How do I know I'm making progress? And what exactly is progress in timeless awareness? Progress is dependent on time and a sense of time, a self and a sense of self being better or getting worse. My mission is to increase the well-being, emotional, spiritual, physical, intellectual and financial in my life. And in the lives of others. Accomplishing this mission depends on a sense and criteria for progress.
So by what markers do I know I'm making progress? Is it how many times a day I hear messages of compassion over messages of self-loathing? Is it how well I'm sleeping? Is it how I feel, generally in my heart? How much writing I'm getting done and how well my writing is going? Is it how happy my son seems? How well we're able to negotiate solutions to problems? The maturity and wisdom we bring to the problems we encounter? How do I know that I'm healing?
Is it just the quality of the energy I feel? How intentional my living feels?
I'm not going to answer this today. Just mull over these questions this week. And see if I can answer them next week.
Is it the taste of purification?
Is it joy?
Is it clarity?
Is it my ability to make a commitment?
Is it that I have more power?
Is it bliss and non-conceptual awareness?
Showing posts with label progress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label progress. Show all posts
Monday, March 9, 2015
Saturday, November 7, 2009
the growth forest
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.
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.
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