December of Digital Declutter

  I end my year with a digital de-clutter. 

This is largely about un-hooking from streaming. I'm tired of all that video content pinballing around in my head. I'm tired of my head. What would it feel like to be happy? More and more I see it as the ability to just rest in wellbeing.  Stop the constant search for drama. 

Once I unhook, I will have to be with my aversion. That tight cable of tension that runs through my heart, my forehead, down to my belly. What would it be like to let go?

I sit here on day 1.  The only news of the day, the tightness that holds me to the past. 

The Mind Illuminated

 I set out on a path that is both new and familiar.

I accidentally bought both a physical and digital version of Culadasa's The Mind Illuminated.  So I'm taking this as a sign that this is a new teacher, and this for the next while is my new bible. 

He seems to be the right teacher for me right now, with his synthesis of Theravada and Tibetan, but the determination to keep things secular.  And it is very helpful to have these stages set out.  Browsing it though, I think I am being honest in assessing myself as a meditator somewhere between skilled and adept. That I can sit comfortably enough for a couple of hours is a strong indicator.  

A few techniques that are already useful are the habit of recognizing and developing introspective awareness, and his decision to distinguish between attention and awareness. 

But what strikes me most is his assertion that without a strong informal practice, progress in formal practice is likely to be slow and stunted, and that moment of total awakening will remain elusive. 

I would say that is true in my case. However strong my meditation. It's impossible to sustain peace and joy if the atmosphere, and if my daily life is chaotic, squalid, impulsive and insecure. 

So alongside the deepening of my formal practice, it is my intention to deepen and strengthen my informal practices, cleaning, eating and exercising mindfully.

Stories

Can I detach from the storytelling that causes me so much suffering, but still tell stories?

I'm having some wonderful meditations lately because I've detached from the idea of having to identify with this vast state of mind that is too big to conceptualize, awareness. It is a state of being that pre-dates my birth and will continue on without me. Realizing this I feel less of a need to identify with a "self," with my body, with whatever idea people have of me. 

If I want others to share in this peace, and joy,  that I'm increasingly sure I can cultivate, I need to be able to tell a story about giving up stories. I need to tell the story of how I found happiness.  How I got out of prison.  But first I actually have to get out of prison. Get off the story telling wheel. Make this state a trait.

Or at least that is the story. 

What if I don't. What if I can start now, as though the only thing that matters is knowing that this state exists, and that I can access it.  What if I don't worry about embodying it?

That was my insight at my last Vipassana, the suffering caused by the narrator, but to get people there I have to be a narrator. 

Maybe it's a question of how we use narration as a tool, not a master. 

I hate myself

This week Dan Harris interviewed Mingyur Rinpoche on 10% happier.  At the end of the interview Rinpoche led a guided meditation in just being what you are. "When you know you don't need to change. That's when you change." 

I put a lot of energy into trying to stop hating myself, but it occurs to me this morning, that maybe I don't need to change this part of my mind. Self-hatred can be that lump of coal in my heart that is really a diamond.  It bring me right to the source of my vulnerability. 

What would happen if I truly believed that I didn't need to change this?

And what if my meditation going forward was truly about accepting what was, the conceptual mind, the confusion, the striving, despite all my effort a non-striving? 

I had a vision of myself this morning, like if I were one of those people so rich that they just have a bank account that builds wealth without work.

Could I get to the point where I saw many times, everyday, that I am this rich? That I will be until my last breath.  

When I can greet this statement "I hate myself" like a lifetime loving companion, with the love I would feel to  a long lost friend who just walked through the door, I will know I am here.

The Secret to the Direct Approach

I'm already doing it. 

I've always been doing it. 

Trying to practice the three vital points, and reading a book by Byron Katie, about her experience living in non-dual awareness, and definitely having some good meditations. 

I came across a book this morning that seemed appropriate to my journey "Standing As Awareness" by Greg Goode.  Published the same year that I started this blog, his approach is to simply make intuitive the belief that Awareness is always aware of itself, with or without our striving.  We need to gradually fall in love with that expansive awareness and feel it as an expanded self that is too big to ever be an object of awareness. In this approach there is no need for "self" improvement, because the self is the totality of everything, the thinking, not the thinker. Just be what is. 

I've also been reading Byron Katie's "A Mind At Home With Itself," her version of the Diamond Sutra (the oldest book in the world).  I've been practicing Katie's The Work to see if it can bring my closer to the non-dual awareness that she lives in.  And I've been applying Dzogchen to my most pernicious thought "I hate myself."  Katie suggest questioning this thought. "Is it true?" and then pondering what it would feel like if I didn't believe it.  The closer I am to believing that I am actually this bigger process of awareness, rather than this abstract object of awareness (my self), the harder is to belief this thought "I hate myself."  It doesn't make sense because if I am Awareness, not the object, or even the witness, just the big expansive process of consciousness, then there can't be an "I" to hate with this other "I."   

And if I'm not an I that can hate myself, then others can't be objects of my hatred. 

Examining self-hatred in primordial consciousness

Last week I discovered Dzogchen, direct pointing out of primordial consciousness. 

I reduced it down to the 3 vital points: 

1. recognize this consciousness free of concepts
2. Be in the decision to be one with this consciousness
3. Know that this consciousness is self-liberating

Now my work is examining the most pernicious and painful concepts as they arise. For me this has always been self-hatred. With all my work and Vipassana, I still hear this inner, poisonous mantra regularly throughout my day, "I hate myself."  I don't think I hate myself, and yet it's there ringing like a church bell. 

So be it.  The seeds of liberation are in there somewhere.  I feel that hatred, I know that it's a conditioned creating. I don't believe that hatred exists in this first consciousness.  Hatred feels real, but it's just a bad dream and I believe I can wake up from it. 

In fact two nights ago I had a very visceral self-hatred dream.  A woman who I saw in the dream as someone sweet, but fundamentally ignorant, started telling me what a fraud I was. I was hurt, shocked and reduced to a contemptuous, scornful tirade of telling her how unworthy her viewpoint was of mine, or anyone's consideration. I felt deeply ashamed of myself of attacking this woman. Tried to make it up to everyone by doing dishes. 

There you go, my life story in a nutshell. 

So the question for this week is who would I be if I didn't deep down believe that I hate myself?

Dzogchen

This week I discovered a new practice that has changed everything.

It's called the "three words that strike the vital point." I learned it Mind Beyond Death by Dzogchen Dolop. The objective of this practice is to unite us immediately and permanently with the primordial state of consciousness.

It's quite simple, but extremely effective and it works for me.  In a nutshell the process is

1.  recognize that there is a primordial state beyond all concepts and be with it.
2. Decide to let this state be the one thing, transcending the usual neurological categories of unpleasant/pleasant, low and high arousal. 
3. Be confident that this state is self-liberating, that resting in pure, primordial awareness will liberate us naturally. 

The meditations that I've done in this state of been effortless, deeply peaceful, and timeless. I know there are still concepts arising. But I know that beneath these concepts is a pure vast, eternal boundless and uniting consciousness. From time to time the self disappears into it. Right now I'm still in the self, but feeling a lot of tingly kalapas that tell me my body rooted concepts are dissolving. 

It's exciting, but of course the excitement won't last. And that's a good thing. When pure consciousness becomes ordinary consciousness, I am home. 

Timelessness

This morning in meditation I truly lost my sense of time.  I couldn't tell if the chime that signals I'm  five minutes from the end of my meditation was the chime that signals that I'm 35 minutes from the end of meditation.  I suspected meditation was almost over, but it flew by so fast I really couldn't tell.

So I rested in this place of not knowing. I'm going to have to get used to that place because the direct approach that I'm now on means giving up the fixations I'm used to. Fixations on my sense of threat. Fixations on this "self" I want to improve. Fixations on this sense of not having enough, being enough, doing enough.  These are my guideposts to the place that I know, which is a place of struggle and suffering.

I don't know this new place, even though my true, absolute self is home. In the end that's just a concept too.  I can't imagine ever forgetting what I've learned in the last few weeks, that this place of affect is my escape from the painful patterns that have become my conditioned life. But I know I can, so I write this down.

Yesterday I understood from Stephan Bodian's book that I have these fixated themes in my life. Well actually one fixated theme.  That I'm under attack.  I don't like criticism.  I particularly don't like being criticized for giving criticism. The theme that I'm fixated on is that I can't live a life of candour, but also that I can't handle a life of candour.  My mind brings me back again and again to this.  This it not a failing on the part of my mind. It's simply bringing me back to this place that I need to resolve and let go of.  Or at least loosen, if I am to live a life with more ease and balance.  I need to learn, rather than struggle with it, I can let it pass through.

But I also need to get down to the core emotions that are at the root of this reactive pattern.  I care about myself.  I want to protect myself from attack, and I want to protect others from attack. I am fixated on this theme because I want safety, and I want others to be safe.

First I need to know this place of enough.  Or know, more deeply, that I don't know it.

Awakened Awareness

I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to simply give myself permission to rest in awakened awareness and just be what happens.

I guess I needed a book like Beyond Mindfulness by Stephan Bodian.   He is an advocate for the direct approach, making awareness the object of awareness, and relaxing into absolute well-being, over relentless scanning.

I've had this book for a while in my virtual library, and I even started reading it a few months back. But for whatever reason it didn't take.  I suppose I still felt a certain loyalty to the Goenka method. After all I had made it something of a new year's resolution to follow it religiously. 

This concept of locality changed that a little.  And thinking about Mingyur Rinpoche's description of happiness as Absolute well-being. After spending a week just being in the energy of my gut, I felt inspired to explore the vast field of consciousness anchored by this lucid anchored energy at my core.

Also, I'm tired of constantly trying to get somewhere. Tired of travelling.  The Adventure has now become one of finding my way back home.

locality

Been thinking a lot about the truth that data works most efficiently when it is localized, i.e closeby, easily accessed.  This is why, for instance, AI is most powerful when all the data is stored in one place and why Amazon and google aren't going anywhere, anytime soon.

It's why to make well-being absolute , we have to bring our attention to the actual place where that well-being is produced.  The gut, the serotonin motherlode

I've been experimenting with renewed attention to my dan tien for the last week.  It's very powerful. I feel the intensity of that energy.

But I've also been experimenting this weekend with the direct path.  Being aware of global awareness, the reality that there is inter being and that there is awareness outside the material location of well-being. This big awareness that unites us will always be more powerful, collectively, than what we can harness in one body. In the best and wisest world, both yield their power towards the liberation of all.

The use of locality should ultimately be the ability to create global interdependence and sustainable peace throughout the world. In the same way we focus energy in the dan tien so that we can engage with everything that exists outside the centre.  We focus on the the dan tien so that in time we can let go of the dan tien.

Only

To whatever degree we know that we deeply have what we need within ourselves, we will let go...

The Adventure of not knowing

If you don't expect to know what's going to happen, if you have no expectations, life can always feel like an adventure.

Like any adventure you need to have your supplies, otherwise it's an adventure in hell. You need to have maturity and skills and good instincts. You need the right attitudes, like patience, negotiation skills and you need compassion for yourself and the people you will meet.  And you need above all the ability to signal love, calmness, open heartedness.

To survive and thrive in adventure, above all, you need to know that place of refuge within you. There are things you can know and carry with you throughout all the places and events that you do not know.  You need to be able to access your refuge on call and know deep inside you that it is always there. 

#1 motivation blocker

I've been thinking this week about the difference between impulsivity and inspiration.

I believe that my impulsivity arises from a need to find stimulation to escape the dullness of a mind trapped by learned helplessness.  According to Mingyur Rinpoche, "faint heartendness" is the #1 blocker of our true, buddah nature.  He tells an interesting story in Joy of Living, about a woman who, early in his vocation as an international teacher, told him about her self-hatred.  He didn't know what that meant. This speaks to the new theory of neuroscience that I'm learning, that all our emotions are culturally constructed. My own self-hatred is a prison constructed from my experience and my circumstances.  When I sit with it I feel its core as a low arousal unpleasantness.

The "stims" that I've lived with all my life, my hand flapping, my grievance collecting, the jumping, the angry daydreams, these are all ways of trying to kickstart my muddy heart. 

But I'm experimenting right now with a different way.  I am following Rinpoche's instruction in seeing life as a dream, and thus feeling this faint heartedness and sense of powerlessness as that.  Seeing it the same way I would if I were in a lucid dream and then allowing the mind to open up to all kinds of possibilities of power.  I'm also spending more time in my meditation in that hypnagogic state, between dreams and wakefulness.

It certainly opened my mind up to changing one pattern.  I imagined that my room was miraculously tidy, and every time I finished my meditation, I felt an overwhelming urge to clean.

I am sitting in this moment in the cleanest room I've had in years.

Narayan Helen Libenson speaks of "don't know" mind, and how practicing this attitude of knowing that we don't know liberates us from all the patterns and habits that we delude ourselves into believing are our identity.

Being comfortable with the feeling of not knowing is what allows life to remain fresh and inspired. It's a natural stimulation that comes from the natural way that life changes, rather than the constant chasing after sensations that comes from a life that has calcified into dull routine.

Chocolate current

Apparently twenty per cent of the population is born happy.  They have a genetic pre-disposition that supplies more anandamide, a well-being transmitter, to the brain that the average human. A woman in Scotland had such an overload of anandamide that she couldn't feel anxiety, pain, fear,  had a tendency to get hurt, but her wounds healed much more quickly than most people.

Chocolate is apparently a trigger of anandamide. One study found that dark chocolate had potential as a natural anti-depressant. When I found this out I experimented with a meditation I was calling chocolate intravenous, imagining that I had just the right amount of chocolate in my veins, not so much that I felt sick but enough to sustain a stable feeling of enjoyment.

Knowing that enjoyment is something that can be sustained seems to be juicing my transformation. I've been thinking back to Echhart Tolle's assertion that on the New Earth we will live in three modes of being, acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm.  Enjoyment will replace want. I'm experimenting with this idea as I continue with the rest of the world in COVID 19 lockdown.

I don't think the economy will ever be the same again, because we will find it harder to accept the myth that ultimate happiness is found in stuff, intimate relationships, and careers. It's not that these things don't bring happiness, but none of them last.  The only thing that lasts is awareness. And even that only last for the duration of a life, which will never seem very long at the end.

Doing what we can to contribute to collective awareness, so that this truth will carry on after we are gone. That's all this is about.

Transformation

I've figured some things out.

We change from state to state, from arousal to calm, from pleasant to unpleasant, from one combination of those states to another. The more we conceptualize these states with whatever cultural programming we've been given, the more varied and busy the change is.

It's a lot of work.

Mediation brings us back to the elemental states. The elemental change.  In time meditation becomes no more than the brain keeping everything in balance with the least amount of energy possible.

At that point, as we begin to liberate ourselves from all the programming and all the energy that following that programming takes, we move from change to transformation. 

True deep rest happens, and true deep repair takes root and makes absolute being possible.

Why I love hatred

In meditation yesterday I hit a vein of hatred in my heart that revealed just how attached to it I really am. All that punk rock energy, all that anger, all that jouissance that was the intense, but ultimately unfulfilling consolation prize of growing up with parents who despised themselves and each other.

All that cre-hate-ivity of the 90s. All that contempt for vulnerability. All that need to be cool. How I with I could go back and truly see how crippled I was by it.  And how vulnerable I was to people who were driven by hatred, not love.

The way out, however, is not to hate the love that I have for hatred.  The only way out is to accept it. and accept however long it will take for that hatred to dissolve, a day, a decade, a lifetime. Not nearly that long if I can learn how to rest in that sea of equanimity.

Why is gratitude hard?

I have not brought gratitude into my practice, my day, my routines as I intended to back in January.

Watched a cute video about new years eve resolutions that suggested that instead of annual goals we create annual themes.  So far I've lost that theme, but I could put that up on my mission spreadsheet as a way of re-directing myself.

But first if I am going to make gratitude a practice, I need to recognize that it's hard. That grievance is my habit loop, not gratitude. Grievance collecting is something I was raised on, with two parents who were union officers. In times of stress this is what wakes up in me, this pattern of collecting all the slights and injustices real and imagined.

Can I train my heart to recognize how it closes around my vulnerability and how it can open to a stronger energy?  And how do I keep to that training? 

I can commit to the algorithm of Padmasambhava's Natural Liberation.  First awareness of our disillusionment,  then awareness of the preciousness of life. Bring that 1-2 in every practice. 

New trauma

A few days ago my mother fractured her hip.  This is going to put some old traumas back into play.  She's in the hospital and I don't know what the next three months hold for her, or the next year. A good percentage of seniors never recover from this.  My father, who has been struggling with depression for the last few years is in deep distress.

Widening my window of stress around this might be a way of repairing old wounds, and going though some psychic rehabilitation myself. I feel the stress manifesting as cravings and a desire to escape into Netflix. I hope I spend that time instead developing a stronger sense of the preciousness of this life, and this awareness that we all have access to.

What would this rehabilitation look like? Maybe it is me make the intention to follow that bardo course.  To begin to prepare for my parents' death and to help them to prepare for death.  Hospitals are a profound place of disillusionment  and reminder of our transience.

May I be compassionate towards my parents. May they both live as long as they need to. May they both connect with the awareness that is their birthright.

Survival brain

One of the themes of this journal since the beginning has been growth and recovery from trauma.  I go back again and again to the idea of traumatic sprouts, re-growth that is at high risk of early death because of a major trauma that cut off the mature and healthy boughs.

I've been reading a book this week about using mediation for trauma recovery.  The author sees the danger in two systems, the thinking brain and the survival brain being out of balance.  She pointed to gratitude as too often being a positive thinking scheme by the thinking brain used to control the intensity of the survival brain.

Re-reading my post last week on creating a "gratitude algorithm," I realize I might have been in danger of one of those poor thinking brain band aid solutions.  A better solution might be using the algorithm of the precious refuge. The three gems, buddah, dhamma and sangha. In contemplating how precious these places of safety are, gratitude arises naturally from the survival brain and growth comes from a deeper place.

I had a chance to put this into practice this weekend.  I had another one of my work spats that set in motion the intense ball of insecurity, anxiety and shame that gets released every time I get into any kind of work conflict.

Trying to do a lot of breath watching to bring back that sense of how precious refuge in the dhamma is.

Making an algorithm of gratitude, and other things...

I forgot to bring gratitude into meditation practice this week. If I'm going to actually make it the word of the decade it needs to be part of my spiritual algorithm. Meditation on the precious gift of this life is a standard Buddhist practice. A ritual that is a building block of natural awareness.

This first building block, though, is awareness of death.  I felt its fiery touch this week when I received news that a work acquaintance died on the flight shot down accidentally by Iranian forces.  It was tough looking at the bodies on the front pages of the NYTimes, knowing one of them could be this lovely man who had moderated a panel I spoke on a year ago, who died with his sister. In meditation, the day after I heard this news, I went deep. I hit the core of the truth that however random this seems, we will all lose every single person we ever cared about. And anyone who cares about us, will lose us too.  Not that horribly, by inevitably.

If felt right to go back to that grief, as I went back in my memory, to Nairobi, to start writing what I hope will be one of the final chapters in Code For Life. Eight years ago an idea came to me that changed my life entirely. Have I done this idea justice? It has given me so much. Have I given it enough? Does it know how grateful I am?  I am re-reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic.  I miss her world view, that ideas are living entities, that inspiration is only part of this world, but also part of an immaterial world.

I ordered a book on the innovation that is happening around the world, Beyond The Valley. I'm going to take that leap of faith and believe that the dhamma, the big magic, the substance, the tao, whatever it is, exists and that I can take refuge in it. That we can all take refuge in it. I will not let another day go by where I do not express my gratitude to it.

In my essay, and in my meditation, I am playing with the notion of circular versus linear time. People who live in one place are closer to the joys of experiencing time as something that returns again and again to our beginnings.  People who travel, who sell things, who depend on the new and on the story of sustained growth, live on linear time.  Either way they are mental frameworks, not true or untrue. These days I try to find pleasure in both.

Yesterday an interesting piece in the NyTimes on memory.  Adults think they are losing their memory, but really they are only losing a bit of short term memory.  The problem is that they have too many memories. But they are better at patterns, at seeing this circular iteration. It seems to me we are trying to replace this precious wisdom, this ability that our elders have of giving context to things, with artificial intelligence.  Good, very good at short term memory, but not much else.

It's overwhelming to think about the apocalyptic future.  I take refuge, but I remember, also, that nothing lasts for anyone.

Gratitude

This is my word for the decade, gratitude.

It is the key to liberation from craving and aversion. It is the antidote to common misery and stress. When grateful there is none of these triggers. Only joyful being. I sit comfortably in my orbital frontal cortex, the part of the brain that stores the relative reward value, remembers it so that I don't fall too easily for immediate gratifications that do nothing for my wellbeing.  I see clearly that gratitude is its own reward,

What can I do this year to make gratitude stick, as a habit, as a way of being? How do I develop and live an algorithm of gratitude?

1. Make it part of my meditation practice.  Open and close all meditation with a prayer and a feeling of gratitude.

2. Think of every person I'm grateful to before I go to bed.

3. Let people know, every day, how grateful I am.

4. Maintain a gratitude journal.

5. Bring it into other routines, eating, working, cleaning

6. Be grateful now for the good things that are going to happen

7. Make it part of my new contrasting practice. When I visualize success, visualize gratitude for that success. Visualize gratitude to myself for overcoming my addiction to delay.

8. Show people my gratitude by sharing my wisdom, my wealth, my success.

9. Be regularly grateful for those things that are eternal, that I don't have to strive for, or ask for, that I receive as part of being blessed with a life.

10.  Every Sunday morning, be grateful for this journal and all it has done to ground me in happiness.

10 things I'm grateful for since 2010

Writing

This has, and will always be my first practice, my skill, my salvation. It's how I tap into my life force. It's how I remind myself that I am more than all the bad and impulsive decisions I've made in my life.  It's my lifeboat.  I hope in 2030 to say that I was able to find more ways to share my writing with others, to use it to create strong, sustainable momentum towards a safer and happier world, and to inspire others to keep writing. 

Banff

Getting this literary journalism residency in 2011 changed how I saw myself.  I felt what it was to be successful and to be with successful journalists. I experienced the  beauty of Western Canada. I felt the responsibility to care more deeply about the world and to think more seriously about it. To be less glib and more committed. I started to feel the glimmers of the bigger picture, that there was something, some kind of power that we needed to harness, if we were going to make it out of this publishing wasteland.  As I head back to Calgary in February, I hope that I can tap back into the place in my soul that I found in that refuge. 

Learning to code

This changed everything for me. Not just because I learned to code, but because I learned to think more algorithmically, make better decisions about my life and discovered a subject in which I could show thought leadership. 

Grants

The money was a life saver for me in one of the darkest decembers of my life. But more than that, the affirmation from peers. The chance to explore and think deeply about a subject and spend a few years, instead of a few days thinking about an idea. I hope I can finally deliver on that vote of confidence. 

CanCode

This money helped kids and teachers across Canada. Helped the non-profit I built, and helped me start to dig my way out of credit card debt. 

My teachers

Where would I be without Mingyur Rinpoche and S.E. Goenka?  They introduced me to my buddha nature, the dharma, and provided me with sangha that made sustaining this life changing practice possible.  It's hard for me to pin down whether the incremental improvement of my life happened with coding, or meditation, since I started them both at the same time.  But the algorithms that I have received through these teachings and trainings are my most precious and important tools. 

Ben

He's a tough teacher, but his affection, intelligence, humour and sweetness are a constant blessing every day. 

My family

When I hit a financial crisis near the beginning of the decade, I don't know what I would have done without my parents. They are still a challenge, their volatile marriage still a mystery, but I don't expect them to be around by 2030.  They have given me so much, emotionally, financially, culturally, intellectually. My brother is still one of the funniest people I know, and I hope he makes it though his psychological challenges. 

Insight Timer

I had no idea when I first logged into this how influential it would be to my practice.  Almost 2000 hours later, I can't imagine my life without it. 

Insulin

This big discovery of 2020 and the decade was the role that insulin was playing in my weight problems.  I'm less than 10 lbs away from a healthy weight and feel more confident than I've ever been that I will not only get to that weight, but stay there for the rest of my life. One thing I'm confident I will still be grateful for in 2030.