It did bring me back to beginners mind and then a strong six months of solid practice.  I changed.  And then I let go again, struggling with something of a midlife crisis. The ZZ was spotty, but I did keep up the writing. Transitioned into sitting practice for a while, developing the more spiritual elements of meditation practice. Did some running, which has kept the chi building in me, even while I stopped my formal standing practice for too long.

Last week I sat down, did my best to look into the future, and what I saw there was the fruits of this blog, and my standing practice. This is where I need to be. And where I need to stay for the next ten years. No more breaks. This is what I do.

Awareness, word of the year

This week I've looped back to my root practice, open awareness.

It is a practice much improved because my environment is more open, less cluttered and distracting. I'm able now to experience my mind as a clear and open space. Within this space the emotional intensity and chaos I grew up in is more visible, as is the pull of ordinary messy awareness. In a cleaner environment I can work to loosen the knots of that.

I sit. I listen to the sounds around me, the traffic, the occasional siren, the night before last, a violent fight between my upstairs neighbours. In that case disturbing memories surfaced, but they don't stick because I'm in a different place. My space is safe from violence and aggression, and I have created a place for  my child that is free of that, directly at least.  There may always be that in the world around him and in the world he's immersed himself in for now, the play violence of his video games. But I haven't inflicted it on him and for that I can feel some relief.

This is the focus of the week, relief. The reward of the habits that have spared me from a bad marriage, abject poverty, squalor, ignorance. That have made it possible for me to produce nurturing things, this journal, educational materials and opportunities for others, and a book that I hope will bring enjoyment, inspiration and knowledge to others.

This relief from intensity, from the feeling of being stuck, from the cumulative dullness of bad habits. This is the reward that moment by moment will change my life.

Looking over past posts on open awareness, I am reminded of a ritual I started a couple of years ago, picking a word for the year, the first time I did this it was abundance, the next year emptiness. This year I've decided to pick awareness. I dedicate this year to keeping this thread of awareness strong and present through all my habits, intentions, and achievements.

Safety

I don't feel safe.

This is what my backbone told me last night. My apartment is radically cleaner than it's been for a long time, but the downside of this is that now I can more clearly see all the things I've been avoiding. Those things that I've been neglecting beneath the outer chaos. The deepest of them all is the fundamental feeling of safety.

I'm not sure I even know what if feels like to feel truly and deeply safe. Or if I even can, or should believe that safety is possible. But how can I possibly build a life for myself, or help Ben build a life for himself if I don't even believe in the priority of safety?

There are actions I can take to build this safety, but if I don't spend some time building the feeling I aspire to it's unlikely that I'm going to make those actions routine.

So for this month, this is the emotional and spiritual goal: to know what it is, what it really is, to feel safe.

The power of yuck

Read an article today in New York Times on "superagers" , people who remain sharp and vital well into their 80s.  Given the history of longevity in my family, I should probably start readying myself for this.

The secret is apparently a willingness to push oneself both physically and mentally.  Strolls and suduko are not enough. One has to be willing to hit the "yuck" point with regularity.  I'm guaranteed a fair amount of yuck with the goal I have set for myself this year, finishing the manuscript of my book, with or without a publisher's advance.

I do not want to do the work that this is going to involve. Nor do I want to run a faster half marathon. Or clean out all the paper clutter in my home. But I care about that 90 year old woman in my future and she cares about me. She has memoirs to write and a rich creative life to enjoy. So I'm willing to hit that threshold for her.

She's worth it.