Now that I'm standing longer and more regularly, I'm starting to notice the effect my late Saturday Night TV watching habits have on my Sunday morning stand.
The thriving energy I felt yesterday morning seems to have mostly evaporated. I still had good moments. I'm still feeling that nice fresh energy gut feeling of a renewed dantien. But I know it's nothing like what it could be.
It would be nice to have an inspiring post that I see all week, that tells me that early bed rest and a nutritious food yield the clarity and joy that I suspect they do.
Still I've had some insights this week.
Mostly about the recursive mechanics of chi. It's not that difficult. Stand for an hour and the effects of that hour will create even more energy the next day. Take the time. Or better yet, may little times through the day to break the recursive cycle of stressful thoughts, and calmer, more creative and wise thoughts will create more of the same.
It really is as simple as that.
Were I to break the cycle of late Saturday nights, I would break the cycle of dull Sunday morning posts. They would become more energetic, more poetic. And in their energy and poetry, they would create more of the same.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Disorder
Yesterday I tidied the kitchen, and made a commitment to keep it tidy for a month. I expected when I woke up this morning that my mind would reflect the calm that a tidy room is supposed to bring. But for the most part I stood with a dull inner chaos.
This is why I avoid tidying. Because when you tidy, it's harder to avoid the dirt. It's harder to avoid the grime in my kitchen. It's harder to avoid the grime in my life. The violent TV dramas I'm addicted to. The trivial internet information I consume all day. And the dullness that all that brings to my brain.
And then beneath all those problems is the problem that created the whole mess in the first place. The despair. A chaotic environment creates despair, which in turn allows chaos to build, which cements despair.
To tidy my home is to put myself face to face with the despair that has haunted me all my life. The same despair that will haunt my son if I don't make significant changes in my life.
In programming there is a practice called divide and conquer. If you can divide a problem down to its smallest components it is easier to solve. Dividing big problems into small ones is a way of overcoming despair. But what about the raw feeling of despair itself? If it permeates life and colours everything, how to deal with that?
And should we? Are feelings "problems" and should they be dealt with as problems?
Interestingly, despair is the main feeling I'm trying to express in the section of the chapter I'm working on in my book. At the end of the second chapter I'm confronted with all the stumbling blocks of becoming a programmer in a world where it's become dominated by young men. And then the stumbling blocks of learning object oriented program. The difficulty of wrapping my mind around lists of lists.
Looking at that arc though, I see that despair is an inevitable feeling on the path to taking on a learning challenge. Without those moments of despair what you're confronted with isn't very challenging or risky. There would be no story, would there? Or it wouldn't be a very interesting story. So in that context, despair can be a healthy signal that growth is happening, not always a sign that I'm taking on more than I can chew.
Let's just make sure that despair is not my home. Just a place I visit from time to time on my journey.
This is why I avoid tidying. Because when you tidy, it's harder to avoid the dirt. It's harder to avoid the grime in my kitchen. It's harder to avoid the grime in my life. The violent TV dramas I'm addicted to. The trivial internet information I consume all day. And the dullness that all that brings to my brain.
And then beneath all those problems is the problem that created the whole mess in the first place. The despair. A chaotic environment creates despair, which in turn allows chaos to build, which cements despair.
To tidy my home is to put myself face to face with the despair that has haunted me all my life. The same despair that will haunt my son if I don't make significant changes in my life.
In programming there is a practice called divide and conquer. If you can divide a problem down to its smallest components it is easier to solve. Dividing big problems into small ones is a way of overcoming despair. But what about the raw feeling of despair itself? If it permeates life and colours everything, how to deal with that?
And should we? Are feelings "problems" and should they be dealt with as problems?
Interestingly, despair is the main feeling I'm trying to express in the section of the chapter I'm working on in my book. At the end of the second chapter I'm confronted with all the stumbling blocks of becoming a programmer in a world where it's become dominated by young men. And then the stumbling blocks of learning object oriented program. The difficulty of wrapping my mind around lists of lists.
Looking at that arc though, I see that despair is an inevitable feeling on the path to taking on a learning challenge. Without those moments of despair what you're confronted with isn't very challenging or risky. There would be no story, would there? Or it wouldn't be a very interesting story. So in that context, despair can be a healthy signal that growth is happening, not always a sign that I'm taking on more than I can chew.
Let's just make sure that despair is not my home. Just a place I visit from time to time on my journey.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Home
I've been keeping to fifty minutes this week and hitting that sweet spot in my brain again. This morning there was a feeling that I recognized when I reach this point that I'm going to start referring to as home.
The home I grew up in was rife with tension, hostility, emotional and mental instability. I've carried that with me wherever I've gone in my life. I've carried that tension in my body, in my dreams, and carried it forward into my relationships. Now I risk passing it on to my son.
That quiet, restful place in my brain that I reach once the magnetic energy starts flowing is the only place I've ever felt relieved of this. It's why I keep coming back to it again and again.
I realized this morning that this is my home. This is my safe place. This has always been my safe place. In Maine, I would reach this safe place while walking on the beach. When I was living on deBullion, I would reach it by walking on the Mountain.
In the last seven years, I've been blessed to reach it here, in this kitchen and by the pond at Jarry. I remember a few years ago, when I got the first notice about having my apartment taken back, I had an insight that it didn't matter because I had a home. This stability is my home.
The home I grew up in was rife with tension, hostility, emotional and mental instability. I've carried that with me wherever I've gone in my life. I've carried that tension in my body, in my dreams, and carried it forward into my relationships. Now I risk passing it on to my son.
That quiet, restful place in my brain that I reach once the magnetic energy starts flowing is the only place I've ever felt relieved of this. It's why I keep coming back to it again and again.
I realized this morning that this is my home. This is my safe place. This has always been my safe place. In Maine, I would reach this safe place while walking on the beach. When I was living on deBullion, I would reach it by walking on the Mountain.
In the last seven years, I've been blessed to reach it here, in this kitchen and by the pond at Jarry. I remember a few years ago, when I got the first notice about having my apartment taken back, I had an insight that it didn't matter because I had a home. This stability is my home.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Stability
This morning I`ve managed to take it to fifty minutes. But there`s a lot of anxiety that needs to be confronted for me to do that. No. "Confronted" is the wrong word. Companioned. I have a different relationship with my emotions these days. Morning practice is a little bit like emotional grooming. I stand quietly and see what`s in there and slowly I let it wash away.
My main insights this morning are about the feeling of stability in practice. Standing provides a stable platform for me to feel what I normally feel, rather than run away to some distraction. On this platform I feel boredom, I feel fear, I feel the effects of a childhood and lifetime of emotional and mental instability. But if I don`t feel those things then I can`t change anything.
And this is something I deeply want to change. I want emotional and mental stability, and I`m willing to accept the boredom that is a side-effect of those things.
I write that sentence and my panicked mind drifts off. Boredom. What a distressing word. In my line of work, it is the worst thing you can be. Boring someone is the worst thing you can do. The worst. What if what I`m writing is boring. I might as well curl up and die.
I know that every time I open my mouth my mother is bored. And all I`ve ever wanted to be in my life is interesting. But what is interesting about my life?
And why exactly does my life need to be interesting. Can't I be interested by life?
A life writer's job is to clean away the dust, and the ordinary detrius of life to reveal what is brilliant and original and precious in every life. Because everybody's life is interesting. No one is an exception to that rule, even me.
But running away from boredom is not the way. Because running away from boredom is like running away from life. Some of the most life giving things are hidden by boredom. To many people a pond is boring. But to the enlightened it is a deep source of energy and vitality. People in the hills escape the excitement of the city and find misery and squalor. People from the city try to escape stress and exhaustion by spending time in the hills.
For the time being I will stay with what I have. This practice. And I risk boredom, hoping it will lead to something interesting.
My main insights this morning are about the feeling of stability in practice. Standing provides a stable platform for me to feel what I normally feel, rather than run away to some distraction. On this platform I feel boredom, I feel fear, I feel the effects of a childhood and lifetime of emotional and mental instability. But if I don`t feel those things then I can`t change anything.
And this is something I deeply want to change. I want emotional and mental stability, and I`m willing to accept the boredom that is a side-effect of those things.
I write that sentence and my panicked mind drifts off. Boredom. What a distressing word. In my line of work, it is the worst thing you can be. Boring someone is the worst thing you can do. The worst. What if what I`m writing is boring. I might as well curl up and die.
I know that every time I open my mouth my mother is bored. And all I`ve ever wanted to be in my life is interesting. But what is interesting about my life?
And why exactly does my life need to be interesting. Can't I be interested by life?
A life writer's job is to clean away the dust, and the ordinary detrius of life to reveal what is brilliant and original and precious in every life. Because everybody's life is interesting. No one is an exception to that rule, even me.
But running away from boredom is not the way. Because running away from boredom is like running away from life. Some of the most life giving things are hidden by boredom. To many people a pond is boring. But to the enlightened it is a deep source of energy and vitality. People in the hills escape the excitement of the city and find misery and squalor. People from the city try to escape stress and exhaustion by spending time in the hills.
For the time being I will stay with what I have. This practice. And I risk boredom, hoping it will lead to something interesting.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
A Walk In The Woods
I`m reading Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods in preparation for the book I'm going to write next year. It's funny, but only about half way through did I realize, at a deep level, that it was about trees. My mind this year has been so on technology that I've forgotten how important the natural processes of the world were to me. But technology works best when we understand what it already wonderful and powerful in the world. It also works best when we realize what is vulnerable
Consider the natural technology of the tree, from Bryson's book:
For all its mass, a tree is a remarkably delicate thing. All of its internal life exists within three paper-thin layers of tissue--the phloem, xylem and cambium--just beneath the bark, which together forma a moist sleeve around the dead heartwood. However tall it grows, a tree is just a few pounds of living cells thinly spread between roots and leaves. These three diligent layers of cells perform all the intricate science and engineering needed to keep a tree alive, and the efficiency with which they do it is one of the wonders of life. Without noise or fuss, every tree in a forest lifts massive volumes of water--several hundred gallons in the case of a large tree on a hot day--from its roots to its leaves, where it is returned to the atmosphere. Imagine the din and commotion, the clutter f machinery, that would be needed for a fire department to raise a similar volume of water.
This has been without contest, the most difficult, uncertain and painful year of my life. I have no doubt that there are many other uncertainties in my future. But this year was just profoundly stressful at my core. It is a really frightening thing to be poor, and I never want to be that bad again, and I would never want that for anybody.
But I survived and I have a year of writing ahead. For the next year I am doing the thing I have always wanted to do, the thing I have always dreamed of doing, writing a book. Writing a book with no pressing responsibilities, other than to write that book.
To do this I need a lucid mind, a strong core, faith in myself and my abilities. Faith in the value of my project.
To build these things, I will stand.
Consider the natural technology of the tree, from Bryson's book:
For all its mass, a tree is a remarkably delicate thing. All of its internal life exists within three paper-thin layers of tissue--the phloem, xylem and cambium--just beneath the bark, which together forma a moist sleeve around the dead heartwood. However tall it grows, a tree is just a few pounds of living cells thinly spread between roots and leaves. These three diligent layers of cells perform all the intricate science and engineering needed to keep a tree alive, and the efficiency with which they do it is one of the wonders of life. Without noise or fuss, every tree in a forest lifts massive volumes of water--several hundred gallons in the case of a large tree on a hot day--from its roots to its leaves, where it is returned to the atmosphere. Imagine the din and commotion, the clutter f machinery, that would be needed for a fire department to raise a similar volume of water.
This has been without contest, the most difficult, uncertain and painful year of my life. I have no doubt that there are many other uncertainties in my future. But this year was just profoundly stressful at my core. It is a really frightening thing to be poor, and I never want to be that bad again, and I would never want that for anybody.
But I survived and I have a year of writing ahead. For the next year I am doing the thing I have always wanted to do, the thing I have always dreamed of doing, writing a book. Writing a book with no pressing responsibilities, other than to write that book.
To do this I need a lucid mind, a strong core, faith in myself and my abilities. Faith in the value of my project.
To build these things, I will stand.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Nervous Breakthrough
This has been, as far as I can remember, the most stressful year of my life. So much fell apart. The newspaper where I had a column for twenty years folded. With it about fifteen years of archives of my work.
I faced more professional rejection than I`ve ever had to face as a I tried to make the transition to long form journalism and sell a book proposal. In part to make ends meet, I took a deal to move out of my apartment at the end of my lease. But with no income coming in, I worried how I would find a landlord willing to rent to me.
With so much anxiety and stress blowing around in my mind, it was hard to meditate. I could feel my physical and mental health ebbing away as the stress proliferated.
But I made it through. A few days ago I got news that I'd received a grant. Enough money that I can spend the next year working on a book project. Enough money that for the next while, I can breathe.
During a period of deep crisis a few week back I reached out for consolation from my brother. A deeply sensitive person and a gifted actor, he has struggled all his life with low self esteem and obsessive compulsive disorder. It seemed to me in the last few months he's been able to pull himself out of a terrible rut and get his confidence back. I've always tried to be there for him, but this time I really needed his help. He turned me on to the work of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
I'm sure I'll be writing more about him in future blogs, but one of the he tells a story in the opening chapters of his book The Joy of Living about the anxiety and panic attacks he struggled with as a child. It must have been a stressful childhood, given that he's an incarnate, declared the reincarnation of a seventeenth century rinpoche. That's a lot of pressure for a kid. But towards the end of his teenage years, as he struggled with this chronic anxiety, he had a realization. This anxiety wasn't a deeply entrenched fact of his brain. It was more of a heightened awareness of the anxiety that most people live with. Many people have nervous breakdowns. As he worked through it, he began to think of it has his nervous breakthrough.
This has been a year of nervous breakthrough. I have questioned my path as a writer, over and over again. But I didn't fall apart. I kept writing. I kept standing even if I could stand it for more than twenty minutes. I know I watched too much television, but I made it through. And now I approach my fiftyeth year with more confidence and peace and money than I had last year at this time.
My one goal for next year is to write a book. To support that goal I plan to do a lot of standing, and do a lot of rebuilding of my sense of peace and equanimity.
Or let me tweak that. Do much rebuilding of my awareness of peace an tranquility. Because it has always been there for me. It is always there for me, and it will always be there for me.
I faced more professional rejection than I`ve ever had to face as a I tried to make the transition to long form journalism and sell a book proposal. In part to make ends meet, I took a deal to move out of my apartment at the end of my lease. But with no income coming in, I worried how I would find a landlord willing to rent to me.
With so much anxiety and stress blowing around in my mind, it was hard to meditate. I could feel my physical and mental health ebbing away as the stress proliferated.
But I made it through. A few days ago I got news that I'd received a grant. Enough money that I can spend the next year working on a book project. Enough money that for the next while, I can breathe.
During a period of deep crisis a few week back I reached out for consolation from my brother. A deeply sensitive person and a gifted actor, he has struggled all his life with low self esteem and obsessive compulsive disorder. It seemed to me in the last few months he's been able to pull himself out of a terrible rut and get his confidence back. I've always tried to be there for him, but this time I really needed his help. He turned me on to the work of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
I'm sure I'll be writing more about him in future blogs, but one of the he tells a story in the opening chapters of his book The Joy of Living about the anxiety and panic attacks he struggled with as a child. It must have been a stressful childhood, given that he's an incarnate, declared the reincarnation of a seventeenth century rinpoche. That's a lot of pressure for a kid. But towards the end of his teenage years, as he struggled with this chronic anxiety, he had a realization. This anxiety wasn't a deeply entrenched fact of his brain. It was more of a heightened awareness of the anxiety that most people live with. Many people have nervous breakdowns. As he worked through it, he began to think of it has his nervous breakthrough.
This has been a year of nervous breakthrough. I have questioned my path as a writer, over and over again. But I didn't fall apart. I kept writing. I kept standing even if I could stand it for more than twenty minutes. I know I watched too much television, but I made it through. And now I approach my fiftyeth year with more confidence and peace and money than I had last year at this time.
My one goal for next year is to write a book. To support that goal I plan to do a lot of standing, and do a lot of rebuilding of my sense of peace and equanimity.
Or let me tweak that. Do much rebuilding of my awareness of peace an tranquility. Because it has always been there for me. It is always there for me, and it will always be there for me.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Standing or Writing
For the last many years now, I've struggling with a choice between two loves. Standing and writing. If I could only do one upon waking. If I should only do one upon waking, which should it be. And also, why do I think it's a choice. A do or die choice?
It's like my life has always been set up as a double bind choice. Which parent do I choose mother or father. Which path do I choose artistic, or economically satisfying. I've believed all my life I had to choose, but I did I?
In the end, I never really had to choose between my parents.
Do I have to choose between standing and writing? Can they be different forms of meditation that I use depending on what I'm cultivating at the moment. The core loop is meditation. Or rather the core loop is awareness, whether I achieve it through writing or standing isn't as important as keeping to the core loop.
All the rest is background.
It's like my life has always been set up as a double bind choice. Which parent do I choose mother or father. Which path do I choose artistic, or economically satisfying. I've believed all my life I had to choose, but I did I?
In the end, I never really had to choose between my parents.
Do I have to choose between standing and writing? Can they be different forms of meditation that I use depending on what I'm cultivating at the moment. The core loop is meditation. Or rather the core loop is awareness, whether I achieve it through writing or standing isn't as important as keeping to the core loop.
All the rest is background.
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