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.
