My brain does not want me to be liberated.
In the last week, I've been doing more open awareness in my meditation, both in formal and informal practice. I noticed yesterday that I feel panicked when I'm just being. It is my mental habit to be predicting or ruminating. Who knows what will happen if I were just to be? This uncertainty is painful to me, so the mind and body contracts, hoping to pull me back into this comforting pattern of worrying and re-visiting.
To get out of this pattern, I have to make a conscious decision to surf the anxiety when it rises up. To be curious about it, and in that moment of curiosity to expand. This is a radical decision, to stop worrying and remembering. To just be in the present moment. To trust in awareness.
That leap of faith is the only way to be truly free. But it has to actually lead to liberation. If the awareness, the groundlessness is the destination, the liberation, then the leap cannot fail. It's a virtuous loop.
We have to get comfortable skiing in fresh snow.
Sunday, July 14, 2019
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Discarding
I have tried so many ways to free myself from the chaos and squalor of my living environment. I have tried the bit by bit, which I now think of as calories in, calories out. I get to a certain point, but my psyche simply iterates me back to despair.
I tried the Kondo method once before, but I think I stopped at paper, and possibly misinterpreted it as something I was supposed to complete in a weekend. I'm going to do a serious discarding and I'm going to do it all. I'm going to give myself the same six months that I've given myself with my weight. My weight is on track now. I know that intermittent fasting is going to bring down my insulin levels and that I will never have a weight problem again. I know that as deeply as I know that I will never smoke again.
It's a good time to make a permanent change in my environment. I have a lot of faith in the possibility of absolute change.
When I was envisioning the kind of home I wanted, what I saw was a home that supported absolute well-being. It was simple and uncluttered. There is a sense of spaciousness and peace. The possessions are few but meaningful. There is peace, and love, and a feeling of liberation from all the demands of modern life. It is a refuge.
To get there I need to discard. I need to go into a deep period of discarding everything that I don't love.
I tried the Kondo method once before, but I think I stopped at paper, and possibly misinterpreted it as something I was supposed to complete in a weekend. I'm going to do a serious discarding and I'm going to do it all. I'm going to give myself the same six months that I've given myself with my weight. My weight is on track now. I know that intermittent fasting is going to bring down my insulin levels and that I will never have a weight problem again. I know that as deeply as I know that I will never smoke again.
It's a good time to make a permanent change in my environment. I have a lot of faith in the possibility of absolute change.
When I was envisioning the kind of home I wanted, what I saw was a home that supported absolute well-being. It was simple and uncluttered. There is a sense of spaciousness and peace. The possessions are few but meaningful. There is peace, and love, and a feeling of liberation from all the demands of modern life. It is a refuge.
To get there I need to discard. I need to go into a deep period of discarding everything that I don't love.
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