Intention part 3

 I am re-reading the first chapter of WOB to deepen my intention. I am struck by the attitude he takes towards this text. That it was something that he constructed to keep his own intention steady, that he never dreamed that it would be something for others.

And now it's this classic.  

I started this blog first with the intention of writing it for others, but now it has become something that has been the anchor in my own journey.  I struggle sometimes with the intention of this blog. Is it only for myself, is it meant for others?  It's been a wonderful tool in my own development and I will keep it up for that reason.  But whether it is useful for others does not feel like something within my power. 

For it to be useful to others maybe what it needs is the clarity of intention.  For this to be the expression of my bochichitta and to embody the energy that is engaging.  

My intention is to live in non-duality.  To move beyond the struggle.  To truly and deeply understand the value of just being. 

To just be my true self, to recognize that I don't need to change.  And then to change.

Intention pt. 2

Since I wrote my last post about the stability of intention, compared to emotions, my father died. 

I can remember so vividly how important that insight was during one of the most difficult weeks of my life.  The week I thought my father was getting better, until he turned so quickly for the worse.  In the end he had a more peaceful death than any of us could have hoped for.  I owe that, I believe, to my grounding in The Way of the Bodhisattva. 

And now as long as space endures,

As long as there are beings to be found, 

May I continue likewise to remain

To drive away the sorrows of the world. 

It has been my intention in the last three months, to tranform my grief into strength. I think I'm getting there.  But it's also ok to let that grief be.  Stability is a good goal, but it's not the objective.  That is balance and balance means having the equanimity to stay poised in difficult situation. 

To drive away the sorrows of the world, it's good to have a light. But it's essential also to be able to see in the dark. 

intentions are more stable than emotions

This truth has been transformative for me in the last week. 

I rest in the heartspace (am I really saying that?), but I don't search anymore for sensations, or even emotions as much. I rest in my intention to achieve enlightenment for all beings. The fruit of that intention is not a sensation, a mood, a hormonal shift, all those these things happen, it's ultimately a stillness, and enduring truth. 

It feels like emptiness, but it is as full as the cosmos is of stars. 

This is liberation. 

The body of a Bodhisattva

The body, used to practice sacred teachings,

Should not be harmed in meaningless pursuits.

By acting thus the wishes of all beings

Will swiftly and completely be attained.

-Shantideva 

I'm going to write a new chapter in my meditation journal on my experience learning and following The Way of the Bodhisattva. 

A large part of this, I know, will be renouncing activities that have been draining me of my spiritual energy.  Specifically internet streaming.   

                        

Self directed retreat 2021

Today's my birthday, and the gift that I've given myself this year is a week of adapted retreat, ending in a three day virtual retreat on The Wisdom of Emotions, led by Mingyur Rinpoche. 

This was not the kind of deep meditation retreat I've been doing since I went to Dhamma Sutta in 2018. This year, I've had to adapt it to the realities of my father dying and be available for the support, emotional and other that my mother and my brother needed.

The most important thing I learned on this retreat is there is a sea of distance between believing in basic goodness at an intellectual level and believing in it truly and intuitively. This is the whole purpose of meditation, to know deeply in our heart, throughout our body and beyond, that we are good. Only when we do, will we intuitively see the good in others. 

In my retreat of 2019, I had peak experiences, but I'm not sure I really saw the way out of the prison.  And in the end I went back to many of my bad habits, although I did maintain my meditation practice. 

In retreat of 2020, I moved down to the heart, and learned more about non-duality, but I'm not really sure that I understood then, or truly developed an understanding of  what it was to live from the heart. 

In one sense what had been missing from all of them is this simple practice of open awareness, which I let go of when I took the time to explore Theravada.  But taking this time to experience concentrative meditation has had its learning benefits. I know have a felt understanding between the difference of object oriented and subject oriented meditation. And from that, I now have the felt experience of non-conceptual awareness, which I started to really feel and understand in the Mingyur Rinpoche  teaching. 

But it was in my exploration of my self-hatred, this thought and feeling that has been dogging me for as long as I remember that I feel like I finally found the key. No amount of concentration, or theory, is going to change the reality that I still believe, and thus feel that there is a fundamental badness in me. That needs to change if the bell of my "hate myself" mantra is going to decrease in number and intensity.

Rinpoche teaches there are three levels of mind, the emotional, the conceptual and the habitual. This lines up nicely with Lisa Barrett's theory of emotions.  At the first level we have affect, the basic sensations. The conceptual mind sorts these into pleasant and unpleasant sensations and makes guesses and applies concept, words, labels to explain these sensations. The habitual mind makes them automatic so that we don't have to keep repeating the process. 

If we want to change our habitual feelings from negative to positive, then we have to go down, find those bad guesses, and labels, and then make those positive emotions habitual. 

Easier said than done. But Rinpoche believes that every habitual emotion, even the negative ones, contain the key to their transformation. Every sensation is a desire to be happy, or cease suffering. Our basic impulse is towards this state of joy and equanimity. We don't have to go in and re-label and conceive every emotion. We need to make intuitive this basic truth, that we are basically good and have access to a powerful transformative energy. 

Meditation both formal and informal makes this transformation happen. 

If I go back to my top insights of 2021, I remember the first one is that in knowing we don't have to change, we change. 

Acceptance of our own mind, and of the powerful synergy of all minds together is the thing we need to make habitual, if we are to be liberated. 

The Way of The Bodhisattva

This month I started a year long course that I expect to be transformational. 

I will be reading and reflecting on Shantideva's Way of The Bodhisattva, guided by Mingyur Rinpoche. I was struck right away by Shantideva's statement that he has written this book for himself, to strengthen his practice and had no thought to whether it would benefit others. And yet it has, helping countless spiritual devotees and leaders cultivate bodhichitta, the aspiration and practice of enlightenment. 

It is so challenging to aspire to enlightenment, but if we can't do it for ourselves, then how can we truly believe that it is possible for others? It is in that tenderness, that actual physical and neurological tenderness around the longing for liberation that bochichitta is awakened. 

The more I can be there, the more I can relax into the pain, the more I can root my concentration there, the more I will thrive in every way.  And the more strength and wisdom I will be able to bring to the enlightenment of others.  

Addicted to thought

I crave thinking. 

This week in meditation I felt that craving deeply, and when I did, a whole new path opened up. I guess I could call it a jhana.  But I felt the release that came from letting go of thinking and allowing all that is not thinking take over. 

Of course I've done this before, but I'm not sure I've ever really focussed as much as I did this week on the impulse to think.  

It was magical. 

I wonder how I can apply that to my writing.  This morning I saw my stack of old writing practice journals.  It's been so long since I tried to bypass thinking in my writing. I've been struggling with the BDW.  Maybe this would work. 

Hello, Hungry Ghost

This week I re-started my mindful eating habit core modules at Eat Right Now. 

I discovered this program about two years ago shortly after I launched an experiment.  On my screensaver I put a rather disturbing buddhist painting of The Hungry Ghost, the being with a large stomach and tiny mouth who represents that part of us that can never be satisfied.  I was struggling with my own HG, having hit the highest weight that I've ever recorded, putting me solidly into the medical definition of obesity.  This app/community of practice is the work of Dr. Judson Brewer, psychiatrist/buddhist, and for me it was exactly what I needed.  It was program and supporting community that helped me transfer my mindfulness skills in meditation to my eating habits and get my cravings under control. It also pointed me toward a low insulin food plan that helped me to lose about 30 lbs in the next six months.  

I kept this off for a good while, but at the beginning of the year I started to struggle again.  Tried to shift to a vegetarian diet with complex carbs that started to bring my insulin levels back up. Tried to balance that with fasting.  By March I was on a rat wheel of uber eats, and my weight was steadily climbing back up to obesity.  Ben was hitting a high weight as well. 

So I'm back in the program.  This morning's module is about The Hungry Ghost.  My tendency is to want to satisfy my HG with substitution strategies, getting busy, doing other stuff.  But these are just band aids on the wound. The prescription today is to just be with the pain.  Eat some small healthy meals throughout the day.  Know that the suffering will eventually ease

through the power of awareness. 

Sit. Stay. Heal. 

 

Living with less prediction

If I want to be free from suffering, the most impactful thing I can do is to rest that part of my brain that is incessantly trying to predict what every shift in affect means.  Do this and let the equanimity build.

If I want to be happy I need to notice when an unpleasant affect is receiving a habitual prediction of gloom and doom. E.g.  when I'm running, I can notice how my mind has shifted to work problems.  Take a beat, notice that there are no actual work problem happening, this is my brain noticing the rise in intensity in my body from effort, and coming up with the habitual reason for this: work problems.  I did this yesterday and was easily able to shift from anxiety to excitement about the incrementum from returning to my running habit and the increase in healthy energy that this was going to bring me. 

Another good example is when I wake up in the morning, cortisol running through my body. Same, my brain starts hunting through the usual negative scenarios, all the things I'm angry or anxious about.  But I don't have to continue with those particular simulations. I can immediately ask, "what can I be excited about today?" I can start my day with an entirely different mindset. 

And then I can start the day with an hour of meditation that sets the default mode at being, instead of predicting. 

Nothing agains prediction.  It's very useful.  But it's also like trying to live on ground that is always shifting. The body, the brain and the mind needs stillness. 

If it's going to maintain balance, it needs to know what balance feels like  

new new words

incubated:  the feeling of being in  my tidied bedroom, where new growth has a chance to grow beyond a traumatic sprout. 

Yesterday I wrote about my project of coming up with new words for new feelings. Like incrementum, for the feeling after taking a baby step towards the recovery of healthy energy. 

When I started this journal thirteen years ago, and then abandoned it a few months later, and then started writing in it again, I wrote about the phenomenon of traumatic sprouts. The re-growth in a tree after there's been trauma, and the challenge of maintaining that re-growth. 

Right now my clean bedroom feels like a fragile environment.  I've rarely been able to sustain this environment for an extended period, and I wonder what impact that has on my ability to thrive and sustain success. 

I hope by identifying the feeling of being incubated, and maintaining that emotion, that the energy that I grow here will become more stable. 

New words, new feelings

I'm working on building the specific words for feelings that  I need to recreate to sustain the growth that I've made and want to build.

Repiphany: an insight that I've had before, but forgot

e.g. If I sit with that feeling of stuck-ness long enough it starts to give, and I start to feel a small motivation to change.  I've recognized this before, but it's not quite intuitive

Incrementum, the feeling after I've taken a small action towards positive change, and

Recrementum, the feeling I have after I've completed a micro habit that served me well in the past

eg. Just looking at that empty swept corner of the room gave me hope. 

Remomentum: the energy that starts to build from several instances of recrementum

eg. If I could commit to the 2 minute hotspot for a few days, I'm sure I'd build some remomentum. 

My theory of equanimity

If joy is the prediction that positive transformation is happening and will continue, then what is equanimity?

It's the prediction that peace is abundant and available, now and in the future. Even forever. 

The universe is at peace. Space seems still and endless, and it looks like that's not going to be changing anytime soon. As I build a stronger and more resilient sense of this truth, the  intense, unpleasant affect that threatens to derail me has  less of a hold, and wisdom is in the driver's seat. 

My theory of joy

 If emotions are guesses and predictions, then joy is the prediction that there will be good things, better things, transformation.

It's not everything is going to be okay, but it is everything will be good enough, better, worth being grateful for. 

It's all that we see in our lives and in the world that convinces us that we can always find a path to peace, equanimity, love. 

If I apply it within the four qualities, it goes like this.  The wish that everyone be happy and free, awakens the hope, possibility and prediction that this will be so.  What makes this feeling habitual is the equanimity that supports it, nurtures it and increases the circumstances and possibilities for joy. 

Equanimity now

A self-directed mini-retreat yesterday. 

I spent a lot of time focussing on the sensations on my skin, keeping my attention to low arousal energy. I takes less effort to maintain, so brings me into calm more quickly. 

I listened to a long and short Goenka led meditation.  Keeping in mind the objective of equanimity, I found that place of balance in my brain, when I feel the truth of 360 peripheral understanding of how well supported we all are by the universe.  When we enter that zone and let go, being is effortless.

Remembering that place, remembering the core purpose and value of our brain, balance and equanimity, is the challenge. 

It's a huge challenge because it means devoting yourself to something that seems colourless, flavourless, affectless, but is in fact the light that brightens, sweetens and awakens all that is good. 

Being an energy leader

To be a thought leader, first you need to be an energy leader.  If, as Lisa Feldman Barrett theorizes, the brain is not for thinking, but for allostasis, then if we want to influence the other brains, we need energy. 

My first stage of energy building and maintenance is nurturing calm. I move  the needle from the unpleasant arousal that is the clay from which I make my depression and self-hatred, towards the pleasant stillness that is serenity and calm acceptance. The energy grows and rises and from that I can weave together curiosity, gratitude, enjoyment. And as it peaks, the excitement and ecstasy that crests until it becomes the base for deeper peace and equanimity.  

Even the unpleasant affects from which we make depression, grief, common misery, sadness, and anxiety can become the material for that more pleasant flourishing that sparks renewal. 

This morning's meditation sparked that kind of pins and needles feeling that I'm guessing might be the awakening of new neurotransmitters.  I'm not a neuroscientist, so I don't know for sure. But I feel like I'm going through a period of transformation. 

The key is still tapping into and strengthening the flow of serotonin. 

Emotional Hunger (Hello Serotonin)

Just as insulin is the ultimate cause of weight gain, so is serotonin the ultimate cause of wellness. 

I felt that and knew that in this morning's mediation.  I've felt it and known it before. So what it the best way to sustain this knowledge so that it infuses every day?

I have to experience it short times, many times.  I have to set a clear intention to breathe it into my transitions.  I have to plan for it.  I have to make it the thing that I produce. I have to track the impact of it on my life. I have to make art about it. 

I have to bring it into my big idea. 

I have to use my hunger as my friend. 

 

The Four Thoughts

Another Saturday of meditation and fasting.   I started the day with a reading of Tsoknyi Rinpoche's  writing on the four thoughts that turn the mind. Of course I have read about and contemplated these thoughts before, but..

"...repeating a teaching is not just for your conceptual mind. Once your conceptual mind understands, you think you understand. But that kind of understanding is not enough because repetition is for your mind's emotional understanding." 

The dharma needs to become a stronger, wider, less rickety wheel if it is to become an intuitive, protective and nurturing set of emotions that make sense of our constantly changing affect.  

I had a glimpse of this earlier in the week after discovering some Goenka guided meditations on my Insight Timer.  Goenka points out a number of times that equanimity arises from the understanding of impermanence.  It's not enough to know conceptually that we are impermanent.  When we make intuitive the understanding of impermanence, we  have the insight born of all the four thoughts: that life is a precious opportunity, that is is indeed impermanent, that suffering has causes, and that suffering is not worth the effort of all the habits we have to maintain to perpetuate it for ourselves and others. 

During my two hour meditation I took my time with each thought, taking the time to rest in the emotional consequences of each.   I felt gratitude, equanimity, bliss, and a deep sadness for everyone still as hooked on suffering as I am. 

This morning I brought those thoughts into my meditation and finished with a strong clear connection with absolute well being, vast infinite and always here. 

The weekly quote from Tergar was the insight that I started the year with.

I am committed.  My job now is to document these changes.

Joy on tap

A Saturday of meditation and fasting. 

After the first 2 hr sit I asked myself how I would feel if it was a successful day.  Joy.  I can say that now because I feel that this is a dependable emotion for me now.  That isn't to say that I didn't feel any painful emotion.  I certainly did.  

During my second 2 her sit, I felt such a strong wave of compassion, it was like I was feeling for all the suffering in the world that I could fit into my heart.  I was dense and immeasurable despair. Then suddenly, a wet trickle of warmth began to flow in my heart, as though a trickle water was emerging from a crack in the ice.

I still hear the familiar hate myself refrain.  But I practiced RAIN on it, bathed it in acceptance, and eventually it began to loosen, like a 3D hologram turning around beneath my gaze. I could see the hatred as simply solid energy, surrounded by other kinds of energy.  All was energy, all the calm ocean like pleasure, all the pain, both petrified and sharp.  All was awareness. I felt what Mingyur Rinpoche speaks of when he defines happiness as the experience of absolute wellbeing.  

We are of the universe and the universe is always well, even if every part of it is dying. 

During my last meditation, I just let go.  Let go of my pain, of my self, of the content of my past.  I let go as though I was dying, returning home.  It was a happiness that could sustain itself.  It was joy as achievable as a water pump.  No more waiting around for the ice to crack. 

Compassion

 

Compassion means letting go of your self-identity, letting go of proving that identity all the time. Compassion means you work in the way the wind works, the sun works, or the air works. Take, for example, how the air assumes the shape of the room. The air does not say, “I will give you this breathing space provided you breathe the way I want.” Everyone enjoys the benefit of being able to breathe in the air. It is the same way with the sun: the sun does not stop shining when there are clouds in the sky. – Khandro Rinpoche

Joy, Meaning, Connection

Slowly, but surely, I'm feeling a coherence in my life. 

The different practices connect, meditation, walking, eating well and mindfully, cleaning, writing, planning and mindful review.  Since I've stopped eating past 7 pm, I fall asleep and stay asleep more easily. Today I had a jhana meditation, in which I could feel the serotonin rising from my gut to nourish my heart and my brain. 

The habit I'm trying to build into my life right now is clarity. It is, according to a book I'm reading, the child of careful thought and mindful experimentation.  It starts with knowing yourself.  In his monthly teaching, Mingyur Rinpoche, talks of the three kind of ways we can sense the self,  unhealthy, healthy and luminous. Unhealthy sense sees the self as permanent, independent and singular.  The healthy sense of self self, sees it as impermanent, interdependent and multidimensional. And then there is the luminous. The self beyond the self that emerges from the unity of these two.  It is both impermanent and permanent, independent and interdependent, multidimensional and one. 

To achieve more clarity in my life, I have chosen three words to describe the self I want to sense and  as the future unfolds: joyful, meaningful and connected. 

May I sense more and more, everyday this luminous self. May it guide me.  May it guide me in how to guide others.

Top insights of 2020

1. "When you know you don't need to change, that's when you change"  Mingyur Rinpoche.

   This was from an interview on the podcast 10 per cent happier.  I realized after listening to this that I don't have to "stop" hating myself.  Being aware of that piece of coal in my heart is like knowing where the diamond is.  As with cravings, I just need to accept this aversion and let it transform itself. If that were my only meditation, I would have all that I need

2.  "To whatever degree we know deeply that we have what we need within ourselves, we will let go"  Narayan Helen Liebenson

   NHL meant this more about connecting with our sacred core, our place of enough. The more deeply and intuitively I am connected to my gut energy, however, the easier it is for me to let go of all the weakening habits I've accumulated.  

3.  Going home is the most treacherous and challenging part of the adventure.

   As I think about putting this book into book form, I remember that movie about the climbers coming back from ascending a glacier in Peru.  Going down is harder and more treacherous.  How we make it home and make it to a place of peace after a peak meditative experience is a much more challenging journey, than getting to the peak experience.  How do we live after we have awoken?

4. Who would I be if I didn't hate myself?

   A question posed while reading Byron Katie.  If I don't have a clear enough picture of that it's going to be hard for me to return home, because I don't even remember what home feels like.  

5. The 3 words of Dzogchen.  

   Recognize (the primordial state beyond concepts). Decide (to be  in this state). Know (that is is self-liberating.

6. The impact of informal practice on awakening

   I learned a lot from Culadasa's The Mind Illuminated, but the best take away was his assertion that awakening will always be stunted if our informal practice is weak.  The end of day review is something I want to bring into the new year 

7. Intermittent fasting is not a sustainable nutrition plan for me

   I've come back to fiber fueled eating, which meant going through a transition, and even some weight gain.  But I truly believe it's what's best for my body, and for the planet.  That said, I'm not eating unlimited fibre in front of the computer or TV.  I am building better intuition about what I really need to eat to feel happiest and liberate myself from cravings and self hatred.  

8. I can become a digital minimalist

   December I cut out streaming.  I'm trying to re-introduce it judiciously. Limiting the emotional thrillers to a couple of episodes a week.  Balancing different kinds of shows and trying to keep it to under an hour a day during the week.  

9. To make my cleaning algorithm intuitive, I need to truly focus on the cleaning habit I'm mastering

   Focus and attention is the foundation of learning. If I want these cleaning algorithms to take, I'm better off bringing my attention to a short practice many time a day for a while, like shining the sink, or 15 minutes, than doing binge cleaning while a watch an empty tv show.  This is how I learned to meditate.  It's how I'm going to learn to clean. 

10.  Attention is the foundational, core habit, of socio-emotional learning 

    I really got the importance of attention, which I may have been mixing up with concentration in the past.  This is partly from Culadasa, partly from my work with UNESCO.  But I'm beginning to understand how vital attention is learning.  Awakening, I am starting to believe, is the unity of attention and awarenes.  It's that simple.  And that difficult to master.