Identity

It struck me yesterday the impact of our sense of identity on our habit energy.  When I quit smoking that happened because I stopped seeing myself as a smoker. If I'm going to quit suffering, I need to stop seeing myself as a sufferer. 

I need to stop seeing myself as someone who is trapped, helpless, unable to transfer my knowledge and strength to others. I need to stop seeing myself as weak, vulnerable and isolated. I need to stop seeing myself as inconsequential to others. 

And then to thrive, I need to start seeing myself as what I am, buddah nature. I need to trust that nature to lead me to where I can lead.  I need to embody this sense of self. And I need to let myself transform as a result of this embodiment. 

This embodiement can be my default. 

Breaking up with bliss

I have often in my years of meditation fallen into the trap of mistaking the lovely effects of meditation as the goal of meditation.  This is doomed loop because simply the act of aspiration loses sight of the fact that we are already what we seek.  Beneath and in and around this suffering is the true clear self.  The more we grasp at this absolute self, the more we lose it.

This week I am experimenting with what Mingyur Rinpoche calls breaking up with bliss before it breaks up with you. My meditation practice is mature enough that I have frequent moments of clarity, non-conceptuality. Though less frequent, I also have moments of bliss.

I have a tendency when I feel bliss to do my utmost to extend it, as though I am going to increase it, like a lung span.  But perhaps what I need to do is the opposite.  See bliss as a cue to resting in suffering.  When I'm aware of suffering, I don't increase the suffering, I create space around it.  I'm not sure exactly of the dynamics of bliss. But I do know that if I'm courageous enough to feel my suffering, the lessening of it makes the experience calm and pleasure more frequent and more durable.

Hunger, my friend

I have it in me to heal this hunger.

Last night I spent 90 minutes in meditation doing the purification rituals of the Ngondro path. We imagine a guru with the power to purify and clarify our perception. The goal is not to purify the self, since in buddhism, the core self is already pure, we just don't see that with our muddy minds.  The goal is to wash away the mud that obscures our vision. Midway through we dissolve this imagined guru into ourself.  We project our best self onto the guru because it's still too much for us to believe that we have that same potential power.

Once I completed the rituals, I felt liberated and empty.  I sat in this strong sphere of equanimity.  I felt like my body would burst with it.  And then gradually it contracted into that core, or what feels like a core, of hunger, restlessness, desperation.  All the things that drive me to my chronic habits of escape. I sat with the hunger for a long time. This hunger for a life I've always wanted.  To be pretty and loved and accomplished and admired, and pure.  And young again.

This morning I went back to that hunger again. I felt remorse for all the bad habits I have that feel so entrenched in me. But I also realized the delusion of that. The "bad" in me is not as solid as I think.  It's just muddy perception. The dullness of that feeling is very grounding. If I could become more familiar with this hunger and cultivate the habit of seeking it out, being with it, instead of trying to make it go away. If it could become as welcome to me as a stiff muscle that I know I can work out with a little massage. If I could make friends with my hunger.  Make it a daily companion.  I could heal all the anxiety and addiction that surrounds it and keeps it in place.

Self Directed retreat, day 1

I noticed in my JOL3 guidebook yesterday that I'm supposed to do a two day retreat at some point during my six months of practice.  Because I'm actually at midpoint--14 weeks into it--and because I'm not sure I'll have the time again in the next few months--or ever--I decided to do it now.

I'm supposed to do at least six hours a day, each day.   It's possible I've actually done that in my more enthusiastic stages.  But I've never done that much meditation formally before.  It's kind of like doing an ultra marathon of meditation. At first it felt incredibly daunting.

But I'm up to it.  I've just completed five hours of meditation.  I'll probably go out for a run, and then I'll do another hour tonight before bed.  To make it a retreat, I'm staying away from news, internet surfing television, even as much as possible, imaginary conversations.

So far it's been an interesting trip.  In the first hour, I felt a pleasant all over vitality that seemed to originate mostly in my brain and felt like what I would call, a sort of spirit molecule awakening, as though my body was heading into the either and was kind of connecting with all the awareness around me. Towards the end of this first hour though, I started to wonder if this was really happening, or this was just come kind of intellectual concept I was framing my experience in.

Hour two was more challenging. The excitement of starting a meditation retreat was starting to ebb, and I found myself sitting in boredom, restlessness, all the feelings I try as much as possible to avoid during a normal day.  Doubt starting setting in about this path, about this decision. Shouldn't I be doing something more important with my life.  It started to become clear to me how much I really do believe that happiness is a result of staying with the program, the job, the status, the security of a respectable life.  I doubt myself, deeply, because I feel I've permanently fallen off that track, that debt will weigh me down and money problems will win out, and that this is my due.

Hour three I found myself a little happier.  I felt a joy in my heart that I know has very little to do with money or status, and everything to do with my spiritual beliefs.  Nothing wrong with money, an important job, power, status, respectablity, any of those things.  But the joy in my heart that I've cultivated out of my spiritual practice is not something that can be bought, or given as a reward.  It's there because of many, many hours of faith in this energy.  So it felt good to get my faith, the ground of my practice and my power, back.

I broke for a light lunch and did a little reading of Rinpoche's book, and found myself drawn to a passage about Buddah nature as a nugget of gold hidden deep under a mountain of waste and mud. As I set into hour four, I had that story priming my mind, and I felt the energy move down from the joy of my heart to the discomfort of my gut.  As yes, my gut, the mountain of waste in I hide, ignore and forget my most powerful feelings, the most powerful seat of my practice, the dan tien.

Hour five was really about explore the literal, experiential truth of gut wisdom.  This insight is such a flickering fire fly, or so it feels like.  Man I hate resting in my gut.  But it's where the wisdom is, and if I don't accept that, I'm like a banana (or is it a cocoa) tree.  The fruit of my practice gets cut down once a year, and everything has to start again.  If I want my power to have staying power, even though I recognize that the fruits of that staying power will never be permanent, I need to really root myself back in my tan tien.

I need to keep working on that energy.

For mysef, and for everyone who might be open to this teaching.

Impermanence of Sensations

I'm midway now in the six month JOL3 program, where I'm trying to make these habits of wisdom intuitive.

This week I've been working on impermanence of body sensations.  But I'm admitting to myself at the end of the week that my practice on this has been somewhat impermanent itself.  There seems to be something in me that is quite resistant to this particular practice.  Probably because it starts with something that feels like pain.  But is merely discomfort.

The consquence of avoiding this practice though, is that I've missed out on a powerful lesson.  It's through these uncomfortable sensations that we reach a state of interesting, comfortable, buddah nature, or chi sensations.  Sensations of stability, stillness, lucid, clear energy running through us.  I guess I'll call them life force sensations.

I like to be in this energy, but one thing I've noticed more than usual this week is that I'm also uncomfortable with this energy.

What I realized this morning is that I'm uncomfortable with the impermanence of this more powerful energy. I'm uncomfortable with the fact that this energy is always in a state of flux.   But if I settle into that, if I watch this energy transform in the same way that I might watch television, suddenly my resistance begins to melt away.  I'm not so worried that I'm going to get sucked into some permanent loop because this energy is impermanent as well.

It's really just another layer of impermanence.