I've signed up for another Vipassana course in June. In the application process it became apparent that if I was going to continue with Goenka, I was going to have to make the decision to embrace this technique fully.
I haven't. Especially at the level of anapana, noticing the breath at the nostrils. I'm a belly breather, and shifting to anapana hasn't been easy. It's like I feel this massive electrical rod going straight down from my nose to my belly every time I try it. I'm starting to realize that I'm afraid to make the permanent shift to such shallow breathing. Or even to experiment.
This weekend I devoted most of my practice to it, and tonight in group Vipassana, I had a revelation. The the awareness I need for Vipassana, and for anapana to feel more intuitive, is not in the sensation, it's in the equanimity that looks at the sensation.
I've been experimenting with non-duality, but trying to root my awareness in the sensation, because I didn't want to see the sensation as an object. This new approach roots my awareness the equanimity with which I view sensation. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one since equanimity is more stable than any sensation, which by definition is impermanent.
Walking home from meditation, everything felt right in the world for at least a few blocks. Once home, I still struggled with some of the work anxiety I've been feeling lately, but I started to feel a burgeoning confidence that whatever might happen, I had the emotional intelligence to deal with whatever comes up.
