I'm in Maine this week, at a cottage my parents have rented. The place is so idyllic it's almost a cliche. Outside my bedroom is a pond with lily pads under old arching trees. In the distance on the other side of a very thin peninsula is the ocean.
This morning I meditated at sunrise. You'd think it would be easy to achieve that blissful connection in such a setting. But what I find the more beautiful and perfect the setting, the more I feel that stress inducing urge to grasp at it. To start thinking, how can a now, knowing such a beautiful place, be happy in my old place of meditation with its morning traffic and beeping street light for the visually impaired.
The first trick is to get to the twenty minute mark, the point at which the silt of our normal stress begins to settle. I know I've reached it when I have that familiar restlessness, and boredom, an almost psychic itching that makes me want to leap up and out of this pose.
Then I do what Shinzen Young calls recycling the emotion. Take the restlessness, be with it and wait for it to pass. It's basically a recursive function applied to emotion.
Eventually I reached the insight that there is no point grasping to keep this place. The best way I could use it to deepen my meditation, was to rest my awareness with the same lightness as I would on any other day, in any other normal place.
Once I did that, the whole space opened up.
I am here this week to realize that I do have power in dealing with the emotional complications of my family. Part of that power is realizing where I am powerless, and where I should probably remain powerless. I cannot stop my parents from fighting. I cannot make them more loving with each other. They don't want my mediation. I only have the power to decide whether or not I want to trigger a fight, or step away from a fight that I have become involved in. I do not want to start any fights. I do not want to continue any fights this week. Nothing,absolutely nothing, is worth fighting over in the beautiful place. So if my mother acts irrationally, or unfairly, I don't have to protect myself. I don't have to play the vulnerability card. I'm simply not as vulnerable as all that. I am more than this little node of selfness that lives in my brain. I am also everything that I'm connected to.
I will step away from all fights this week. I will not be drawn into them. I will not add to them. I will not involve myself in the fights of others.
The decision has been made.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Joyful Wisdom
This month I'm practicing specifically with feelings.
I start a formal practice in open awareness then I shift into being aware of whatever feeling comes up. I try and notice the story lines and the images. If a feeling is really overwhelming I see if I can drop some of these story lines, images, and thoughts associated with it, so that I can be, in compassionate abiding, with the root feeling. No matter how difficult, eventually it passes.
But it's hard. Very hard for me, because I grew up in such an emotionally complicated family, so I become very easily lost in my feelings and memories. One thing I've been trying is from an old book I've had around for a long time, The Power of Mind. I try to remember the first time I ever had that feeling. I find this really helpful in locating the emotion in the body. It doesn't necessarily lead me to some cathartic feeling where I let go of that feeling forever. But it gives me some space to see the feeling more objectively, and to see the feeling as an object that I am creating, and diminishing.
Yesterday, I felt like I had some kind of flu. It was vague, I kind of knew the feeling before from doing a food detox. I was feeling heightened irritation, impatience depression, and a heightened sense of the resistance I feel to these uncomfortable feelings. At times I felt just the resistance, which I guess I could describe as the kind of icky feeling I've sometimes experienced when doing mushrooms, or any kind of psychedelic. It's a feeling of poison entering, or sometimes exiting your body.
It's an uncomfortable feeling, but I've come to greet it with anticipation because I know that it usually means I'm on the cusp of letting go of some suffering, and experiencing some kind of deeper more sustaining joy.
Today when I did my meditation, for the first time in a while, I felt that deep joy. I guess I'm going to call it joyful wisdom. It's the feeling I have when I have connected with a universal energy, but now that there is more than just this moment of connection. I feel the pleasure and the awe and the gratitude. But I also feel the decision I have made to experience this feeling regularly and often throughout my life. At some point I made a decision to cultivate this practice. At some point I made a decision to deepen this practice. I did it. And now there is no going back. It is the joyful reward I feel at the commitment I made and kept and will always keep.
All that remains is to build and work the technology that increases this joyful wisdom for myself and brings this lasting happiness to others. This "technology" is lovingkindness and the wish to continue cultivating this feeling for myself, for my loved ones, for my neighbors, and even for my enemies. For all. The more I wish this, the greater my JW grows.
It has just hit me that these are my initials.
And that's the thing. We think that we are just our crappy, imprisoning feelings. We base our selves and our sense of self on those feelings and on the repression and eradication of those negative feelings. But we aren't those feelings. We are actually this infinite, huge, always available, fundamentally joyful wisdom. That is what we really are. Not the prison part.
Recognizing this should be easy. But we're used to the prison. It's our home. We're very attached to it. Sometimes the only way we get out of it is when something burns it down. But that's probably not the best way. The best way is to make the decision to leave, and then slowly and surely we move more and more stuff out into the better world.
Into the light. Which is our real home.
I start a formal practice in open awareness then I shift into being aware of whatever feeling comes up. I try and notice the story lines and the images. If a feeling is really overwhelming I see if I can drop some of these story lines, images, and thoughts associated with it, so that I can be, in compassionate abiding, with the root feeling. No matter how difficult, eventually it passes.
But it's hard. Very hard for me, because I grew up in such an emotionally complicated family, so I become very easily lost in my feelings and memories. One thing I've been trying is from an old book I've had around for a long time, The Power of Mind. I try to remember the first time I ever had that feeling. I find this really helpful in locating the emotion in the body. It doesn't necessarily lead me to some cathartic feeling where I let go of that feeling forever. But it gives me some space to see the feeling more objectively, and to see the feeling as an object that I am creating, and diminishing.
Yesterday, I felt like I had some kind of flu. It was vague, I kind of knew the feeling before from doing a food detox. I was feeling heightened irritation, impatience depression, and a heightened sense of the resistance I feel to these uncomfortable feelings. At times I felt just the resistance, which I guess I could describe as the kind of icky feeling I've sometimes experienced when doing mushrooms, or any kind of psychedelic. It's a feeling of poison entering, or sometimes exiting your body.
It's an uncomfortable feeling, but I've come to greet it with anticipation because I know that it usually means I'm on the cusp of letting go of some suffering, and experiencing some kind of deeper more sustaining joy.
Today when I did my meditation, for the first time in a while, I felt that deep joy. I guess I'm going to call it joyful wisdom. It's the feeling I have when I have connected with a universal energy, but now that there is more than just this moment of connection. I feel the pleasure and the awe and the gratitude. But I also feel the decision I have made to experience this feeling regularly and often throughout my life. At some point I made a decision to cultivate this practice. At some point I made a decision to deepen this practice. I did it. And now there is no going back. It is the joyful reward I feel at the commitment I made and kept and will always keep.
All that remains is to build and work the technology that increases this joyful wisdom for myself and brings this lasting happiness to others. This "technology" is lovingkindness and the wish to continue cultivating this feeling for myself, for my loved ones, for my neighbors, and even for my enemies. For all. The more I wish this, the greater my JW grows.
It has just hit me that these are my initials.
And that's the thing. We think that we are just our crappy, imprisoning feelings. We base our selves and our sense of self on those feelings and on the repression and eradication of those negative feelings. But we aren't those feelings. We are actually this infinite, huge, always available, fundamentally joyful wisdom. That is what we really are. Not the prison part.
Recognizing this should be easy. But we're used to the prison. It's our home. We're very attached to it. Sometimes the only way we get out of it is when something burns it down. But that's probably not the best way. The best way is to make the decision to leave, and then slowly and surely we move more and more stuff out into the better world.
Into the light. Which is our real home.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Alternating
This month I'm working on my feelings as objects of meditation. In this practice the idea is to alternate from the intensity of a feeling to the release of open awareness. Almost like a toggle. As I practice this, eventually the feeling begins to diminish on its own.
One of the things I have a tendency to forget when I'm doing this is to alternate. I'm good at staying with the feeling. I stay with it until the feeling passes on its own accord, or something distracts me.
This is okay with small feelings. But bigger feelings--angers, anxieties in times of crisis, deep sadnesses I've been avoiding--still seem to have a lot of power over me, and it's easy to end up back on the ratwheel of bad habit that I've developed to deal with them.
So this month I want to work on divide and conquer. When I'm feeling the big emotions this month (and life is really good at presenting you with big situations for this practice, which I won't go into now) I'm going to do formal practice. Open awareness. Feeling. Open awareness. Diminished feeling. Open Awareness. Whisp of a feeling.
And then move on to some constructive action or work that is improving my world and the world around me.
One of the things I have a tendency to forget when I'm doing this is to alternate. I'm good at staying with the feeling. I stay with it until the feeling passes on its own accord, or something distracts me.
This is okay with small feelings. But bigger feelings--angers, anxieties in times of crisis, deep sadnesses I've been avoiding--still seem to have a lot of power over me, and it's easy to end up back on the ratwheel of bad habit that I've developed to deal with them.
So this month I want to work on divide and conquer. When I'm feeling the big emotions this month (and life is really good at presenting you with big situations for this practice, which I won't go into now) I'm going to do formal practice. Open awareness. Feeling. Open awareness. Diminished feeling. Open Awareness. Whisp of a feeling.
And then move on to some constructive action or work that is improving my world and the world around me.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Enjoyment
In Eckhart Tolle's vision of a New Earth, enjoyment replaces wanting as the driving force. I want to be a part of that new world, so I'm trying these days to focus on what I enjoy, and to allow that to be the thing that organizes my decisions.
I enjoy the same things most people do, interesting experiences, conversations, travel, delicious food. But if I had to answer the question what I enjoy more than anything, it really is the feeling I get when I'm meditating. Feeling that vitality in my gut, the warmth at the back of my neck and down my spine, that gravitational beam when I assume a natural posture that connects me with the universal force. Without that, all that I enjoy is merely craving and escape.
If I'm going to move forward in life, I have to give myself permission to enjoy this state of being as often and as fully as I want.
The crazy thing is that I often don't want it. I often don't want to do this thing that I truly enjoy.
Maybe that's because I'm still in the state of wanting. I keep thinking about all the things I don't have and want. To be a successful writer able to make a comfortable income. To be an influential teacher, able to inspire people towards a better way of living. To be a better parent, able to raise a son who will want to contribute something to the world.
I won't be able to do any of that if I can't enjoy life. If I can't enjoy the feeling of being alive.
To be motivated by enjoyment rather than want is a decision. It's not a hedonistic decision, because I'm not being motivated by pleasure. I'm being motivated by the joy that arises from being at peace in the world. And there's a lot of pain to be faced and worked through to get to that enjoyment.
But I'm going to do it. The decision has been made.
I enjoy the same things most people do, interesting experiences, conversations, travel, delicious food. But if I had to answer the question what I enjoy more than anything, it really is the feeling I get when I'm meditating. Feeling that vitality in my gut, the warmth at the back of my neck and down my spine, that gravitational beam when I assume a natural posture that connects me with the universal force. Without that, all that I enjoy is merely craving and escape.
If I'm going to move forward in life, I have to give myself permission to enjoy this state of being as often and as fully as I want.
The crazy thing is that I often don't want it. I often don't want to do this thing that I truly enjoy.
Maybe that's because I'm still in the state of wanting. I keep thinking about all the things I don't have and want. To be a successful writer able to make a comfortable income. To be an influential teacher, able to inspire people towards a better way of living. To be a better parent, able to raise a son who will want to contribute something to the world.
I won't be able to do any of that if I can't enjoy life. If I can't enjoy the feeling of being alive.
To be motivated by enjoyment rather than want is a decision. It's not a hedonistic decision, because I'm not being motivated by pleasure. I'm being motivated by the joy that arises from being at peace in the world. And there's a lot of pain to be faced and worked through to get to that enjoyment.
But I'm going to do it. The decision has been made.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Leaning in, Sinking down
Last night I had one of the best stands I've had in a long time. I'd just finished the first day of a two day conference (Montreal WordCamp) and I was feeling that emptiness I sometimes feel when I've been around a group of people. Maybe I'm an introvert who feels drained around other humans. I don't know. Though I want human company, I often feel this profound feeling of depletion and despair afterwards.
Too often in the past I've dealt with this problem with distraction. I come home feeling empty. Then I fill the emptiness with food and television,which just makes the emptiness worse. And then I go into these social situations, that I want, from a feeling of vulnerability.
Last night was different. I've been working with thoughts and feelings in my meditation practice, and last night I decided to divide and conquer. I did some standing with my loneliness (made a little sharper by the fact that my son left for two weeks with his father.) I alternated this with a feeling of open awareness. I did some standing and sitting with smaller feelings, my aversion to cleaning the kitchen that I left a mess this morning, my frustration that my son had pulled out all the cable, internet connectors in an attempt to take his Playstation, etc.
I stayed with this feelings and felt the thinking feeling in my forehead, as I do more and more. Later in the evening I found the motivation to really stand for well over an hour.
I felt the warmth of this universal energy that is always available to me. I felt a voice telling me that I didn't need to choose this energy anymore. The choice had been made. I am this energy and I have chosen myself. The feedback loop is now a core part of me. No decision. It's just maintenance.
As I stood, the warmth began to sink and grow. But towards the end of the stand I began to notice different kind of energy. There was, not so much a numbness in my forehead, but an energy close to a neutral sense of being. Not the usual tension I feel there. Or the sense of relief when i've stopped living in that part of my brain. Just an energy, a presence.
Later I wondered if maybe this was what it felt when thought was in the service of awareness/attention, and not the other way around.
This morning as I was standing, I found myself getting distracted and pulled into the stream of thought. I reminded myself, as I've been doing the last week or so, to lean into this energy and then alternate it with open awareness. But this time it occurred to me to lean in and then do what I'd always been doing in Tai Chi, sink down. Or rather position myself to allow the energy to sink of its own accord.
Lean in, sink down. I realized that this could be a very effective mantra for bringing my attention back to deeper core awareness.
When I sink, or position for sinking, I start to feel all the deeper parts of my brain, all the other lobes below and beyond this frontal cortex. I know my brain is getting deeper and stronger. And I know I'm becoming deeper and stronger as a result of this practice.
As I continue this, I will feel this strong desire to bring this connection to other people.
And then, as the end of a day or a conference, I'll feel less and less drained. More and more energized.
The loop, once blocked, is now open.
Too often in the past I've dealt with this problem with distraction. I come home feeling empty. Then I fill the emptiness with food and television,which just makes the emptiness worse. And then I go into these social situations, that I want, from a feeling of vulnerability.
Last night was different. I've been working with thoughts and feelings in my meditation practice, and last night I decided to divide and conquer. I did some standing with my loneliness (made a little sharper by the fact that my son left for two weeks with his father.) I alternated this with a feeling of open awareness. I did some standing and sitting with smaller feelings, my aversion to cleaning the kitchen that I left a mess this morning, my frustration that my son had pulled out all the cable, internet connectors in an attempt to take his Playstation, etc.
I stayed with this feelings and felt the thinking feeling in my forehead, as I do more and more. Later in the evening I found the motivation to really stand for well over an hour.
I felt the warmth of this universal energy that is always available to me. I felt a voice telling me that I didn't need to choose this energy anymore. The choice had been made. I am this energy and I have chosen myself. The feedback loop is now a core part of me. No decision. It's just maintenance.
As I stood, the warmth began to sink and grow. But towards the end of the stand I began to notice different kind of energy. There was, not so much a numbness in my forehead, but an energy close to a neutral sense of being. Not the usual tension I feel there. Or the sense of relief when i've stopped living in that part of my brain. Just an energy, a presence.
Later I wondered if maybe this was what it felt when thought was in the service of awareness/attention, and not the other way around.
This morning as I was standing, I found myself getting distracted and pulled into the stream of thought. I reminded myself, as I've been doing the last week or so, to lean into this energy and then alternate it with open awareness. But this time it occurred to me to lean in and then do what I'd always been doing in Tai Chi, sink down. Or rather position myself to allow the energy to sink of its own accord.
Lean in, sink down. I realized that this could be a very effective mantra for bringing my attention back to deeper core awareness.
When I sink, or position for sinking, I start to feel all the deeper parts of my brain, all the other lobes below and beyond this frontal cortex. I know my brain is getting deeper and stronger. And I know I'm becoming deeper and stronger as a result of this practice.
As I continue this, I will feel this strong desire to bring this connection to other people.
And then, as the end of a day or a conference, I'll feel less and less drained. More and more energized.
The loop, once blocked, is now open.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Scattered Mind Insight
Earlier this week, I watched a talk given by Shinzen Young at Google. He said something that hit me as a writer. Insight when you have a scattered mind tends to be superficial, personal, and psychological. With a focused mind insight has more depth and spiritual weight.
I've never really considered how important the quality of the mind is to get insight to stay. That sounds crazy now, because it's so obvious. But I've tended to think of meditation as something I do for me, not something I do to make my insight more transmittable to the world.
Of course, because my mind is so scattered, I haven't been able to focus on the problem of focus, so it's a kind of a recursive problem.
Add to this the problem that I grew up in a family of scatter brains and suddenly I feel like I'm in "mid-mountain" with this meditation project.
Mid-mountain is a term I learned yesterday reading Malcom Gladwell. It refers to a famous transportation project in nineteenth century Massachusetts that ended up in massive cost overrun because they thought that it would be a lot easier to blast through a mountain than it was. they known how much it was going to cost, they never would have gone ahead. But had they not gone ahead, Massachusetts would not have been able to ship its goods so easily to the expanding West, and would never have become as wealthy as it it.
If I'd known how long it would take to get my mind in shape, I'm not sure I would have started this meditation project. If I'd known what I was eventually going to realize about myself, how truly out of control my mind really is, I wouldn't have had the courage.
But I'm here now with this meditation practice that I've been cultivating for years. And I know there is a lot of insight there ready to be shipped out.
One day I will look back and know that the cost was worth it.
I've never really considered how important the quality of the mind is to get insight to stay. That sounds crazy now, because it's so obvious. But I've tended to think of meditation as something I do for me, not something I do to make my insight more transmittable to the world.
Of course, because my mind is so scattered, I haven't been able to focus on the problem of focus, so it's a kind of a recursive problem.
Add to this the problem that I grew up in a family of scatter brains and suddenly I feel like I'm in "mid-mountain" with this meditation project.
Mid-mountain is a term I learned yesterday reading Malcom Gladwell. It refers to a famous transportation project in nineteenth century Massachusetts that ended up in massive cost overrun because they thought that it would be a lot easier to blast through a mountain than it was. they known how much it was going to cost, they never would have gone ahead. But had they not gone ahead, Massachusetts would not have been able to ship its goods so easily to the expanding West, and would never have become as wealthy as it it.
If I'd known how long it would take to get my mind in shape, I'm not sure I would have started this meditation project. If I'd known what I was eventually going to realize about myself, how truly out of control my mind really is, I wouldn't have had the courage.
But I'm here now with this meditation practice that I've been cultivating for years. And I know there is a lot of insight there ready to be shipped out.
One day I will look back and know that the cost was worth it.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Thought
This month in the Joy of Living program I'm working with thoughts. I'm glad I've taken the previous two months to work on sound and objects, because at their most basic level thoughts really are sound and objects internalized.
Not that I seem to be able to remember this in meditation. I'm constantly drawn into the content of my thoughts. And the content of my thoughts are usually problems.
Thought is a technology. We developed it to solve problems, to create shared memory. Eventually we became ennamoured with the beauty of thought made manifest, and that became art. Thought is mostly about problem solving and if we let it run on its own without slowing it down, checking it, letting it rest, we are in constant problem solving mode. We'll find problems where they don't even really exists.
Meditation slows this down so that we can shift our brain outside of problem solving mode for a while. So that we can just be. So that we can fulfill our purpose. We're not actually here to solve problems. We're here to witness and feel and experience this beautiful world, and to love each other and make life an experience full of awe and wonder.
So, for the next few weeks I want to be like the father of information theory, and seminal cryptologist, Claude Shannon, and act as though the meaning of the content is irrelevant. I'm going to listen to the sound of my thoughts, I'm going to watch the images, and feel the sensations. Just follow along.
Not that I seem to be able to remember this in meditation. I'm constantly drawn into the content of my thoughts. And the content of my thoughts are usually problems.
Thought is a technology. We developed it to solve problems, to create shared memory. Eventually we became ennamoured with the beauty of thought made manifest, and that became art. Thought is mostly about problem solving and if we let it run on its own without slowing it down, checking it, letting it rest, we are in constant problem solving mode. We'll find problems where they don't even really exists.
Meditation slows this down so that we can shift our brain outside of problem solving mode for a while. So that we can just be. So that we can fulfill our purpose. We're not actually here to solve problems. We're here to witness and feel and experience this beautiful world, and to love each other and make life an experience full of awe and wonder.
So, for the next few weeks I want to be like the father of information theory, and seminal cryptologist, Claude Shannon, and act as though the meaning of the content is irrelevant. I'm going to listen to the sound of my thoughts, I'm going to watch the images, and feel the sensations. Just follow along.
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