An Adventure in Standing Still

future as addiction

2012-02-14T05:58:00.000-08:00

My brain is addicted to the future, whether it's in a state of worry or a state of excitement, I am almost always thinking about life as something that will become worse or better than it is now.

Why can't I get addicted to the present? Because the present is nourishment, not addiction. So why am I not finding nourishment in the present?

I pause to do that and so much stress evaporates instantly. Who cares if Mme Fauteux wins this court case? I'll find an apartment somehow. Odds are I'll negotiate an extension at least until 2013. There's really nothing to panic about, other than mystress over winning or losing, which is really just ego.

It's easy to try and make a project out of liberating myself from my ego, but that's really, paradoxiacally just ego. Just more future when everything will be okay without ego. It's all abstraction without the action of actually being in the present, in this present, with this identity that I have now.

Sometimes the present can feel like an addiction. Sometimes I feel the jouissance, a sort of joyful subversive feeling when I'm not doing anything. It's a radical rebellion to the programming of tending to past and future.

Can I accept my present as it is right now?

2012-02-13T05:51:00.000-08:00

Messy kitchen. Economic uncertainty. My mother ill. Dripping toilet. Court case pending. Can I accept this?

I don't want to. I want instead to drift off into fantasies about starting a coding camp for kids, becoming a local celebrity on French radio, or how much better things might be if I changed my colour palette. I want to escape into nostalgia about Whitney Houston who died two days ago, at 48. She was born a week and a day after me. To think you can have beauty, talent, skill, wealth beyond your wildest dreams. You can sing the American anthem with such joy and freedom, better than anyone ever has and probably ever will. And still you can be so miserable and self destructive.

I have only a fraction of the things I wanted when I was twenty and Whitney Houston was just becoming a star. But today I'm alive. I have food. I am reasonaby healthy. I'm addicted to misery, maybe, but not really anymore to the things that cause misery. And today I have the wisdom to sit with this misery and watch it shift into peace, if I can keep my commitment to mindfulness.

As for the circumstances in my life. I can accept everything, except the debt. I can live with being forced to move, if it comes to that. My parents will die. As will I. I know I can get the kitchen together. But the debt. What am I going to do about that? That's something I need to sit with a bit.

The Trick

2012-02-12T03:42:00.000-08:00

You can't feel self loathing and love together for very long. Eventually love wins. The trick to life is to take the accumulated stress, disappointment, fear, regret, whatever sad and painful feeling you hold in your body and brain and to make the very so slight adjustment that makes this food for consciousness, instead of food for more of the same.

I grew up in a household of hate, and I see how everyday is a choice for me between passing that hatred, and the habits of hatred--constant bickering, fighting, power struggles--and cultivating love, and the habits of love --acceptance, openness, peace building.

It starts in the morning, in the alchemy of my practice where I stand with these painful, tight, disabeling feelings, and I just allow presence to loosen them and start working with the warm energy of chi, bodhicitta, whatever one wants to call it. If I can do that consciously every day, in time my body will begin to do it without my need to sit there and give it instructions.

This is the process of enlightnment.

Transmutation

2012-02-09T08:52:00.000-08:00

In The Power of Now, Tolle writes about the process of transmutation. This is where if we stay present with the pain in our body, experience it, but don't form new cognitions about it, our presence is strengthened and our pain is lessened.

I feel like over the years, I've learned to do this with my body, but I still often believe my mind is still a whole cluttered scary project full of unprocessed anxiety and sadness. That belief is an illusion. The mind that my faulty emotional programming is only a small part of is a far greater and stronger entity than my emotional pain. But it takes diligent practice to keep reconnecting with it over and over and over again.

At this moment for instance there is a feeling inside me of confusion and worry. I'm not quite sure what I should be doing on this day when my son is unexpectedly home sick. Should I be learning code, should I be cleaning, shopping, writing? I have less of a clear idea of which my life is heading every day.

Maybe that's a good thing. My life was obviously in something of a rut before, so if the path isn't clear at least it's not the path that was heading me into trouble.

But maybe it is. Maybe my sudden new interest in coding is just a way to undermine the momentum I was making as a writer?

So I sit with the pain of not knowing what I should be doing. I don't think. I just feel.

Eventually the pain lessens, and I have an insight. Usually when I'm feeling in a double bind between two secondary purposes, it's because I've lost sight of my primary purpose: to be. To just allow my natural energy to flourish and in doing that to help other people to manifest their own natural warmth, intelligence and openness.

Vitality

2012-02-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

I've written earlier about something Elizabeth Gilbert once said about depression. How the opposite of depression is not happiness, it's vitality. I still deal with depression. I won't say struggle, because I believe I've reached the tipping point where it will no longer drive me the way it once did. But I still have remnants and shadows and blocks that I must be working at steadily and always.

Cleaning up after the depression that gripped me for most of my life is my greatest responsibility. It's easy to get distracted with the outside evidence of my depression: clutter, grime, debt, but the most important work is my internal state of mind. That is where I can make the deepest and most influential changes. In my gut, my tan tien. In my heart, and through that my brain, or whatever that grey stuff is in my head.

Happiness

2012-02-01T05:30:00.000-08:00

From The Art of Power:

"When you are happy, it is not difficult to earn enough money to live comfortably and simply. It is much easier to make the money you need when you are solid and free. If you are happy, you are more likely to be comfortble in any situation. You are not afraid of anything. If you have the five spiritual powers and you lose your job, you don't suffer much. You know how to live simply, and you can continue to be happy. You know that sooner or later you will get another job, and you are open to all possibilities.

We must distinguish happiness from excitement, or even joy. Many people think of excitement as happiness. They are thinking of something or expecting something that they consider to be happiness, and for them, that is already happiness. But when you are excited you are not peaceful True happiness is based on peace."

Sense of self

2012-02-01T04:08:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a good stand. Chi flowing, connection to the earth, all the things that I do this standing for. When that happens my entire sense of self changes.

Earlier in the day, I'd been gripped in self-hatred, feeling weak and vulnerable to all the things happening in my life right now. But standing I feel like a different being, someone healthy, vital and safe.

Maintaining a committment to Zhan Zhuang gives my life a simple sense of purpose. To just stand today and everyday in this energy. To aspire to health, and wholesome power.

Liberation

2012-01-31T02:18:00.000-08:00

Last few days, and even right now, have been high stress. Court, financial crisis, transitional time. It's all scary stuff.

But there is something deeper I think that I have to deal with. An undermining energy. A fundamental lack of compassion for myself. I have not been taking the actions needed to protect myself from this situation. I have not been acting responsibly.

There's a part of me that wants to blame this on ZZ. That wants to say, look: ZZ has not solved all your problems. You have still made some bad decisions. But that's not ZZs fault. I abandonned that. It didn't abandon me.

It's T.V.. Internet surfing. Internet buying that have been leading me around like a lost dog looking for my owner. And I have been passively allowing that to happen.

Yeah, I need to sit down and make realistic getting money plans right now.

But on the plus side, at least I don't need a lot of money.

stress management

2012-01-30T06:03:00.000-08:00

In The Way of Power Master Chuen write about stress management as a natural strength. Right now I'm dealing with a few tons of stress: an upcoming court case, a mid career crisis, a huge transition about to take place in Ben's life. I've been having difficulty falling asleep so I'm tired and more vulnerable to identifying with the sense of panic in my brain and body.

Chuen's words remind me that I have the resources inside of me to deal with this stress. If I keep the focus returning again and again to my tan tien, if I return to my foundation postures and re-connect as often as I need to with the natural warmth and the natural relaxation I've been building over years of practice, this stress will be lesss likely to take me over and block my intuitive abilities.

Chuen says over time this develops fearlessnes. What an idea, to be fearless. We have normalized fear so much in our culture that to be fearless is something for action heros and movie stars. Not something for ordinary people who need so much strength just to fight against the social forces in their lives that are allways threatening to take away job security, rights to shared resources, etc. And then there are, of course, the natural forces the bring stress: ageing, death, grief at the ageing and death of others.

We need a cultivated resilience to deal with all of these things. That's why I stand.

indescribable marvels

2012-01-26T06:29:00.000-08:00

My practice fluctuates like winter and summer between periods where I'm feeling amazing surges of energy and periods where I seem to have incrementally returned to where I set out from, a place of rigidity where the sap is thin.

Often my thin sap days are because I'm growing in a different area of my life. Right now, for instance, I've started learning computer programming and I'm more than a little obsessed with all the places that might lead me. Maybe I'll start a meet up for teenagers at the RPM center. Maybe this will turn into a business where I run after school programs.Maybe I'll start a career as a tech journalist. Maybe I'll design a course to teach at Dawson.

All these maybes. None of them right now have standing like a tree in the centre of that action. None of them involve keeping a space for the indescribable marvels that I can experience now.

I can't force myself to care about Zhang Zhuan. But I can break the infinite excitement loop to keep my feet on the ground. Otherwise I'm just giving away all my energy for free. And then I'm sapped.

Excitement

2012-01-24T05:52:00.000-08:00

One of the things that has derailed me time and time again in my standing practice is excitement.

I get to a stable point where I'm feeling the inner peace and the joy and then something happens that sparks my enthusiasm, and suddenly the practice starts feeling very mundane and dry and well, treelike. My ego starts getting all fired up with the potential for success and before I know it I lack the grounding energy to keep that fire going. So whatever has made me enthusiastic dies, along with the practice.

Right now I'm excited about something, but I'm holding back. Is my holding back healthy, or undermining?

One thing excitement undermines is writing. It's hard to write when your brain is jumping about with ideas and visions. Writing needs a kind of energy in between depression and mania. Writing needs authentic joy.

My home

2012-01-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

This is a really interesting process, the behaviour bias that happens when I make this my homepage. Homepages for me are traditionally newspages, New York Times, lately the blog at the New Yorker.

Why is it that I've never thought to make my home page my actual home, my blog, the blog that I love more than any other blog. The first blog I ever started.

And then I wonder why I keep getting distracted from this path...

Well yes, everytime I open a browser I'm browsing the big wide store of information. I'm shopping for the story that will make me happy.

The joy of being

2012-01-23T06:03:00.000-08:00

I know I think too much of joy as something that I can attain, as something that I will eventually attain through standing, or whatever new skill my promiscuous, curious mind happens to settle on.

Standing has taught me that joy is accessible now, that it's in me and all around me. That I can have it whenever I want.

So simple. So easy to forget because of all the programming. All the code that says that enough food is not enough. Enough shelter is not enough. Enough time will never be enough. Enough joy will never be enough. And so as soon as I feel this innate joy I start running away. It's like there's an instruction in me that says joy is an obstacle not a beginning or end point.

That's why I decided recently to make this blog, this adventure, my browser home page.

It's a scary feeling, not starting the day with someone else's instructions, someone else's priorities. Where's my newspaper? Where's my water cooler talk? Where's my water cooler. It's just me here on this page. What's going to happen if it's just me? Who will tell me what to do?

program or be programmed

2012-01-22T04:16:00.000-08:00

I made a spontaneous resolution in January to learn how to code. Not exactly sure now why I'm doing this. It's good to have a skill. I've been thinking back a lot recently to what I most enjoyed studying in highschool. It was actually geometry, not English. Coding is a combination of those two things.

But I'm also curious how learning to code might change the way I see the world. Or might change my behaviour in positive ways. Something about coding feels empowering. Like learning to read or write.

Also been watching lectures by Douglas Rushkoff. He's usually a pretty good visionary. His mantra these days is program or be programed. If you don't understand how your mental environment is being programmed by the web now, then you risk being programmed by forces that are not necessarily working in your best interests.

I know that the web programs me to buy.

I would rather program myself to stand.

Stillness Saves

2011-12-05T04:03:00.000-08:00

Tolle writes that stillness will save the world. I don't know if that is true. But stillness is saving me. Every morning I wake up and stand, stillness grounds me. It builds a hub of awareness in me. If I make a conscious effort to pay attention to the silence and to the post of energy that holds me up, I feel the particular pleasure of stepping out of mental conditioning. If for whatever reason, I forget to do that and start getting lost in my thoughts, stillness is still there working its way through my body, working its way through my psyche. As long as I maintain a strong devotion to stillness, I will lose myself less and less in the things that are weakening me, consumer culture, ego driven careerism, entertainment overload. I will return again and again to that place in me that is a rest from all of that, and in time none of those things will have the power to drive me.

Timelessness

2011-12-04T04:17:00.000-08:00

It happened this morning, this timelessness I've read about. I started standing at 6:30, and it was like the next minute I looked up and it was 7:15.

This has much to do with a decision I made yesterday to think of the real me a pure awareness and not this conditioned thinking. To not see meditation as an escape, but to see thought as the escape. This doesn't mean that to be myself I have to spend all day standing. It just means that I need throughout the day to regularly take the time to be still, so that my thoughts serve me rather than drive me.

When I really spent this meditation coming back to my true self, standing quiet, listening to the morning silence, deeply still, all the usual markers of time--boredom, the urges to get back to important thought using tasks--lessened. There was no need for time. There was just now.

An exciting thought

2011-12-03T07:32:00.000-08:00

"When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning."

I've been reading Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks. Tolle believes that stillness will save the world. This is a hard thing for me, child of busy journalist/activist/professor types, to accept. That is might be inaction, not action that will create a better world. But what Tolle says, what he conveys about the excitement of stepping out of conditioning, speaks deeply to the heart of my practice. I have felt those moments, those thrilling moments of stepping out of the flow of habitual belief, routine, buzzing cravings and unhealthy worries. They are what keep me coming back to this again and again.

The day my anxiety died

2011-12-01T12:49:00.000-08:00

A couple of years back I wrote a post about the night my depression died. I was standing, in the middle of the night, up because of some insomnia thing. Somewhere near the end of what had been an extremely relaxing, deeply calm stand, I suddenly felt this buzz of anxiety, and then the smokey despair of the chronic depression I'd been struggling with all my life. I felt it flare up, and then I pretty much felt it burn away, replaced by a deep sense of calm.

This isn't to say that after that day I never felt depression again. But I can say, that it's never driven me, or controlled me in exactly the same way since. I visit that murky path from time to time, but I know it's growing over more all the time.

Last week has been an extremely difficult one. My landlady gave me official notice that she's going to take back my apartment. Doesn't look, from what an experienced tenant's rights lawyer told me, that she has much chance of pulling it off. Still, I've been obsessively anxious about this for a week. It's been difficult to sleep, work, and very difficult to meditate. I've been in imaginary rental board hearings now for a week, and any actual rental board hearing is months away.
Today I stood. I heard my most compassionate voice reassuring me "you don't have to be driven by this obsessive anxiety. You don't have to be driven by this obsessive anxiety. You don't have to be driven by this obsessive anxiety. Obsessive anxiety helped you once. But it's not helpful to you anymore. You don't have to be controlled by this." Then I thought, who is this you that the voice keeps talking to. And I realized that I didn't want to think of myself anymore as the helpless person, who needs reassurance from a secondary voice. I thought "wait a minute. I'm the strong voice that's reassuring me. I'm not the child who needs reassuring anymore." So I started being this voice and I started hearing myself say: "I don't need to be driven by obsessive anxiety anymore." The voice got stronger and started to feel like more and more of a core part of my identity. Until it was.

For a while, just after that stand, I sat down. I started thinking about a time in my life when maybe that obsessive anxiety did help me. I thought of my childhood, always on attention. Always expecting my mother pounce any moment with some overblown irritation of some sort. I needed to be obsessively anxious, it felt like, to match her obsessive anxiety.

But she's not here anymore. This is my life. I'm not always doing something wrong. I'm often doing something right. Something healthy. Something smart. Something interesting. Something delicious. I don't need to be worried ALL the time. I don't need to be controlled by that worry.
This doesn't mean I'll never worry anymore. But I'm about to lose my home, one of the worst feelings in the world. And I'm up to it. I'm up to the fight of protecting myself and my son. And maybe, eventually I'll even feel secure enough to let my landlady have it. I'll see, once i'm more used to this knowledge.

My Job

2011-11-23T06:49:00.000-08:00

It's snowing. A very late Indian summer is officially over. Hanging out with my three willows, feeling the abundance of stillness, I suddenly felt the stab of guilt. Of course I should be working. I have debt to deal with. Private school fees to save for. All that.

But then I felt that sense of paradox that I so often do when I'm standing. Things were so good this morning in our home. Peaceful, playful, everything moving smoothly towards Ben getting off to school. I could feel the consequences of regularly tending to my peace of mind. So it hit me in the park. However rushed, however stressed I am--this is my job. It is my job to plant this field of peace at the beginning of my day. It is my job to nurture the inevitable creativity and physical, mental and spiritual energy this time supplies me with. It's my job to cultivate this and to pass on the skills of this cultivation to my son and to my readers. This is my job and I have deep faith in its rewards and its renumerations.

worries

2011-11-20T04:31:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a lovely stand. My body relaxed into that pure column of energy and I tasted timelessness. I was so sure that I was on a wide open path to peace. Then I watched the HBO show Enlightened. This is the story of a naive woman coming back from a retreat in Hawaii. She's stuck on the hamster wheel of work, and she can't get off because she's in debt.

Me. This morning all I can feel is a column of anxiety. Financial anxiety mostly. How, I wonder will standing help me with my debt? Will psychic and physical energy translate in financial success? Will I reverse this trend. Or am I just escaping?

I'd like to think that in standing I'm facing up to what my body is telling me. That there is entrenched worry in me that needs to be faced. But standing also tells me that this worry does not have to be the core of my identity. I'm feeling anxious this morning. Tonight, I may feel better. I don't want to duck my head in the sand, but without faith in some kind of energy in my life--a kind of energy that won't put in anymore debt than I am, since standing is free--I won't have the energy to face and deal with this problem. So I can't run away from this anxiety and escape into my other habits, food, T.V., etc. I need to stay with it.

The paradox of no change

2011-11-17T04:03:00.000-08:00

I started this blog as an investigation of how I would change after six months of daily practice. But today I wonder if the most profound change I could undergo might be to lose this craving for self-improvement.

Reading last night about the concept of maitri, self-acceptance in Buddhist talk. A large part of meditation is being able to accept the source energies beneath our proliferating negative thoughts. Can I stand with my boredom, my loneliness, my self-loathing and not seek to eradicate these things. Just be with them.

I tried this morning, and an interesting thing happened. I felt the paradox of accepting my self-hatred. I felt what it felt like to be unconditionally loved by myself, even when I didn't love myself. Eventually the pleasant magnetic energy of standing took over. But when distractions came back, as they inevitably do, I was more easily able to deal with them, when I followed them back to the painful energy beneath them, and just stood in it. Just felt them like knots in my bark. Just part of who I am. No big deal.

So much of self-improvement is self loathing. So much of that industry is an exploitation of self loathing. To just be with ourselves, just accepting this self-loathing as a part of us--for today, or for however long, may be the most liberating change that we can take.

Chi-back loop

2011-11-16T01:11:00.000-08:00

Last night, instead of zoning out in front of mystery channel, I stood. I hit that bad spot, where all I could see in my life was emptiness and loneliness. And then, of course, it disappeared, as it pretty much always does into this sea of quiet, sustaining energy. All evening I had this wonderful feeling of deep security, feeling what it will be like to connect at least twice a day to this source of chi.

Now I'm up in the middle of the night, woken by this recurring flashback I couldn't seem to get out of my mind. When Ben was six, a few days after his father told him he would be moving, with his two younger brothers, to Israel, there was a very bad day. Non stop acting out. At the end of the day I walked into the kitchen and saw him scaling the outside of the backstairs fire escape, a huge drop beneath. I screamed. He got angry and said "mommy, when you screamed like that it startled me and I almost let go." Everytime I think of that moment, I get this deep terrified shudder of horror. I keep seeing him letting go and falling to his death. Again and again, before I feel asleep this image came back to me. It woke me up in the middle of the night, and then just proliferated into all my petty anxieties at the moment.

So I got up and stood. Soon enough I was feeling that nurturing, stabilizing chi. I remembered the way. My pain, my anxiety, my worst memories. All these things can be fuel for this positive nurturing energy, this connection with the most stabilizing, grounding, empowering elements of the universe. Contemplating that I feel this tremendous liberation and sense of purpose. Even my lame distracting little anxieties are food for this energy if I diligently loop back to it.

Escape

2011-11-14T06:06:00.000-08:00

When I first started this blog, the fundamental question I was asking was whether I was using an exploration of consciousness as a healthy source of empowerment, or whether I was using it as escape. There is a danger with any pursuit that yields peak experiences that we are using it to avoid the mundane realities of a responsible life. So I couldn't go out and stand next to trees in the morning light while my son was still young. But I could do that later. And in doing that, I now have to choose whether I'm going to continue my t.v. addiction, or I'm going to start standing in the evening.

I know that fundamentally I am committed to health, not television. And now that I'm healthy I'm able to look at how this t.v. addiction started and what it's been doing in my life.

There was a time when t.v. actually protected me, or it felt like it was. When I was Ben's age, 11, my parents' already volatile and usually miserable marriage was at its worst. My father had just gotten a job at the CBC, and he was out drinking every night with French television journalists caught up in the drama of Quebec nationalism. My mother was a tenure track university professor, who came home after a day of teaching and university politics, and probably a couple of happy hour drinks at the faculty club, to an empty house, not knowing if or when her husband was coming home. Often he didn't.

It was about 10 oclock when it was clear my dad wouldn't be home, or he'd be home, late, drunk, hopefully not having killed himself or anyone else on the way back.

I'd lie in bed, anxious about homework I probably hadn't done, or had lost somewhere in my chaotic room. My mother, if she wasn't crying already, would probably be soon. I'd sneak into the t.v. room and watch Starsky and Hutch. I had a crush on David Soul because he looked like my dad. Come to think of it Paul Michael Glaser had the same curly brown hair as my mom. They had a partnership that nobody in my home had. Sure they sniped at each other, but deep down there was that working respect. Meanwhile I still can't remember which was Starsky and which was Hutch. But they distracted me from all the emptiness, and fear and heartbreak I wasn't emotionally equipped to bear.

Numbing myself out with t.v. was only something that started around the time I had my son. Before that were the years I was partying as hard as my dad was. Just a different kind of escape.

But now I'm here. A parent, with a child whose brain is going to be going through a quantum growth spurt in a few years. Standing in the middle of those memories night after night is probably going to be one of the most painful experiences of my life. I get PTSD tremors just thinking about it. I wonder if all these morning practices have just been a prelude to this heart of darkness practice that I'm about to set out on. And most of all I wonder what's going to be on the other side.

Distraction

2011-11-12T08:32:00.000-08:00

Interesting article about the four paradoxes of Standing Meditation . I am struck particularly by Paradox 3, time flies when you're standing still. I am addicted to distraction. And the last time I let the practice go was because I got sucked into a t.v. criticism gig. Yes, my friends. I was a pusher.
But now I'm going to get past that. Six months of evening standing will dry up that distraction. Time will fly.

Hockey Stick Standing

2011-11-11T11:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I saw a video made by master teacher Shinzen Young. He uses a hockey stick as a metaphor for exponential growth. In his experience, after you've practiced long enough you eventually hit an exponential growth curve that becomes such a powerful feedback loop, your practice changes you permanently.

I have come so close to that curve so many times in my practice, but something is stalling me. It just hit me what it is today. I have no end of the day standing practice. I'm great at beginning of the day. It's second nature to me now. But end of the day is still more often than not Jon Stewart. Nothing wrong with laughing yourself to sleep. But without the end of the day practice I don't have the feedback loop I need to snowball this practice.

So, starting tonight: six months of evening zhan zhuang.

My Addiction

2011-11-11T06:51:00.000-08:00

So my plan to skip Prime Suspect didn't work. Not only that, but I ended up on some huge drama binge. Re-watch of Girl With the Dragon Tatoo, and then Law & Order Criminal Intent, up until 1 a.m. I didn't foresee the way the brain rears up when you try and change a deep routine. The anxiety of not sitting down to this ritual I've been doing since I met Ben's father, since I was sneaking out of bedtime to watch Starsky and Hutch--it felt like too much to bear. I need to find a way to reframe this hour so that I can use it to nurture my mind, not infeeble it.
This morning I went to my willow and thought about how powerful this journal has been for me. How it has been like a tree growing from the best of me. It's such a radical thing, in this urban civilization, to go stand next to a tree and not get down to whatever stressful job we have, first thing in the morning. I know I watch these dramas because they give me the stress of a workplace, which in some ways I miss. All the drama and gossip of a community of people. Turn that off and I feel like I'm staring into the void. But actually this is a great time for community on facebook, blogging, that community that I can take up at any time. A great time to send e-mails and be in touch with people. And to nurture my community in this home. Ben and I. My community of books. My community of thinkers, magazine writers, publishers. This is my community. I need it back.

wind

2011-11-10T06:17:00.000-08:00

I've decided to give up 10 p.m. television. The hardest part of this is the part of me that believes this hour to be the only exciting thing in my life. In a day in our urban world, spent inside, comfortable, vaccum packed rituals, this is true. 10 p.m drama does give our lives drama.
This morning I went back to my willow. I didn't think there was much point when I looked outside. It was a dull grey day, but warmer than I expected. I sat under the long, yellowing boughs, the last few leaves before winter. I huge wind began to roil. The boughs were whipping around me. There was such a deep sense of how powerful the atmosphere was. And it hit me. That my standing meditations have the potential to be so much more exciting than anything I see on t.v. That a life, well rested and alert is one with so much more real energy and passion than what is manufactured on film. But if I'm not living it, I can't know. So it's so easy to get trapped on this hamster wheel, for months, years, decades. A whole life passes never really knowing the wind. So tonight I skip Prime Suspect. I can watch it online, or on mystery channel or whatever. At nine oclock I put the control up on a top shelf somewhere. I take out a good book. A truly exciting book, and I climb on the wheel of awareness and wake up powerful

snowglobe

2010-12-16T06:31:00.000-08:00

This morning Ben's bus didn't come. It was a bitter feeling, cold, slushy, cars rushing around us. By the grace of god another parent showed up to drive the kids to school. It felt like this could not be a good morning to go be with my willow. But I put on my sweater and my big boots and I went.
When I got there it was magic. The sun was hitting the spot in such a way that the cold was broken and I was just warm enough to stand forever if I wanted. The pond was empty and the light snow that was falling was infused with warm mid morning light. I watched the pond and absorbed the space and stillness. Then I sat for a while and watched the bright pieces of snow dance around.
Last night Ben and I discovered a snow globe that my mother had bought him last christmas. When you turn a switch a lamp comes on, switches colors, occassional a mechanical buzz indicates that the glitter is being stirred. It's quite pretty and fun in the evening. And I caught ben reading by it this morning. It's magic. But not as magic as this lovely moment in the park was for me. So easy to stay in the present moment when the present moment so lovely. I'm realizing now more and more the importance of getting outside for meditation. I can carry this moment inside of me all day, and in a certain sense all my life.

Winter Willow

2010-12-14T06:13:00.000-08:00

There's a light snowstorm this morning. I went out to the park to sit beneath my willow tree. It's winter so of course the leaves are gone. But the drooping branches, so many, protect me from the wind and snow. I feel the power in stillness. I feel a deeply rooted cool as I stare out over the snow covered pond. I will nurture this feeling everyday and it will keep me safe from the change and the challenges and the anger of the people who surround me. It will help me to ease their anger and bring peace and power into their lives.
We focus so much on the brain and not nearly enough on the trunk. As though the source of the tree's strength is its leaves and its tiny branches. But the core of the tree's strength is nothing we can see. That's where its magnificence lies, not in its branches, but in its roots.

Leaning on my tree

2010-11-29T06:22:00.000-08:00

Today I went to the park to stand in the sunglazed blue sky. I did a little chi kung. Stood for a while and felt the calm of the snow covered lake. And then I just leaned again the weeping willow with its golden leaves. when I felt the strength of that tree supporting me I suddenly realized how depleted of energy and strength I've become.
I've always considered the recommendation of doing the standing outside as not really important. For me what was important was to do it for long periods, or daily. But doing it outside brings an entirely different quality to the practice. A clear headedness that is difficult in my apartment. I feel a little bit of despair coming in here after the practice. But I know I'm going to use some of my energy to de clutter and dust Ben's room. I know that the outside will start soon to bleed into the inside. And I'll become a happier person and a better mother.

Day 5

2010-11-26T06:21:00.000-08:00

Zhan Zhuang is very much about surrendering the magnificent energy that drives nature, the cosmos, growth and, yes, disintegration. Unlike most exercises, which are primarily about using effort to get energy, Zhuan Zhuang teaches you to tap into the energy that is already there, and is far more powerful than anything you can achieve on your own.

This week I'm going outside, even through the weather is almostly defiantly crappy. Today in Montreal an icy rain has covered all the sidewalks in a layer of danger. But it did mean that the park was empty. I stood in the cold rain, next to a tree and felt this huge, quiet, deeply cleansing energy that I can never really experience in my apartment.

I don't go outside enough. So my challenge this year is to cultivate an outdoors standing habit. Apparently if you stand near trees it's as good, better even, than any anti-depressant, and I'm feeling the need to do some serious brain cleaning.

Position three really helps with this. If position two is about the energy that enters the body through the heart, position four is about the brain. When I do this I actually feel my brain relaxing, almost cracking like a knucke. I feel sense of surrender and the universe just slowly flowing in and removing all the stress. Developing the desire for this relief is a large part of changing your psyche for the better and in a permanent way. And it's a wonderful remedy for brain lock.

iced pond

2010-11-25T05:52:00.000-08:00

I don't go outside enough for my practice. I know, I'm self-conscious. Zhan Zhuang is weird, it's cold, etc. Lots of excuses to stay inside and breathe the same stale are that is not exactly brimming with bright chi in my house. So I'm making a commitment to do at least some standing outside every day in the lovely park near my house.

There's a beautifully landscaped man made pond there, with tall old trees. This morning it's starting to get cold, weather turning into winter. The pond is icing over. Last week I noticed duck waddling their way across the ice. They're gone now. Just seagulls now, with yellowing weeping willows. But the sun is bright and feels good and warm on my back no matter how bitterly it is cold.

second position

2010-11-25T03:52:00.000-08:00

In the Way to Power Lam Kam Chuen says that chi is stored in the Tan Tien, but enters the body through the heart. He also says you cannot think your way into this practice, you need to feel it. Second position is about generating a feeling for chi kung, and through this feeling a love and committment. In first position I feel the energy start to flow through my body. I might feel it under my armpits and lifting my hands and arms gently. But in second position I feel it as a balloon of energy. I feel it as an external force, pressing gently against my chest, the same chest I once held my newborn son. Gently holding this balloon how can my emotions not begin to de stress, how can my heart not begin to feel gradually full. Get this feeling everyday and how can you not be assured that you can always find happiness, at least in this?

Day 4

2010-11-24T06:51:00.000-08:00

As professor Yu says, the more you practice the better you feel. Zhan Zhuang really is that simple. Whenever I get back to it I can believe I ever stopped doing it. It's such a guaranteed deep mind boost. I do feel the silent laughter that he talks about, deep in my belly is still feel the deep tickle of energy in my Tan Tien.

So glad to be back.

my hypothesis

2010-11-22T06:06:00.000-08:00

So I've had a hypothesis ever since I started this blog that Zhan Zhuang would lead me towards a good life. And not just a good life, but an amazing life. Because that's what an adventure should be, an experience of things that are amazing.

I still believe that, even though I keep letting go of my practice every time my life starts getting exciting. This is my challenge to maintain my practice through the exciting times. It's easy to take up my practice when my life has sunk into despair and I'm depleted of energy. The magnetic force that renews me is always there. But can I keep it up when I start to experience the high of success?

Maybe that's the wrong question. Will it still be there? Of course it is. This energy is always there. It never goes away. It is the essence of love. There.

But maybe that's why it's so important to take it slow. Even when all I want to do is stand. I need to take it slow and see how it slowly influences my decisions so that they lead to the kind of incremental success that doesn't blow itself up.

Day 3

2010-11-22T03:46:00.000-08:00

In this segment, Professor Yu speaks about watching the marvels of change as we practice standing. I've found this to be true whenever I've remained committed to this practice, that I've witnessed changes in my body, connections to energy, feelings and alterations of consciousness that are beyond anything I could ever imagine.

Far more interesting that television, reading, even travel, although doing Zhan Zhuang does not exclude the doing of any of these things.

I hope this blog can be a record of my changes.

Today I feel the tingling of energy returning to my Tan Tien. I'm really enjoying the process of just observing energy in Wu Chi position. As the years go by I become more sensitive to the energy that flows through me just in the basic standing position. I wonder if the rewards of standing still are an evolutionary process. Those who can stand still do stand a better chance of survival, they make less noise, they can blend in to the forest. They can observe and have a better sense of what's around them. They have the discipline of being quiet. These amazing feelings that flow through us, are these rewards for developing this survival skill?

Day 2

2010-11-21T05:06:00.000-08:00

I agree with the students that one of the challenges for people who practice Standing is that it's so unusual and people think you're weird. After years of experiencing its benefits, I'm over that problem. But I do wish that standing were more common. For me, as a single mother, who can't really find the time to go to classes, the hardest thing has been maintaining this practice without a community.

At the same time, it would be difficult to keep it up if I didn't have a high tolerance for solitude. I'm a writer. Solitude is the foundation of my career. So it makes sense that I would choose a physical practice that would cross-train with that skill, as it were. Community it important, but you do probably have to have a strong sense of self to keep this up. And I believe it's helped me to build a stronger sense of self.

Stand Still Be Fit

2010-11-20T08:26:00.000-08:00

Just discovered this today, the ten day video of Lam Kam Chuen's program. I'm resisting urge to watch them all in one sitting. Mostly because I've been realizing that one of the problems I have in maintaining this practice is that I'm not starting slow enough anymore. In the past that has always been the key to sticking with it, starting out slow and allowing the urge to develop on its own. So right now I'm just going to stick with the wu chi position, enjoying the simple feeling of natural healing instead of striving for mind altering energy shots, and allowing and trusting that healing to chart its own path.

The Simple Plan

2010-11-13T05:59:00.000-08:00

I've been reading another book about power by Thich Nhat Hanh. The foundation of power, the very first building block in his book is Faith. I've been struggling the last day trying to make myself believe I can do things that for whatever reason right now I don't believe I can do. Slowly over the last day I've whittled myself down to the one thing I do believe in, the one thing I've believed in for years. Standing. I believe if I take the time to stand everyday, if I make it the foundation of my life I will have all the energy and power I need to accomplish the things that need to be accomplished in my life. I will have the diligence, which is the memory of what works an the continuting to do it. I will have the mindfulness, which grows out of the stillness of this practice and becomes a natural urge through this stillness. And the concentration will grow out of the mindfulness, and the insight will grow out of the concentration.

Yes I can get up early every morning to stand. But the most important thing in this plan is to just stand, everyday, throughout the day, whenever I need it. Standing needs to be my default practice, not watching t.v. not eating, not internet surfing. Standing. That is freedom for me. That is the path towards everything I really want out of life.

It is the science of abundance. Know that you will get what you need, be deeply grateful for what you have and what you will get.

Commitment

2010-07-15T04:22:00.000-07:00

So here I am back after two months.

My mind has been on other things. My book, which drifted off to limbo when the editor quit the major publishing house. I got into hypnosis, which has been an interesting experience and has, if nothing else, helped me to lose that fifteen pounds I've been struggling with. A major online magazine asked to do a recap of a show that I love, but that keeps me up late.

But my body is stiff and I really miss this quiet morning time. And I miss the energy, and I'm sure that if I let the practice go it will affect my writing.

So how to really, really get that commitment to stay solid inside of me?

There are two ways that I know of. Visualize it daily. Visualize the rewards, the energy, the confidence, the power. Feel it. Step into that body that I would be if I made a lifetime commitment to this.

Be aware how much my reality is affected by not practicing. Feel the manic energy and buzzy stress that seems to be taking over again. Feel it and know that I don't want that to be the thing that drives me.

Keep the navigational tools pointed up....

I'm connected

2010-05-17T05:58:00.001-07:00

Just now I did a simple 20 minute stand. Just noticed the energy and trusted it to ease physical and emotional tensions. Eventually I had a sharp stabbing reminder that I might hear from the editor today, or this week. And with that reminder the fear of rejection.
And then a reminder that as long as I'm standing I'm connected to this energy. And a contemplative thought that this fear of being rejected by an editor might be a smaller version of a deeper fear. That one day I will be rejected by this energy.
And then a reminder that one day I'm going to die and feel what might feel at that moment like the ultimate rejection.
And then an insight that this energy might--no let's say will--step in at the last moment and take me for the final moment of connection.

Interesting talk I saw this morning by Victor Frankl in which he argued that living is a lot like flying a small plane. You have to adjust for wind currents. If you aim directly for where you want to go, the current will usually bring you to a spot below. To go where you need to go, you actually have to aim for a spot above. If we aim to be who we are in reality, we will probably end up below that. If we aim to be better than we are, then we usually end up being what we really are. Frankl links this to Goethe. I think I'll go find a quote to inspire myself.

"All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green."

My new lifetime commitment

2010-05-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

I'm a little flu ish this morning. Up early standing and then not sure if I really want to stand. Wrote for a bit, because my monkey mind thinks sometimes that's what I should be doing to make my writing better. Writing more. And there is truth to that. But I think it's a mistake to make writing the primary purpose. Being is the primary purpose. I think it's a more effective way to live, and to create.
That's my theory.
But the reality is that standing is hard. It is the hardest thing I've every done. To keep it up I have to believe that this really is the best thing for me to be doing. The best way to use my time. The best way to start my day.
The only way to start my day. The only way.

The answer to the question

2010-05-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

So seven months ago more or less, I asked myself a scientific question. Would making consciousness the primary purpose in my life empower my secondary purpose, being a writer.
I got my answer seven months, rather than six months later. An editor at Penguin is enthusiastically interested in my book proposal. So now I believe that it works.
But of course, I'm tempted to make writing my primary purpose, because that's what society rewards us for. Making work my primary purpose has, in the past, derailed me from my practice. And then, ironically, when I get de-railed from that my work suffers.
So enough writing about standing. Time to go stand.

A big change

2010-04-30T03:56:00.000-07:00

Okay so it was closer to seven months than six months that this happened, but I am definitely a huge step closer to one of my deepest dreams. An editor at a major publishing house has expressed enthusiastic interest in the book idea I sent her. So I'm feeling pretty confident I've got a book deal on the horizon.

How do I credit Zhan Zhuan with this accomplishment. Well it kept me steady during a really anxious time, when I'd cut back on my job. But I took that extra time to explore ideas and create and write, instead finding knee jerk jobs out of financial fear. And well, it's paid off. So thanks ZZ!

Six Months

2010-03-31T05:51:00.000-07:00

So this it. I've reached the six month goal that I set. And if I've noticed one major change recently it's that I've become more goal oriented. Achieving goals does that to you.

I've always been pretty suspicious of goal directed living. It smells to me of meritocracy. And I always worry that when one gets too focussed on goals one can so easily forget to take the time to just be.

At the same time there is an undeniable energy that comes from a life of action. It's a more manic energy. Or at least it feels like that to me today. So it's important to remember to take the time to breathe and make sure ones actions are coming from a relaxed intuitive place.

The great gift that this six months has given me, I think, it that it has helped me develop the habit of bookending my days with nurturing relaxed time. Standing in the morning. Early, quiet sleeptime in the evening. I want to be more active, but I don't want the habits of action to lead me into debilitating stress.

It's good to focus on the next small action, on the present moment. It's good to be organized in one's thinking and one's life. It's good, however, and really important to be able to take the time to feel the big picture.

I had a moment the other day: "Pre dawn purple sky. Birds up. What's going to happen with my life. Oh right, this is my life."

Finishing

2010-03-08T05:20:00.000-08:00

I'm coming towards my goal, and I feel myself tempted to undermine my efforts. Cutting my meditation shorter. Starting to think of other things I might do in this morning time (morning pages.)

This is a typical pattern for me. I don't bring the project to its completion, and then I don't really feel the rewards and the energy that comes from achieving a goal. Instead of petering out though. I'm going to really put some energy into making this last month one that's filled with good oxytocin highs. Just the earlier dawn is making this cycle feel like a flourishing one. I'm also going to try to draw the energy from this completed project into the beginning of my next blog project. Getting the damn house clean.

how I've really changed

2010-03-07T04:02:00.000-08:00

So I'm nearing the six month mark of my project. I'm not exactly the massive energy magnet that I envisioned. I'm not richer, or demonstrably more successful when I was when I started out.

But I've changed in a fundamental way, I think.

I've changed by re-framing my desire to change. I don't meditate anymore to change, I meditate to be conscious and aware that the life I have and the being that I am is sufficient. Paradoxically, being aware of my sufficiency seems to make that energy grow more quickly and more strongly than if I'm conscious of what I lack and try to get "more."

This doesn't mean that I've given up action. But my action is motivated by wanting to change the world so that it will allow people to be what they are, and be more accepting. I'll have to think about that a little more. But my philosophy, my vision of life is changing.

My dream is changing.

In praise of mild happiness

2010-02-01T08:51:00.000-08:00

Just recently discovered the psychologist Robert Boice. He claims that the best state of mind to write in is mild happiness. Write everyday, from a life that encourages this state of mild happiness.

When I think of happiness, whether I mean to or not I usually think of bliss, or achieving transcendence. And I'm not knocking those awesome feelings. But mild happiness as well. This is a state of mind that I've not usually aimed for. I know it's important, but I've never thought of mild happiness as a real goal.

Just did a short stand, 20 minutes. And I feel nice. Not hyperactive, or hyperfocussed. Just good, that I have this energy that I seem to be able to access easily throughout the day, and from this place I make a lot of small decisions to make my life better. To take action to make my life better, instead of choosing compulsive activities, like surfing the internet, or whatever. Small healthy pleasures, like five minute room rescues suddenly have more appeal to me. Rather than this big stimulating pleasures that I've become addicted to.

Looking forward to seeing how this progresses and how it shapes my writing goals.

The day my depression died

2010-01-31T06:01:00.000-08:00

Something changed last night.

Insomnia, I just couldn't seem to get that oxytocin self soothing I've been able to induce when I wake up in the middle of the night. Just this rigid, impotent buzzing.

So I decided to stand.

I guess I'd been standing for about twenty minutes, pushing it, and surrendering, the sort of push pull I experience when I'm doing this. I started to feel this very strong and concrete post of energy. My arms and hands started to shift around in some weird feeling branchy ways. I was just quietly being still with this energy. Trying to rest in cool detachment, trying not to get too excited and trusting that it would come back when I seemed to be losing it. And then suddenly this lame, annoying stale energy came back. Or rather I became very conscious and hyperaware of the part of my brain where this energy came from. I was outside of of it, just watching it kind of flame up, and I realized that this part of my brain was kind of having one last hurrah, because I was about to leave that part of my brain to die. I realized that even if I ever felt that feeling again, those neurons would never have the same power they once had.

And then gradually I started to make my way to the new part of my brain. The pre-frontal cortex maybe? That part of my brain felt fresh, calm, strong, confident. Vital in a really flourishing, not manic way. That was the new place for me. It was a place I knew well, but had been visiting from time to time. It was my new home though. I knew it.

Did some counting realized that I was six months from my birthday. My real birthday if you believe my mother, since it was my due date.

I'm going to celebrate this day, January 31 for the rest of my life. The day when my real brain came alive. The day when the best part of my life really began.

The clearer path

2010-01-29T05:53:00.000-08:00

I'm a little over three months into this, and the path is becoming clearer. I know that what is pumping through my body is the same natural opiate that pumped through my body during breastfeeding. And when I stand what I am for now is the letting down, that state when the milk flows, the opiate flows, and the bliss flows. I know now that if I commit to this that opiate can be there for me daily. And if what Norman Doidge says is true then I will be able to forget some of my past self-destructive behaviours and lean ones that will guarantee this steady flow of natural high.

Is this how I want to live my life? Of course.

The question is how do I enable other people to discover this?

My first stage is to trust in the process. My next stage is to get people to trust me.

But right now it's all about commitment. This is the commitment opiate, so they say.

My life suffers from a lack of commitment. A lack of structure that allows this learning drug to flow regularly and create more structured action in my life.

So what's the plan?

I guess #1. Get the flow going stronger.

stand, sleep, write

2010-01-26T06:01:00.000-08:00

So I'm more and more convinced that when my brain, gut-brain, heart brain, and whatever brains there are in my body are opening up that I'm getting a rush of oxytocin. And this oxytocin rush is helping me to learn new healthier behaviours. And more importantly, helping me to forget old ones.

I''m still struggling to find the best way to express this. I see a year, like Liz Gilbert, but without the advance. Doing the three things I need to do to make a good life for myself. One: stand. It's still a challenge and Ben is now developing the habit of getting up early. So my meditation hour is being disrupted. But fine, then, little one. You can go to bed a little earlier tonight to make up for that. No way though, that doesn't make sense that he would start a habit of rising that early.

The next thing is sleep. I look into the effects of getting to bed early, giving up the T.V. feeling the advantages of regular sleep. I felt the advantages of them last night. Woke up with some dumb grievance on my mind about a blog I had read. Decided to stand and tap into the oxytocin, did a bit of self-hypnosis to get myself tired again, and within about half an hour I was fast asleep again.

And the next stage would be to write. How does writing change our lives, our culture, our brain. How does writing change our brain. What is the current theory behind writing, according to that French guy and the global workspace theorists. How can we change our brain to make us better writers. How can good writing make us more empathetic and a better community?

My job is to explore that. But also, how can writing change our heart, our lives?

this is it

2010-01-23T04:03:00.000-08:00

Not a particularly disciplined meditation this morning. Feeling drained from that time of the month. Ben woke up early. Just stood really. But near the end of it, that vein in my brain opened up and I felt that oxytocin high, which I know from breastfeeding and sex and I guess labour. And I got it. This is what is happening. I feel calm. I feel connected and trusting of the world and the universe. This is the transformation. A commitment to this everyday would transform my brain and my heart and my life. That's why meditation is transformative.

And weirdly woman are more able to recognize it than men, since we have more bonding experiences.

But yes, this is it.

0xytocin

2010-01-15T03:52:00.000-08:00

Watching the Daniel gilbert series on PBS. It reminded me about the theory of oxytocin and bonding. Apparently when we have sex, or breast feed or cuddle, we release oxy into our bloodstream and this helps us to bond.

I've done all these things and I suddenly just now, when I was meditating, recognized the feeling of when the energy opens my body and brain up as an oxytocin high.

So if I continue to do this what am I bonding with. The universe? God. My mind?

I'm happy

2010-01-11T06:09:00.001-08:00

As long as I can remember, and still after a fairly rigorous meditation practice, on and off, I've always had intrusive thoughts telling me I'm depressed. Today for the first time I can remember I had and intrusive thought telling me I'm happy.

A lot of that, I think, has to do with getting a good sleep. I have had nights where I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. But last couple of nights I've slept through the eight hours I gave myself, and it does feel really good.

Been reading Jeffrey Schwartz The Mind and the Brain. Had a theory yesterday that just as I used to have intrusive negative thoughts when I was suffering from OCD as my brain becomes healthier I will start having intrustive positive thoughts. Intrusive silence, intrusive peace, intrusive happiness. Then positive mental health will be my driving force.

the opposite of depression

2010-01-09T01:12:00.000-08:00

I've been watching Daniel Gilbert's PBS documentary on emotions. In the second installment Elizabeth Gilbert said something that has struck me like a bolt of lightning. The opposite of depression is not happiness. That is the opposite of sadness. The opposite of depression is vitality.

This is of course what I'm doing in this practice and with my chronotherapy. Setting up a life structure that will maximize my vitality. That would be the aim of a healthy diet, if I were to get back to that! Cleaning, eating and sleeping well, meditating. All these things are about creating a life that will bring in the vitality that will eventually flood out this depression. It seems so simple, but never is to my depressed mind.

An Adventure in Lying Down

2009-12-30T08:59:00.000-08:00

So now we're at New Year's Eve. And I feel good. I've been taking this chronotherapy seriously and I get into bed at 9:30, read with Ben and fall asleep by 10. It's the fourth day I've done this and I feel so much better. I feel like there's this obvious key to happiness that's always been right under my nose, but I've never seen it. I read recently that just getting an extra hour of sleep every night makes the average person happier than a $60,000 raise.

I'm going to add this to my committment. I get up at 6 a.m. I fall asleep by 10 p.m. and then I see how my life unfolds just from the stable supply of energy that evolves from these practices. That is my new year's resolution.

Christmas Eve

2009-12-24T03:57:00.000-08:00

This is the celebration that is supposed to cheer us up during the darkest time of the year. But I talk to my mother and she is so tired. I find it exhausting too. Seems to me it should be the time when we are sleeping, not partying. Does that make me a Grinch?

But I could use some more sleep. Read an interesting article in the New York Times yesterday about circadian rythms. I've always known this, but the article claims that they will be the next big trend. Chronomotrists, or something like that. People who coach you into healthier circadian rythyms.

I suppose that's what I'm doing here. Waking up at dawn. But going to sleep early. I know what an effect that has on my life, and still I don't do it. I'm addicted to electric lights, televisions, all the things that mess with my natural sleep patterns. I've read that you can lose weight just be sleeping earlier.

Today I sank a little deeper into my posture. This squatting, with your hands above eye lever is supposed to distort your sense of time. And true enough, the hour I meditate in the morning seems to pass much faster now. While I'm in this kind of trans state I try to visualize myself getting really, really tired near eight or nine o'clock. All I want to do is start getting ready for bed. I lose interest in television. I can barely keep my eyes open. Maybe I can hypnotize myself into an earlier sleep time. Wouldn't I rather be alert all day, than entertained for a couple of hours at night?

It seems simple, but until you feel that alertness as a daily fact in your life, for an extended time, then it's hard to keep it up.

Being Dreamt

2009-12-21T05:33:00.000-08:00

As the days where I'm standing first thing in the morning build, the energy builds and my realization that I am an energy that is dreaming me becomes clearer.

Okay, clear to me, but I realize that might be a little cryptic to somebody else. Here's what happens now when I meditate. I stand. I feel the energy starting to circulate in my legs, in my Tan Tien. It builds up in my spine and between my knees and hands. Then I hear my muse, the voice that instructs me in what to do while I'm standing. I tells me to stand with her a little bit behind my body and just observe. Observe the energy a it builds, as it becomes the ball that lifts my arms. As it begins to open up my chest, my upper back, my brain.

I just observe the energy. And sometimes that energy even starts to get a little funky with me, sending pleasurable, erotic feeling through my tummy. Yesterday I had a weird afternoon meditation where I remembered my first, very disappointing, sexual encounter. I remembered it. I surrounded it in this new energy and I let it go. I feel like I'm being cleaning out of sadness and anger and disappointment as I ally with this new, although it's always been there, concept of self.

Is this self-immolation? It doesn't feel like it. I feel stronger, sturdier when I'm allied with this energy. I have a clearer picture of what I need to do to bring well being into my life. I feel healthier, not manic or unsettled.

The more I do this, the more I am driven by this energy. The more I am driven by it, the better I feel. To be driven by wellbeing. That is the best way to live.

Letting the energy do my thinking

2009-12-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

The last week instead of assuming postures, I've been starting from the first position and letting the energy build and direct my body. At a certain point my muse told me to simply let this energy do my thinking for me. For a short while my thoughts stopped chatting and I was able to simply be in this energy.

I felt that very strong field of magnetic energy. It began to loosen my shoulders and go into my upper back. I started to shake a little, like a mini seizure. And then at one point it was like my body filled up like one of those snowmen balloons. I was just this energy being there.

I felt the urge to scream, and started fooling around with the idea of a mantra. Eventually it morphed into Yaweh. I am.

It's a hard, hard thing for me ego to accept that this. Just this standing in this field of energy is such a strong and important part of our evolution. But I know it is. And I know that my rewards for this are deep and enduring. To become this energy. To let it direct my life towards more loving, useful behaviour. To do this is to be secure in the knowledge that abundance is always available to me.

Now it's time to stop worrying.

soft snow

2009-12-15T06:47:00.000-08:00

There's a soft snow falling this morning. While I was shovelling it off the entrance I thought of it as all the pleasant numbness that can so easily build up, become ice and block the entrance of energy into my life.

I'm making healing metaphors out of all my housework recently. It's working wonders. My kitchen and bedroom are orderly. I managed to do some sweeping and dusting yesterday. Metaphors, I read in a poem recently, are god's directions.

I talk with my muse more regularly now. And last night while Ben was at piano, instead of reading or watching a movie on the ipod, I just sat. And sat and thought about how through most of my life I've felt really unwanted. Or maybe more acurately, I haven't often felt wanted. Really passionately wanted. In an erotic way, or in a loving way. Ben makes me feel wanted. But that's more needed. And it's not fair to burden him with that responsibility. I sat for a while and it struck me that the best way to be wanted it to actually want others.

I sat there for a long time and just wanted God. Really felt the strong desire for that in my heart.

It carried me through a difficult evening with Ben, who is becoming increasingly angry and rebellious. I took away his video game privileges. I decided that he needed an "evening of acceptance."

I'm worried about the effect of those games on his energy level. He seems to be driven by this rigid angry energy. Almost a rage. I need to find a way to help him unhook from that. But I need to unhook from it myself.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the nigth. I meditated. I read. I went back to sleep and made the mistake of bringing the ipod into the room with me. I slept in and had dreams about my mother. She and my father were sleeping in my room (I had moved to Ben's room in the middle of the night). She seemed sweet at first, but something put her into a rage. I responded in rage. And soon we were fighting with all the anger and despair we have always fought.

I don't want that in my life. I do not want to continue the tradition of that rage. I need to find peace.

creativity

2009-12-14T06:20:00.000-08:00

It says in The Way of Power that creativity is the expression of your natural energy. For me it's an expression of my connection with the universal energy. I don't particularly like that description. It makes me feel all new agey, utopian, flakey. But I don't have words for it right now. I don't know why it's so important for me to find my own word for it, but it is. Consciousness will do for now. Creativity is the expression of my consciousness and I now that I believe in consciousness driven creativity.
Today is a day that is inching closer to the shortest day of the year. Dawn is late. Instead of turning on the light in the morning, this morning I sat in semi darkness until Ben woke up at around 7:20. There was no pink window. It had snowed last night and it was simply grey. This is why we celebrate Christmas I guess, because there is so little light.
I would rather sleep than celebrate. Man I could use a good sleep. Ben and I are developing a habit of watching the news until we fall asleep. Not healthy I'm sure. But at least it gets us into bed.
I would love to go to bed earlier. Have a really long and deep sleep and clean out all the sleep debt.
I wonder if this is the secret to cleaning out my financial debt. Getting rid of my sleep debt. If I slept that off, I would have enough energy to resist temptation, to make better financial decisions, to eat better and have more energy and willingness to work. I would be more useful, and healthy and all the things I want right now.
So what stops me. Habit. Bad habit. But more importantly absence of good habit. Absence of being in touch in the evening with my deepest desires. My desire for authentic happiness. I am not cultivating habits that put me in touch with that.
I need some sacred evening rituals. As permanent and ingrained in me as this habit of getting up in the morning.
Then I will have the energy and then the creativity and power that I want. That God wants me to have.
The Way. I still like The Way as an expression of this energy.

Famous last week words

2009-12-11T06:42:00.000-08:00

Remember a couple of days ago when the chi was getting stronger. Well here I am now struggling to maintain my focus.

I'm obsessing over, all things, Roman Polanski. I wrote an opinion piece yesterday and now I can't stop thinking about it and get my mind back to the gentle energy I need. This morning, while standing, I had a Roman Polanski related memory, which I won't go into. But at least in standing I begin to trace the roots of my obsessions.

Much of my writing is driven by this obsessive energy, memories that want to come to the surface, desperation for validation. I wonder sometimes, okay often, if my public blog is more of a distraction than a help. I can't seem to settle down to the subject that I'm pretty sure is my calling, consciousness driven writing.

I, I, I, I.

Yesterday it hit me why I want to believe in this force, this energy that is stronger than me and that will intervene in my life in a positive way if I ask it. Because if it can help me and others then I have a responsibility to believe in it. If channeling it actually can bring love and justice and peace to the world, then I have a responsibility to channel it and encourage other people to do it. But I'm scared because I know that a lot of people will consider that regressive and irresponsible and immature. And I don't really have the authority or the great life to prove to anyone that this is a good thing to do.

But can't I do it because it's a good thing for me and a good thing for the people in my life, and for the other people who are also in the process of channeling it?

What is my way?

chi drive

2009-12-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

The Chi is getting stronger. And the motivation and drive to stand is getting stronger. I feel myself being more and more willing and able to surrender to it.

So now what. I don't feel like I'm ready to write anything substantial about this. Re-reading Elizabeth Gilbert and I think maybe I'm going to need some time with this chi before I figure out how and what I'm going to write about it.

It's hard

2009-12-08T06:01:00.000-08:00

This getting chi to flow into the rest of my day turns out to be harder than I expected. It all seemed to easy. Spend a few minutes connecting with chi everytime I feel the urge to do mindless net surfing.
But the will the mindless netsurf if strong in me. Or more specifically, the will to write entertaining, but ultimately unsubstantial blogs for Salon is pretty strong in me. The urge for validation is strong in me. And it makes it hard to stick with a practice that doesn't usually get validation from society.

I wonder. I wonder if there is a place where I could get the validation I need for this. I've said it before, but I think it's true now. I need a teacher.

A Plan

2009-12-06T05:25:00.000-08:00

My concrete sense of Chi is growing every morning. I'm optimistic that peace and energy are flourishing in me and have a permanent home in this dawn routine.
But how to get this consciousness to flow into my day, instead of dissapating by evening? One of the tricks I've been using to create an antidote to self-hatred and depression has been the habit of countering every negative utterance with a positive cognitive action. "I hate myself" with "May I be happy, at peace, flourishing in inner well-being." I think it would be good idea to target some bad habits in the same way. For instance when I feel the urge to do some mindless internet surfing, I hold the ball for five minutes. That way I'm bringing little pockets of healthy energy into my life and cultivating a nurturing habit that will hopefully take over and tip the balance from negative habits to positive ones.

This will be especially helpful at those times of the day when I want to sit down and overeat in front of the computer.

Let's try it and see.

Dark night

2009-12-04T06:02:00.000-08:00

Dark night of the soul last night. Or dark hour. Lay awake for a while frozen in fear with a vision of a life of poverty, not enough money. Just not enough. I couldn't seem to shake it. And then suddenly my brain shifted not to what I had instead of what I didn't have. I remembered that I have this flowering of peace inside me that I've been developing for the last two month in these morning meditation, and developing for years in my mid morning meditations. I focused on that and my mind shifted eventually from my fears to my sense of security.
This morning I'm tired. I know I'm not getting enough sleep, and I hear a voice telling me I'm depressed. So I decide to take twenty minute to stand and look at the sky. I realize that I am carving a permanent place for peace in my brain, that these morning practices, once established, are less likely to get tossed aside. I'm planting the tree of peace in my brain, and that is the most precious source of abundance that I can have. Greater than any bank account. I know this is true, but it may take some time to feel it.

negative mantra

2009-11-29T06:29:00.000-08:00

I still have a very negative voice in my head. A voice rooted in longstanding depression and self-loathing. It tells me regularly throughout the day "I'm depressed." "I hate myself". And it asks regularly "what do you want?"

I'm experimenting this week with using these entrenched chronic thoughts as triggers to consciousness. When I hear "I'm depressed" I look up at the sky. I connect as much as possible with my natural openness and remember how vast and full of potential the word is. When I hear "I hate myself" I take a moment to feel some loving kindness towards myself, and anyone else who comes to mind. When I hear that question what do I want? I reply authentic happiness, for myself and for everyone.

Today I try to focus as much as possible on just what that means for me, authentic happiness. I'm trying to visualize a procession of dawns where the chi grows in my body, heart and mind. I'm trying to imagine a clean, tidy house that stays clean and tidy. I'm trying to imagine enough money in the bank to maintain a simple life with a few meaningful luxuries. I'm trying to imagine work that inspires other people towards happiness as well.

Above all i try to catch myself when I'm drifting off towards meaningless anger and negativity and I try and nip that in the bud.

going deeper

2009-11-27T06:12:00.000-08:00

After the great circle the next posture in my cycle is "going deeper." I sink down lower, let the gravity loosen my hips and my spine. My hands rise and I begin to feel a magnetic energy create a pathway to my brain.

This increases the tension in my body, but like a good stretch it also releases it. I feel like I'm stretching my brain. But after it's stretched I feel a calm. Kind of the calm you feel after an orgasm. But this is more sustained. It feels like my hands are holding the calm in place with their magnetic energy. And all I have to do is surrender to this calm. The fact of this calm. Just surrender to it.
This is surprisingly difficult because we don't think of calm as a fact of life, or a sustained state of being. We think of life as sustained stress and suffering, relieved from time to time by moments of calm. But when I'm in this state I feel that it's really the suffering that is artificial. This calm is the state we are naturally programmed to feel. The stress is a result of cultural programming.

I'm not saying that's true. But that's what it feels like when I'm in that state of being, and I make a choice to step out of it and back into the culture of stress that I've been born into.

the great circle

2009-11-25T05:53:00.000-08:00

I've been spending recent mornings trying to cultivate my vision. Trying to build my desire to be genuinely happy as an antidote to my self-hatred. Just now, however, I did something really simple. The Great Circle posture.

This posture is a little deeper and more intense than holding the balloon. I sink my lower body, I raise my arms above my head, still in a circular position. Soon I'm feeling a magnetic force between my hands and my brain, or at least my frontal lobe.
They say that if you use TMS wands over the frontal lobe you can improve mood and creativity.

I forget that if I simply stand in this position eventually my brain starts to slow down and become still. I don't have to make the conscious intention to focus on awareness, or to bring my mind back to my breathing or whatever. I simply allow this magnetic energy to build and eventually I hold my brain still with my hands.

I suspect that if I were to make a regular practice of this my mood and my creativity would improve in a permanent way. So why is it that I haven't simply done this?

Is it because I get distracted by all the other things I think will bring me happiness, all the practices and intentions. What if it is as simple as doing this everyday, whenever I feel the desire, until my brain simply shifts? All this reading, all this aspiring, all this thinking. What if it's sort of useful, but not ultimately as effective as assuming this posture?

awareness

2009-11-24T06:01:00.000-08:00

The phantom anxieties that have been tormenting me for the last few weeks seem to be flying off somewhere. Things seem to be stable and friendly with Ben's teacher. His marks this term are excellent. All these things I've been anxiously obsessing over.

Starting to see the fruit of the heightened awareness. I catch myself when the irritation starts to bubble up and I stop myself there. Or at least try to stop myself there before letting it erupt into angry words. I'm starting to see the self hatred and anger as a deep addiction. Like smoking. I always thought my next biggest addiction was food. But the food is a way to numb the emotions. I'm addicted to the emotions. The self hatred, the loneliness, the emptiness, the boredom. These are the triggers and I need a different way to deal with them.

Last night for the first time in a while I didn't feel like overeating. I was hungry before bedtime, but I just had some cereal and was okay

Soon, I know, I'll get back to cultivating the chi. But until I have a deep desire for optimal happiness, it's unlikely I will stick with the chi. So I think I need to deal with this stuff first.

antidote

2009-11-23T06:10:00.000-08:00

Still reading Mathieu Ricard's Happiness. This is a convincing book. A life changing book. One of the things he's made me conscious of is how I can work to defuse the deep, pervasive self hatred that keeps knocking me off track whenever I try to deeply commit to a meditation practice.

I won't go into great detail about where this self hatred comes from. There are any number of mundane, and perhaps interesting reasons. My Catholic origins, my overachieving parents, my possible learning disability. Who knows. But Ricard explains that hatred and love cannot co-exist. Not real love, the deep aspiration for happiness, safety, contentment, true abundance. So these days, during my meditation time, I'm working a little less on the chi, and working on holding this aspiration for my real happiness in my mind. Working on trying to root it firmly and deeply in the ground of my chi.

This morning I thought of the balloon as all the positive feelings I have and want to have for myself. I thought of the tan tien as the place where I store these feeling and make them a permanent, strong, driving part of my inner self.

The vision I have of this six months is setting my circadian rythmms so that waking up at dawn and sleeping not too far after sunset become my normal way of being. And I root my desire for happiness in the rituals surrounding this change of light. Something about that feels permanent and possible.

thoughts

2009-11-20T06:42:00.000-08:00

This morning I'm starting to feel some of the chi return. I've been in the grip of a lot of anxiety. Some of it no doubt useless. But I am clearly in the grip of thought. Not in the grip of chi.

For a small moment while I was holding the balloon I remembered the importance of surrender. I remembered to stop trying to hold the balloon up, to just relax and rest in the magnetic energy that will do a far better job of holding this balloon up than I will. I forget that again and again and again.

Much of this has to do with the continuing dominance of the ego in my life. My ego is still convinced that only it can, should, will drive my life. And for the most part I still seem to be in its spell. I don't want to be there anymore. I want to be allied with nature and with consciousness, not careerism, ego building and status obsession.

I've been writing recently about The Muse. To work with a muse you have to be willing to surrender your creative ego. I'm not there yet. I'm trying, but it's still hard.

Fog

2009-11-19T05:49:00.000-08:00

This morning there was no warm window filled with dawn. Just a grey fog, which turned out actually to be an early morning frost. It's gone now. But I did take it as a sign.

I am in a fog these days. I get up like I've planned, but it is no longer a really energizing meditation. It's all I can do to just stand in one place for an hour. Which as I write that is still probably more than most people would be willing to do.

Willingness. That word pops out at me. I have a willingness right now to get up early. But not as much of a willingness to do the other things I could be doing. Standing in a challenging posture. Even putting in the time I need to put in to clean the house.

I need a guide, so for the time being I'm working on my muse. On what I believe the muse is, and in actually cultivating a relationship with this muse. Maybe I need to research that a bit. Maybe I need to really commit to that subject for some substantial time. Because without some kind of guide, inner or outer, I feel a little lost.

Dawn

2009-11-18T05:58:00.000-08:00

Woke up late this morning. Somehow my alarm had been turned off. But my eyes opened and I could see the golden light and lavender sky of dawn from my window. Got out of bed just in time to see the golden window. A few minutes into my meditation the sun was up and the window had turned silver.

Yesterday in the afternoon I felt overwhelmed, tired, lost faith in myself. I lay down and simply imagined myself cradled in this golden light. Later in the day I read Ricard's book and he suggested an exercise. Imagine that you are taking in somebody's suffering, sucking it into your heart and then re-transmitting it as a healing energy.

Dawn is becoming that for me. A light that transforms me in the morning and a light that I want to pass on to others.

golden window

2009-11-17T06:09:00.000-08:00

The view from my kitchen is not a beautiful one. It stares out into an alley that is pleasant enough, but in mid November Montreal, not particularly pretty. At dawn, the only evidence of the magnificent rising sun is the golden light that hits the upper story windows of an industrial building on St. Laurent.

This is the view from the picture window on the left side of the room. Not much to see out of the door window on the right side of my room. It hit me this morning, however, what a lovely subtle metaphor this is for what is happening in my brain. I've been reading Mathieu Ricard's book, Happiness, this week. His theory, which I wrote about in an earlier post, is that happiness can be measured on an fMRI. Happier people, like long time meditators, tend to have more activity happening in the left side of their brain. Depressed people, the right side.

The last few weeks for me have felt like a huge neurological detox. My right brain is regressing, picking fights, wandering all over the place, obsessing, trying desperately to regain control. And often it is winning. But I am waking up every morning and standing in the place and watching those small golden windows in my left brain start to take their place, permanently. Someday, maybe in the summer I will go out and do this in a place where I can watch the sun rise every morning. But for now this golden window is all I need. It's there. And when I come back to meditation during the day I look at that window. If the weather is nice it is bright with the sun. That is my brain, now, more often than not. That is a good enough vision for me.

Shenpa smack-down

2009-11-15T05:48:00.000-08:00

Still wrestling with the shenpa. I'm pretty good at the first two steps, recognizing I'm hooked and feeling the negative energy. Don't seem to be as good at the third step, moving on.

But isn't this the story of my life. I'm good with beginnings not so good with endings.

I realized something this morning while standing. My original vision when I started this standing was to stand and see how much it affected the rest of my life. More and more all I want is just a better, deeper, more satisfying standing practice. The rest of my life is just the rest of my life. This is and should pretty much just be about standing, cultivating that energy that allows me to stand for an hour in the morning, and allows me to continue with the habit of standing first thing in the morning. I do that because I believe that this energy is an endless supply of peace and happiness for me.

If the only thing that changes after six months is that I've cultivated an early morning practice that I will return to again and again. Then that is all the change I need.

Shenpa

2009-11-12T06:05:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago I received a great book by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun from Nova Scotia.

Now I'm working on the concept of Shenpa, the magnetic pull of bad habits and afflictive emotional patterns. This came in incredibly handy yesterday at my son's "intervention" meeting at school. I seem to have expressed myself poorly in French and said something that really offended Ben's teacher. Normally I think I would have given into old patterns of defensiveness, and believe me I'm still feeling them. But I'm also able to stand and just feel them and not let myself get badly sucked in.

It's a huge relief even to know that I'm capable of resisting these obsessive, defensive patterns.

natural intelligence

2009-11-11T06:08:00.000-08:00

I find when I wake up in the mornings, now, I'm a little less focused on achieving energy highs, and more focused on just absorbing the peace and quiet and subtle energy of the morning as it become light.

I think true happiness is a process of aligning oneself with the natural intelligence and happiness of the universe at it is. Sometimes this process brings tremendous gifts, tremendous alterations of consciousness. Sometimes it bring only a deeper appreciation for a more subtle stillness.

What I'm becoming more aware of today is the subtle tightening and stress that grips my body when my mind drifts off to other processes. The processes that have been promised to me by the civilization I live in, education (Ben's), career (mine, my parents), all my anxieties surrounding these things. My lack of mate, and to some extent community. I'm not saying these anxieties are not legitimate. But I no longer desire to be driven by them. I would prefer to be aware of them and to make my decisions from a place that is driven by authentic peace.

That I think is what I call natural intelligence. A place of natural intelligence where my choices and decisions are directed from the place of peace and strength we have when we are committed to this alliance with nature, with light, with the sky and the sun and the planets. This is a good place to come from. This is the only place I want to come from.

Growing desire

2009-11-10T05:52:00.000-08:00

Woke up an hour earlier than usual, so I ended up standing for almost two hours. I'm starting to feel the energy really grow again. And with that I'm starting to feel a deeper desire for the energy.

My desire for this renewal of chi has been mostly intellectual up until now. But today I felt a real craving in my heart for it. For the wonderful feeling I have known. A kind of nostalgia, a kind of desire for what you've always had. It's such a great feeling because it feels like such a real, solid desire than can always stay with you, not the ephemeral feeling of a fleeting desire. Or the pain of a bad habit.

This is true healthy desire, and it gives me faith that I'm on the right track.

my life has changed

2009-11-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

It hit me this morning that early morning rising will always be a habit for me now. Even when it's not. This is really what my mind needs and even if I fall off the path, I know I'm going to wind up here again. This early morning time, watching the sun rise, feeling the energy grow in my body and in my brain. Cultivating a center of my identity in my gut. All that is my true home. And because I know that I will always be secure.

taking a stand

2009-11-08T08:04:00.000-08:00

I've unblocked my hangover, though still feeling a little lethargic. Reading Jon Kabat-Zinn and he has a little chapter on "taking your seat" and the importance of having a sense of purpose when you meditate.

I realized that when I stand I am in fact taking a stand. I am prioritizing consciousness over all other things, civilization, culture, the market economy, etc. I am aligning myself with nature, not political parties, or my nation, or whatever most people ally themselves with to gain power in their life. I am taking a stand and aligning myself with the planet. With energy and with a source of power that is not visible to most people.

And I am taking a stand to receive this power through my heart, and make others aware of it.

blocked

2009-11-08T05:48:00.000-08:00

So, a break from my commitment.

Cousin's elopement celebration last night. I drank, I ate a midnight souvlaki, I didn't bother to set the alarm. I feel pretty crappy. At least I don't have to spend the day preparing for the exterminator.

I guess I still have some bad habits.

Yesterday evening before I set out I was feeling a massive level of lethargy. I didn't want to go. The voice in my head kept telling me how depressed I was. And then I decided to change things. I'm not depressed I said. I'm blocked. I did some standing meditation and felt immediately better.

I'm going to try this for a while. Instead of identifying with the bad feeling that seems to be permanent. I'm going to see it as a mere blockage that in time I can dislodge.

Right now for instance I feel terrible. But I'm going to just stand for 20 minutes and see where that takes me.

the growth forest

2009-11-07T03:57:00.000-08:00

It's been about a month since I started this commitment to early morning zz and regular writing about it.

I expected change. I expected a steady a progress of building of chi. But, of course, that's not exactly what happened.

I've made some progress, but I've also experience what I supposed would call setbacks, but are merely the psychic knots of energy that always arise to undermine my practice if I choose to allow them to drive me.

Simply making the tension go away is not really the strategy that feels right. Just being with it, just knowing the familiar pattersn and getting up and standing anyways, even when I can barely focus on the changing light, let alone my tan tien.

Being with them, familiarizing myself with them is the first step, I hope, to loosening their hold. Yesterday for instance I sat with all the anxiety I've been feeling about this decision to send my son to a more challenging school against the advice of a young neuropsychologist. I still don't know if it's the right decision. He had a rough first year, but he seems to be doing better, making friends and enjoying the school. But we need to ask for services and its possible the school board will find out about the recommendation I ignored.

So there's the whole mix of anxiety, and guilt and possible shame, that is really as much about my own bad school experiences as my son's. I don't know what to do anymore except sit with it. Acknowledge that there is this whole nest of anxieties and I don't know where they started, where or if they will ever end. But they're there and they will probably return. And the best I think I can hope for in my project to "change" is to be more aware of them. To be able to continue working on my well being and be able to say, yes those are my school neurosis returning. Oh well. I'm going to stand and hope for the best, and do what I can.

It's not this steady progression of energy and power. It's more like being confronted by the fact that before you can renovate, first you need to toss all the junk in the basement.

metal brain

2009-11-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

Things are progressing. I'm feeling more focused. I'm feeling more grounded. But I know that I'm still more anxiety driven than I want to be.

When I practiced today I began to imagine that the metal energy that I was cultivating was forming this deep permanent structure in my body and in my brain. Almost as though my body was becoming a very high quality, enduring machine that consciousness was going to flow freely through for the rest of my life.

I finished my practice by visualizing a wrecking ball destroying all the old structures used by the anxiety and sadness to dominate my life. My body and brain is now this funky new machine. It's going to last a long, long time.

There's still some clean up to do to move on from the old structures. But I feel quite firmly entrenched in my consciousness practice. And as a result I believe that consciousness is now firmly entrenched in my being.

more metal

2009-11-05T06:10:00.000-08:00

Still having some focus problems. But the metal training is taking root.

One of the things I realized is that metal is a symbol of endurance, permanence and commitment (although, sadly, if we really wanted a symbol of endurance we might want to consider plastic training. From what I've read McDonald's happy toys have as great a chance of being around hundreds of years from now as wedding rings. But I digress because my mind is digressive.)

Anyways. Maybe if I work on my metal training I'll be a little less at the mercy of my anxiety drives.

What I'm doing right now is imagining my tan tien as a magnet that sucks in all the little distracted thoughts that keep buzzing around in my brain. Another thing I imagine is having a couple of big axes that cut through the scattered thoughts. Or little blades that quickly slice them into mulch.

Mostly I just try to imagine my inner strength as something extremely permanent. A permanent grounded force that will be there no matter what.

heavy metal

2009-11-04T08:03:00.000-08:00

Of course it's not my brain I want back. It's my core. My consciousness.

I'm distracted, at the mercy of an anxious drive in my brain that drifts off to reparative fantasies to sooth whatever it is that's bothering me. But whatever it is seems lost in the chaotic underbrush of my mind.

So today I'm trying to cultivate some metal power. There are specific exercises in chi kung where you cultivate a feeling with the sharpness and weight of metal instruments. In martial arts you can use this power to use a sword, or to use your limbs like swords.

But you can also use it to develop mental clarity, to develop the ability to get right to the point.

These energies are supposed to develop protective strength. Right now I'm feeling tossed around by inner forces, bad habits, unchecked drives. I don't really want to live this way. So I'm setting out today with my mental machete.

I'm also trying to gather my power by focusing on my tan tien as though it were a magnet drawing more and more energy into it all the time. So that it can't suck my scattered thoughts into my gut and fuel my instincts.

Let's see how that works.

caged in chaos

2009-11-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

So I got through the day. Did more housework that I've ever done in my life. Just kept going broken only with small meditations. From 9 in the morning to 4 a.m. Threw out more stuff than I ever have in my life.

But now I'm exhausted, stressed out over at situation at Ben's school. A recurring situation that's resolved itself before, but I'm tired and it's eating at me.

How do I get my brain back?

dawn

2009-11-01T05:15:00.000-08:00

The clocks fall back today so when I woke up, quite hungover from Halloween celebrations, it was light during my practice.

So for the next while I do get to be standing at dawn.

Eventually I may train Ben to expect me to be in the park at dawn, but not while the weather is getting colder.

Practice was a challenge, but it certainly helped me with my hangover. And I need the help. My landlady suspects she has bed bugs so today I have to clean my house from top to bottom, bag everything, throw out every ounce of clutter and deep clean.

Knowing my housework challenges this is going to be an incredibly challenging day.

At the same time I almost wonder if it isn't something sent by the dawn.

I'm going to work on being able to do these tasks with an attitude of acceptance all day. Look at it like an intensive retreat. It's going to be difficult, but I wonder if I won't feel energized tomorrow being in a house I've managed to clean from top to bottom.

As I put everything back in the cupboard next week maybe I can just dump anything I really don't love. Get my possessions down to the bare minimum? Do a massive throwing out of stuff. And with it a massive clearing out of my psyche.

First, however, the accepting attitude.

anxiety driven

2009-10-31T04:23:00.000-07:00

Okay now I'm officially anxiety rather than consciousness driven. Can't seem to stand in the morning even for 20 minutes.

Fantasy conversations with the psychologist at Ben's school. Even though I know he's going to be allright. Even though I know he's not going to be kicked out of school. Even though all he needs is for them to get him a computer.

I can't even get through writing this post without drifting off into a conversation about that.

So what do I do?

Other responsibilities aren't being met as well and they weigh on my mind. Although there's no reason I can't meditate and meet my responsibilities as well. I'm meditating because I WANT to have the energy and motivation to meet my responsibilities. I'm meditating out of responsibility.

SUDDENLY I SEE THE SUN RISE. I GRAB MY SON AND WE HEAD OUT TO WATCH IT IN THE PARK

Wandering off the way

2009-10-30T06:21:00.000-07:00

I'm in danger.

This is where I wandered off the path last time. Being driven by my work obsessions.

And then I forget about how good I feel when I stand. And then I start filling my anxious belly with things to numb it. And then I'm eating badly, and sleepng late. And before you know it I'm managing to remember only for 10 to 20 minutes to stand. Just enough to keep me from falling apart.

But I want more than not falling apart. And maybe that means letting certain other things fall apart.

I don't want to lose my way again. I want to plant myself right here and grow here.

But I don't know how to make that permanent.

Help.

How do I make this vision of what I really want, a consciousness driven life. How do I make this a permanent part of my life?

Distracted

2009-10-29T05:49:00.000-07:00

A job opportunity has come up. Something I think I would be good at, but I'm not sure would be good for me. Or that doesn't quite fit in to the plan I had for myself.

It was a situation similar to this that seriously de-railed me last time I got serious about Chi Kung. I found myself obsessing about that job, which would bring me more money and more stuff. I didn't apply for it in the end. Possibly the right decision, but I never quite got back on track again.

I'm trying to stay centered as I consider this one. One I'm probably better suited for, but still, one that would derail other writing plans I have. And one that would suck me full in to the written dialogue of our culture, its obsession, which are not always healthy.

Just thinking about it de-rails me, I know.

So it sounds like I shouldn't apply or it. Or that at the very least I shouldn't let it distract me from the things I really need to do today.

I want to stay committed to my vision.

Maybe I need to ask that Jon Kabat Zinn question a few times of the universe today. What is my job?

Why I stand

2009-10-28T05:34:00.000-07:00

I stand to develop a deeper reason for standing that merely having a repertoire of cool feelings.

I stand to have a profound connection to universal energy. To the energy we want to conserve in all our challenges right now as a species.

I stand so that I will have a deep well of resources, which will make it easier for me to risk being loving. And that will give me something to give to others.

I stand so that I will be driven by the primal joys of life, not the fears. I stand so that I will recognize real anxiety when I feel it and sift out all the deluded anxieties conditioned into me by a dysfunctional upbringing and society.

I stand because i want to change my body and my brain.

I stand to change my world and hopefully the world.

But I also stand to honour stability and conservation and slow careful change.

I stand so that I will better know what needs to be changed, and what needs to be conserved.

I stand to that I can participate in the world discussion of those things.

I stand to have a more profound, more rooted, more stable sense of being in the world. I stand to help to experience that and then to help others find it.

What drives us

2009-10-27T06:02:00.000-07:00

This morning I felt that real warmth that happens when the Tan Tien is starting to fill with relaxed energy. I'm never sure if what I'm sensing is a change in the Tan Tien, or if the Tan Tien is already full of energy and all that's happened is an opening of some kind of neurocircuitry that allows me to sense the energy that is always flowing through it. At any rate I know that something has changed.

And what I want is to make this change permanent. This may be the root of the problem. Usually when I feel this warmth I get all excited. This is it. Everything's going to be great by now. I've felt my Tan Tien. And then I don't know what happens. Maybe life doesn't change significantly enough. Or the mere egoistic thoughts of how much smarter and stronger and more creative I am going to be is a sort of regression in itself. And then before you know it I've regressed back to my unconscious way of living. Basically I back to being in my brain.

Yesterday as I was walking around the neighborhood trying to locate a book that I left behind somewhere when I was Sherpaing Ben around, instead of panicking, I focused on my tan tien. I started to feel a very solid and profound sense of being. And I understood something. That cultivating this energy, or an awareness of this energy, is cultivating a strong and solid sense of being. You sense the ground. You sense the reality and present moment more vibrantly from that point, that you do from the brain. You sense the ground.

It's not that you stop using the brain, but you don't live inside your head. The head, basically, is not a very good place to locate your sense of balance. Or i guess your center of gravity. And gravity is where it's at.

Does this mean I would use my head brain less. I don't know. I would like to think that I use it for less useless things. That I use it for more concrete living and connection with the world around me.

So this morning I come up with a theory. That the Tan Tien drives us, no matter what our relationship with it. If what is in the Tan Tien is a tense, unconscious feeling of powerlesness, then we are driven in life by a tense, unconscious feeling of powerlessness. If what is in the Tan Tien is a relaxed profound sense of being and connection to the universe, then that is what we are driven by.

I would like to get the point where this warmth in my tan tien is not an unusual exciting event. I would like it to become daily and mundane and a drive towards authentically powerful living that I barely think about.

Storing stillness

2009-10-26T05:57:00.000-07:00

Power, it is said in the zhan zhuang literature, is born in stillness. One of the greatest pleasure of zhan zhuang for me has been the occasional feeling of stillness in my brain. There are these wonderful moments when my thoughts stop and I connect entirely with this quiet still present moment.

But I'm brain driven. Head brain driven. In zz the source and storage place of energy is the tan tien. In the gut. It's a challenging process for me to make the decision to be more gut driven. For a while this weekend I was trying to keep my focus on my gut and my brain felt drained and disoriented. Maybe that's why I decided to punish my gut by overeating at my parents.

Woke up this morning feeling a food hangover. Energy just wasn't moving. Ben woke up with a nightmare that I had sent him to tap dance school (We watched the finale of So You Think You Can Dance Canada last night.)

Had green smoothie and morning practice went better.

One thing I became conscious of yesterday is how much tension I have stored in my gut. All kinds of unhealthy, anxious drives down there I'm sure. Drives to grieve, grumble. Memories of sadness and feelings of powerless. One of the goals of focusing on the Tan Tien is to open up some fresh space to create joy and relaxation.

And stillness. I'm trying today to feel, really feel in a solid concrete way, the stillness at that point. So that I can feel stillness throughout my entire body and, ultimately, psyche. Not just in my brain.

From this stillness, the very grounded mountain peak of stillness, I plan to reconstruct some new, healthier, kinder and more loving drives.

Dawn

2009-10-25T04:51:00.001-07:00

It is a strange dawn today. The sky is blue but it is extremely windy. A strong, quite warm wind considering the time of year.

Ben woke up early too. His coughing and loud page turning and then insistence on wanting to talk about the things he was reading was pretty distracting. But we did spend a bit of time talking about dawn, the illusion that the sun rises, the immensity of the universe. And God, if God exists, how big that love would be.

If God exists. Do I have doubts? No, not since my concept of God has shifted to this power.

This power I feel now in my lower belly. It's hard to make the shift. Hard because I keep wanting to make it "permanent." Instead of having a goal of focusing on it in the present moment. But I feel the loss of energy in my brain. It feels weird not being as active up there.

But it's where I'm thinking from for now.

Tan Tien

2009-10-24T11:33:00.001-07:00

The Tan Tien, more formally known as the lower Tan Tien, is this place in the belly which is the grounding point of Zhan Zhuang.

It took me years of practice before I felt it. I guess I must be really blocked there or something. Even now as I come back to it, I have at tendency to forget how important it is. It is THE most important focal point of practice.

What happens now when I stand is that I get feeling, almost like a carbonated vitality starting to flow through it. If I keep my focus on it, eventually a very strong warmth begins to grow. The best way to think about it, I've found, is as the major ball bearing in the body. Like a magnetic ball bearing.

But I have a tendency to feel it and then want to move on to other parts of the body. What I"m practicing today is feeling it and then explanding my feeling, but always keeping the Tan Tien in mind. This is a pretty exciting feeling. It hits me right at the point I felt of first sexual awakening, and it's no surprise that the Tan Tien is supposed to be the place where we store out sexual energy.

As westerners, of course, we tend to focus on our genital area, but the tan tien is actually more effective at sustaining the kind of ecstasy we associate with sexual release.

Of course, quasi-puritan that I am programmed to be, I end up focusing on everywhere but. Anything that feels that good can't be good for me, right?

Well, let's see....

Heart brain

2009-10-23T06:11:00.000-07:00

Two things. Two things happening today. This morning a very strong feeling of groundedness. I felt as solid as a mountain in my lower body. Haven't felt that in a while. It's an extremely comforting feeling, the sense that strength is coming from something other than the outer circumstances of your life, or I guess I mean, the cultural or economic circumstances. It is coming from something external though. I'm pretty sure, even if it feels like my brain is creating it. It's coming from the "cosmos." I guess. As you can see I'm not quite comfortable with that term. I'm not a New Agey person and I'm self conscious about using that terminology. And yet even if I'm not comfortable saying it, I do believe in it. How can I not? There is a cosmos. There is space out there and it's pretty powerful. Okay scratch that. Very powerful. Powerful beyond our imagination. I feel myself in the magnetic force of that power. It grows every day and it will become more intense.

The second thing. I read in The Way of Power yesterday that the energy of the cosmos enters through the heart. So I made a conscious effort to feel it there. And it felt good. Really good. Like I had stable, constant access to a powerful source of love, and that I just had to develop the practice everyday and that gradually the self hatred that I know permeates my soul, will have a weaker and weaker grip on me.

It doesn't want to let go. I can hear it, I can feel it. It is still stronger than my practice or any lovely feeling of connection to the universe that I have developed today. Or at least it feels like it is stronger.

It's not. Of course my little self hatred synapses, or paths in my brain that I've cultivated, are puny tiny barely alive little things compared to the energy in the universe and that love. But because they run my brain they feel bigger for the time being. I wonder how often I have to choose the consciousness of the universe over the chatter of my self-contempt before it loses power permanently. I wonder if that's possible. I hope so.

consciousness driven

2009-10-22T03:59:00.000-07:00

I want to be driven by consciousness, not anxiety.

Reading Eckhart Tolle last night, I finally got it. Living this way is a decision to be consciousness driven. Not ego drive. Not anxiety driven. Consciousness driven.

I suppose in a certain sense it is chi driven. But what's interesting to me this morning is that to be consciousness driven is not to be word driven. Or language driven.

I had a moment in this morning's practice where the words disappeared. I was trying to think in words as I am constantly doing, and they wouldn't come out as words anymore, just sort of silent grunty things. Mumbles I guess. Because of this I was able to have a few moments of pure silence.

Moments like these are exciting to a writer because I am so driven by ideas and the words that I put to these ideas. Deep, complete silence is always a brand new place to me. Certainly not my home.

But back when we did live without words, as pre-language man, or as babies, we learned thing quite fast and amazingly. I wonder what happens to my brain when I am able to return it to this pre language state. Does it re-find its baby smartness. Will I be able to put learning into super drive again?

This is not consciousness driven curiosity. It's no doubt ego driven as I imagine all the remarkable things I could be capable of if this were true.

Too bad I'm not living like that anymore.

Surrender

2009-10-21T06:08:00.000-07:00

The most difficult thing about standing is not standing, but surrendering to the energy that would enable me to release all the effort that goes into standing.

So the most difficult thing is not standing but not-standing.

This is difficult on several levels. First psychological, or maybe more appropriately, cultural. Surrendering to something bigger than ourselves is kind of against our North American programming. Or so we think. Of course we surrender to things more powerful than ourselves all the time. When we allow the government to manage civic affairs. When we allow the television to hypnotize us. When we participate in our market and consumption based economy, we are surrendering to something we have accepted is bigger than ourselves.

Why so hard to surrender to a pleasant energy? I know this is an energy that increases my well-being, and increases my quality of life. I've experienced its benefits over and over. Still, it's so hard to surrender.

Why does pleasure and health make me so anxious? Or rather, why am I anxious about increased pleasure and health? Why would I be anxious about well-being?

A little story came to me this morning while I was doing the dishes. One of the last conversations I had with my grandfather before he died. It was on the phone. He sounded happy and I told how happy he sounded. "That's what everyone keeps telling me" he said. "But I'm not happy. It's these morphine pills. I've been eating them like beans. They make me sound happy. But I'm not. I'm dying."

Because our only experience with altered consciousness is usually drugs, we worry when we experience it drug free. Like somehow we'll lose touch with our anxiety and be unable to see or express reality.

I don't think I'm really in danger of this happening. Last night I was watching T.V. and I started to feel anxious about the things in my life I should feel anxious about: My lack of stable employment, my debt, etc. I started thinking, what should I do to get rid of this anxiety. And then I realized, no I don't have to do that. I'm strong enough to face this anxiety. I'm strong enough to feel it and not feel the urge to run away.

This is the advantage of authentic well being. Not an escape from anxiety, but the calm strength to face it squarely.

I believe that if I surrender to this growing energy, that is what I will have.

Hippocampus

2009-10-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

Read yesterday that there is a new study which shows that meditators develop stronger bigger hippocampus. This is the part of the temporal lobe responsible for long term memory and attention. What this could mean is that meditation strengthens your long term memory.
It's also an exercise in facing long term memory. One thing I realized this morning is that depression, desperation and powerlessness is my default setting. When I meditate in the morning, I become more conscious of this because I'm forming a different setting. The quiet energy of early morning meditation is really the opposite of anxiety and depression. So it would be great if what I'm accomplishing is changing my memory to return me to quiet and stability and a sense of well being.
I felt a very strong energy rising in me again this morning. And I felt that weird sensation of lack of symmetry. Even though I could see that my arms were symetrical it felt that my body was twisted into a different position. I love this feeling. It tells me that my brain is really changing somehow. I think that it means more energy is flowing into my left brain, perhaps to heal all the extra energy in the right brain from my depression?
Don't know. But I know it's a good sign of progress.