I've spent a long time, during this process of letting my energy sink, resting in my heart. There is so much numbness in there, so much work that still needs to be done, that I haven't wanted to leave. Yesterday I had an emotional/physical insight into hatred. I could feel a layer of hatred in my heart, and then underneath, in an actual physical place, I could feel the desire to be free of that hatred. I could feel that desire to be free, my compassion, in a place deeper. And that's when I knew that the hatred would never last. Things sink, and one day that hatred would simply dissolve into my much deeper desire to be free of it. I would like to continue this project of mapping out the heart. Locating feelings, especially the positive ones when I feel them. And perhaps I will.
But I sense that my heart is telling me it's time to move on, and move down my body into my tan tien. Moving down into this place feels like a rooting process. I'm allowing this energy of an open heart to now move down my body into the earth of my liver, of my lower body. That's where the blocks dissolve, that's wear the toxins get cleansed. I'm going to take my time. I'm going to take it slow. Resting in my Tan Tien is a very intense experience. Alot of feelings will emerge.
But here lies wisdom.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Writing from the heart
Feeling this new, growing energy in my heart, means I feel more compelled to live from my heart. I trust that if I sit with this energy in time I will feel a place of completion, joy, reverence. A state of being.
But how do I write from this. Last night I was watching a television show with that standard scene, which we've all pretty much seen a milliion times now. A piano teacher tells a student that their playing is too perfect, too intellectual. They need to feel the pain and play from that.
I've tried to do that in my writing, but it never seems to work. My heart feels numb and self-conscious when I do that. But I suppose naming the numbness and the self-consciousness is a start. My own heart is so muddy and chaotic it feels like, and my environment continues to reflect that even if I know I've made a lot of progress.
Like it or not, there is squalor in my heart. Light squalor, but squalor nonetheless.
In the television show, the character worries that he has no pain to draw from. He lives with loving, politically correct, lesbian parents. Meanwhile, he's forgotten that his father is an embarrassing, lonely alcoholic, who had has distanced himself from.
I sit with my heart and feel years of numbness. And I worry that I will never unfreeze all these blocks.
But that numbness is there because of pain. A lot of pain. I will never have to worry about not having pain. Pain is good. Suffering is bad. The resistance to pain, the mechanisms by which we dull the pain.
I don't want to feel that numbness.
A few years back, I found places in the energy centre in my head that were full of depression and anxiety. Now I'm feeling them in my heart. Or not feeling them, but I know I'm working my way there.
But how do I write from this. Last night I was watching a television show with that standard scene, which we've all pretty much seen a milliion times now. A piano teacher tells a student that their playing is too perfect, too intellectual. They need to feel the pain and play from that.
I've tried to do that in my writing, but it never seems to work. My heart feels numb and self-conscious when I do that. But I suppose naming the numbness and the self-consciousness is a start. My own heart is so muddy and chaotic it feels like, and my environment continues to reflect that even if I know I've made a lot of progress.
Like it or not, there is squalor in my heart. Light squalor, but squalor nonetheless.
In the television show, the character worries that he has no pain to draw from. He lives with loving, politically correct, lesbian parents. Meanwhile, he's forgotten that his father is an embarrassing, lonely alcoholic, who had has distanced himself from.
I sit with my heart and feel years of numbness. And I worry that I will never unfreeze all these blocks.
But that numbness is there because of pain. A lot of pain. I will never have to worry about not having pain. Pain is good. Suffering is bad. The resistance to pain, the mechanisms by which we dull the pain.
I don't want to feel that numbness.
A few years back, I found places in the energy centre in my head that were full of depression and anxiety. Now I'm feeling them in my heart. Or not feeling them, but I know I'm working my way there.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Heart
I'm not sure exactly how I became more focussed on the energy in my heart this month, but that's where I am. A combination of things I supposed. Finishing Tergar's Joy of Living 2: opening the heart. I actually, physically feel my heart more open. The calm energy that I used to feel more often in my head is now more solidly in my heart area.
I've also been falling asleep to several lovingkindness guided meditations. So I'm more conscious of the energy and power of love.
I remember in Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love her Indonesian teacher's life teaching, to see from the heart.
In our science driven world we try not to see from the heart. We try to look clearly at the facts. But as Mingyur Rinpoche says in The Joy of Living, compassion is a kind of technology. The mind is a tool, and the heart helps us to bind to people, to right practices, to nurturing values.
I used to think that wisdom was something that would always change as we gained more experience. In some ways I'm sure it does. But there us something permanent about wisdom. It's a conceptual understanding of something that has been drawn from experience. And once you get that conceptual understanding, that doesn't change.
I am as healthy, psychically, as the vitality in my heart. My body may get sick and old, but my psyche can stay strong and vital as long as I tend this connecting energy, and tend the points in my body that connect me to this vitality. The heart is an amazing gateway.
But it's more than a gateway. It's a home.
I've also been falling asleep to several lovingkindness guided meditations. So I'm more conscious of the energy and power of love.
I remember in Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love her Indonesian teacher's life teaching, to see from the heart.
In our science driven world we try not to see from the heart. We try to look clearly at the facts. But as Mingyur Rinpoche says in The Joy of Living, compassion is a kind of technology. The mind is a tool, and the heart helps us to bind to people, to right practices, to nurturing values.
I used to think that wisdom was something that would always change as we gained more experience. In some ways I'm sure it does. But there us something permanent about wisdom. It's a conceptual understanding of something that has been drawn from experience. And once you get that conceptual understanding, that doesn't change.
I am as healthy, psychically, as the vitality in my heart. My body may get sick and old, but my psyche can stay strong and vital as long as I tend this connecting energy, and tend the points in my body that connect me to this vitality. The heart is an amazing gateway.
But it's more than a gateway. It's a home.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
The World
Today I did a two hour practice. I've been falling a little behind on my one hour practices of late, but I went to retreat last Sunday, which has given me much food for meditation.
In one of his introductory lectures, Mingyur Rinpoche talks about the three levels of awareness: ordinary awareness, awareness of awareness, and pure awareness. When I first started meditating all I wanted, and all I aimed for was pure awareness. I wanted that wonderful, pristine, perfect free from all suffering bliss. I often got there our of sheer beginner fanaticism. Like many mediators in the first stages of practice I thought of ordinary awareness, and awareness of awareness as stages to surmounted until I reached the pure place free of all suffering forever and ever.
One of the biggest barriers to progress, I think, has been my contempt for the other kinds of awareness, as though they are "lower" stages of evolution. When I found myself being driven by ordinary awareness, I would get frustrated and angry with myself. Shouldn't I be past this by now? Shouldn't I be master of my awareness after all these years of practice.
More and more, though, I am building a certain affection for these states of being. The goal of practice in not necessarily pure awareness, so much as stability of awareness. Simply being conscious of which state of awareness you are in lays the ground for more spontaneous arisings of pure awareness. If I catch myself in ordinary awareness, I don't get irritated or discouraged, I just notice that it's ordinary awareness. In the noticing I am immediately in stage too, awareness of awareness. The trick is to bring stage two into a place of self-awareness, not self-consciousness. Most people, myself included, really hate this place where all we seem to be doing is noticing the thoughts, the tensions, the memories. The suffering.
But freedom from suffering is not freedom from pain. The Dalai Lama is free of much suffering, but when I saw him in Montreal a few years back, he'd just had an appendectomy. He obviously still felt pain, and took that pain seriously enough to have necessary surgery. Suffering, as Shinzen Young has so brilliantly defined it, is resistance to pain. Because of our ingrained resistance to pain, we are often resistance to the pure pleasures of existence that are available to us whenever we want.
In recent weeks I've been falling asleep to guided loving kindness meditations. For the next while I've decided that I will direct loving kindness mostly to different levels of myself. I will feel the natural love I feel for those parts of myself, which I like, my natural intelligence and openness. I will feel the more directed love I need to feel for the more neutral parts of myself that I often neglect to validate. The part of myself that does the dishes more often than not. The part of myself that shops for the basics and keeps my butt sitting in front of the computer so that I can generate some writing every day. And I will take those more naturally arising feelings of love and gratitude and direct them towards the most difficult aspects of my personality. My messiness, my self-delusion, my tendency towards resentment and reactivity. The anger that I continue to feel towards my family, despite my best intentions.
And then, here's the hard part. Once I've felt this recursive love towards myself, I will then direct this love towards the world. Towards all people who have, but don't recognize their natural kindness. Towards all people, and there are so many, whose minds are dragging them back into patterns of suffering that they feel powerless over.
We all want safety, happiness, health and ease. We all forget several thousand times a day that we have this wonderful permanent nature that is safe, happy, healthy and easily available every time we choose to recognize it. As safe and as permanent as a mountain, as happy, strong and full as the ocean, and as easy and inevitable as gravity.
In one of his introductory lectures, Mingyur Rinpoche talks about the three levels of awareness: ordinary awareness, awareness of awareness, and pure awareness. When I first started meditating all I wanted, and all I aimed for was pure awareness. I wanted that wonderful, pristine, perfect free from all suffering bliss. I often got there our of sheer beginner fanaticism. Like many mediators in the first stages of practice I thought of ordinary awareness, and awareness of awareness as stages to surmounted until I reached the pure place free of all suffering forever and ever.
One of the biggest barriers to progress, I think, has been my contempt for the other kinds of awareness, as though they are "lower" stages of evolution. When I found myself being driven by ordinary awareness, I would get frustrated and angry with myself. Shouldn't I be past this by now? Shouldn't I be master of my awareness after all these years of practice.
More and more, though, I am building a certain affection for these states of being. The goal of practice in not necessarily pure awareness, so much as stability of awareness. Simply being conscious of which state of awareness you are in lays the ground for more spontaneous arisings of pure awareness. If I catch myself in ordinary awareness, I don't get irritated or discouraged, I just notice that it's ordinary awareness. In the noticing I am immediately in stage too, awareness of awareness. The trick is to bring stage two into a place of self-awareness, not self-consciousness. Most people, myself included, really hate this place where all we seem to be doing is noticing the thoughts, the tensions, the memories. The suffering.
But freedom from suffering is not freedom from pain. The Dalai Lama is free of much suffering, but when I saw him in Montreal a few years back, he'd just had an appendectomy. He obviously still felt pain, and took that pain seriously enough to have necessary surgery. Suffering, as Shinzen Young has so brilliantly defined it, is resistance to pain. Because of our ingrained resistance to pain, we are often resistance to the pure pleasures of existence that are available to us whenever we want.
In recent weeks I've been falling asleep to guided loving kindness meditations. For the next while I've decided that I will direct loving kindness mostly to different levels of myself. I will feel the natural love I feel for those parts of myself, which I like, my natural intelligence and openness. I will feel the more directed love I need to feel for the more neutral parts of myself that I often neglect to validate. The part of myself that does the dishes more often than not. The part of myself that shops for the basics and keeps my butt sitting in front of the computer so that I can generate some writing every day. And I will take those more naturally arising feelings of love and gratitude and direct them towards the most difficult aspects of my personality. My messiness, my self-delusion, my tendency towards resentment and reactivity. The anger that I continue to feel towards my family, despite my best intentions.
And then, here's the hard part. Once I've felt this recursive love towards myself, I will then direct this love towards the world. Towards all people who have, but don't recognize their natural kindness. Towards all people, and there are so many, whose minds are dragging them back into patterns of suffering that they feel powerless over.
We all want safety, happiness, health and ease. We all forget several thousand times a day that we have this wonderful permanent nature that is safe, happy, healthy and easily available every time we choose to recognize it. As safe and as permanent as a mountain, as happy, strong and full as the ocean, and as easy and inevitable as gravity.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Sleep
I've been sleeping better. Going to bed listening to guided loving kindness meditations by Sharon Salzberg and Bodhipaksa. Now in the morning I have those voices in my head, alerting me to the energy in my heart.
Still. I'm feeling restless. Maybe the anxiety of the waning moon. I don't feel like writing this morning, sure Ben will be waking up any morning. I do this more out of duty that a real passion for the truth.
I've been feeling that way recently about my practice. I'm not doing the full hour. I'm feeling the call of work and things that need to be thought about and worried about. I don't want to lose my formal practice. I know from this journal what happens once I let my practice go, whenever I feel like I'm getting somewhere.
I need the insight that practice gives me. Even if it's insight into my state of restlessness.
Ah Ben is up.
Still. I'm feeling restless. Maybe the anxiety of the waning moon. I don't feel like writing this morning, sure Ben will be waking up any morning. I do this more out of duty that a real passion for the truth.
I've been feeling that way recently about my practice. I'm not doing the full hour. I'm feeling the call of work and things that need to be thought about and worried about. I don't want to lose my formal practice. I know from this journal what happens once I let my practice go, whenever I feel like I'm getting somewhere.
I need the insight that practice gives me. Even if it's insight into my state of restlessness.
Ah Ben is up.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
My addiction
So I didn't make it past Friday.
The excuse went this way. It's too hard to wait to find out what's happening in the final episodes of this series I've been following (okay, it's Girls). Maybe I can just make that the one thing that I watch. From that came the next episode of Episodes. From that the end of Parenthood. All good shows. And that's what I keep telling myself. These are all good shows. Shouldn't I be able to watch them?
To which I need to reply. Yes these are all good shows, but shouldn't I be able to give them up? These aren't real people and I'm encouraging my son to live a life comforted by entertainment, not comforted by friends and community.
Fresh start today. I can't just abandon this. So today I'm going to be on alert for the seductive reasons.
I'm going to go back to Pema Chodron's book on breaking old habits and I'm going to try again.
And I'm going to build new habits. Primarily evening meditation sessions. How I spend my evenings impacts my day. Deeply impacts my day. So I want to get back to evenings that are vital and rich with peace. Not drama.
Deep breath. Once again.
The excuse went this way. It's too hard to wait to find out what's happening in the final episodes of this series I've been following (okay, it's Girls). Maybe I can just make that the one thing that I watch. From that came the next episode of Episodes. From that the end of Parenthood. All good shows. And that's what I keep telling myself. These are all good shows. Shouldn't I be able to watch them?
To which I need to reply. Yes these are all good shows, but shouldn't I be able to give them up? These aren't real people and I'm encouraging my son to live a life comforted by entertainment, not comforted by friends and community.
Fresh start today. I can't just abandon this. So today I'm going to be on alert for the seductive reasons.
I'm going to go back to Pema Chodron's book on breaking old habits and I'm going to try again.
And I'm going to build new habits. Primarily evening meditation sessions. How I spend my evenings impacts my day. Deeply impacts my day. So I want to get back to evenings that are vital and rich with peace. Not drama.
Deep breath. Once again.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Happy Tibetan New Year
Today is Tibetan New Year. I'll be heading out to the Tergar Centre to celebrate. But this morning I think of what I want for myself and for others this year.
Peace. That profound thriving peace that I feel in the centre of my brain when I've been working steadily at my mediation practice. That palpable magnetic energy that is always available to me when I need it. That thing that I still use too rarely in my life.
All people have this. Few people are aware of it. In my current practice it is called Buddah Nature.
This is what I want for myself and everyone.
One of the ways I'm going to stay close to this over the next month, the first month of this year of The Horse, is to re acquaint myself with Lent. My old Catholic practice of renunciation before re-birth.
Television. That's what's going for the next forty days. Television.
No more courtroom dramas. No more Girls. No more Netflix.
Just for this month my greatest entertainment is going to be this peace. Maybe some reading. But this peace. This peace, if entered into playfully, can be a profound source of entertainment. The human body,and psyche is an endless roller coaster. Like a video game with blocks and challenges that once met and dissolved bring you to the next level.
No sugar. No television. Just peace.
Though it might not seem like one, this is another adventure.
Peace. That profound thriving peace that I feel in the centre of my brain when I've been working steadily at my mediation practice. That palpable magnetic energy that is always available to me when I need it. That thing that I still use too rarely in my life.
All people have this. Few people are aware of it. In my current practice it is called Buddah Nature.
This is what I want for myself and everyone.
One of the ways I'm going to stay close to this over the next month, the first month of this year of The Horse, is to re acquaint myself with Lent. My old Catholic practice of renunciation before re-birth.
Television. That's what's going for the next forty days. Television.
No more courtroom dramas. No more Girls. No more Netflix.
Just for this month my greatest entertainment is going to be this peace. Maybe some reading. But this peace. This peace, if entered into playfully, can be a profound source of entertainment. The human body,and psyche is an endless roller coaster. Like a video game with blocks and challenges that once met and dissolved bring you to the next level.
No sugar. No television. Just peace.
Though it might not seem like one, this is another adventure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)