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.

Hunger

Today I'm very conscious of the hunger that lies beneath the hunger.  The excitement of having this clean energy is winding down, and now I have to deal with the emotional hunger that drives my overconsumption of food, information and entertainment.

Sitting with that raw emotional hunger is very difficult. I can do it, but I don't want to. It feels so insoluble. How do I cultivate the will to do this regularly?

I have to engender a deep, core motivation to feed it with what it really needs, this pure life force that is always available to it, than can never be overindulged.  I need to see and feel and experience this hunger dissolving into equanimity.  And I need to make that second nature.

Information Cleanse

My overconsumption of food goes hand in hand with my overconsumption of information. I eat while I read about the world. And this overload makes me lethargic and dull.

So this week I'm going to pay attention to this. What are the effects of too much screen time on my mind? Now that I have my food choices more under control.

My meditation time gives me a barometer of how sharp and vital my mind is. If I've overeaten, or over indulged in screen time, I know it in how distracted my mind feels when I wake up.

Meditation also gives me an alternative to screen time. It feeds the hunger that I think I'm going to solve with overconsumption.

The Way

Yesterday I re-read part of one of my favourite essays, Jonathan Franzen's Why Bother?  It's something of a manifesto about the writer's responsibility to protect the literary tradition of tragic realism.  It is not the writer's responsibility to weigh in on whether or not the world is doomed, simply to remind people that death, loss, poverty, destruction aren't going anywhere soon. We still have a lot of work to do.

So the writer spends a fair amount of time contemplating change.  Contemplating the difference between natural suffering and self-created suffering.  The writer spends most of her time in the first of the noble truths: there is suffering.

There's this other place, however, that is a little harder for the writer to stay in.  The belief that there is a way out of suffering. Maybe this  is where comic realism comes in.  Comic realism kicks us in the butt in a different way. It looks at our tragic lives and sees where we get stuck and helps us laugh at our vulnerabilities.

Last night I had a stroke of good fortune.  Aziz Ansari decided the Just For Laughs comedy festival would be a good place to try out some new material.  So he flew up from New York, and tweeted that in an hour he'd be at a children's theatre not too far from where I live.  I found out about this on FB, from a guy who I've had a bit of a thorny relationship with lately. I wanted to see the show, but I wasn't sure if it would be comfortable seeing it with him.

I risked it and it was great.  I saw a master comic from the middle of the third row. He was practically talking to me. It's interesting to see a comic in the draft stage of a routine. To see those moments of discomfort before he's got it seamless enough to charge $100 at Madison Square Garden.  To realize how much work goes into a good comedy routine. How it literally left him short at breath at one point because he wasn't in good enough shape for the physical comedy.

I need a lot of energy to do and be all the things I want to do and be. I can't muck around anymore getting stuck in these bad cycles. I need to learn how to manage my energy, so that I can turn it into the power that the world needs from me.

This next week coming up.  I set out on the way of accumulating that power.

Nectar of The Path

I'm now into my second week of this cleanse.

The plan this week is to start replacing my compulsions--food, and emotional--with Ngondro purification rituals.

Yes, this means chanting.

I am very, very self conscious about adopting spiritual rituals of any kind. Last night I was convinced that the Ngondro audio tape I was listening to was disturbing the neighbours, and of course if I chant they will hear me. Or will they? I'm not that loud.

But I imagine that they will than then what? They will think I'm a Buddhist. That's a very vulnerable feeling, because having a religion of any kind leaves you open for persecution.  It doesn't make me feel safe. The whole point of Ngondro practice is to find refuge.

And yet, the starting point of refuge is that feeling of vulnerability. Without acknowledging our vulnerability, there is no motivation to seek refuge.

Paradoxically, it's this vulnerability that prompts us to seek refuge, and the refuge that keeps us safe and, thus, less vulnerable.

So, perhaps the key is to take refuge in this feeling of vulnerability.  It keeps us open, it means we are learning, It keeps the compassion flowing. It keeps us strong. It is courage. And it takes courage to set out on this path.

But it's the way

From Anger to Anxiety

Cleanse day 7.

Physically I'm feeling much better. Lighter, cleaner, less compulsive.  Hungry, but in a good way. Emotionally things are a little shakier. Yesterday I was in a combative mood.  Today I'm feeling that layer of anxiety beneath the anger.

I feel it in my gut. Or do I. When I try to locate the anxiety in my gut, I actually encounter this kind of numb void. Like there's a black hole and the anxiety I experience manifests like shooting stars through my body. That metallic taste of terror in my mouth.

By the time I've actually found the anxiety deep in my belly, my energy has already started aligning itself though my heart, my breath is already starting to flow in to relieve.

Is this how anxiety is my friend?  That if I were really to find and listen and understand my anxiety as simply awareness. As awareness it ultimately leads me to the exact spot where pure awareness is rooted.

What if the very thing I don't want to feel and be with is really the straightest path to liberation?

Emotional Detox

Something I don't think I was conscious of the last time I did a cleanse. That once the physical side-effects have subsided, there's a new level: emotional side-effects.

Looking over my last journal, I see that as soon as I lived through the physical aches, I found myself confronted with the other addictions, but I'm not sure that I saw what the trigger for those addictions were. Anger, anxiety, remorse, all the things that rise up when I'm not using food to numb them.  If I'm not using food, television, computers, I'm going to have to sit with those feelings and feel them.  I'm going to have to live life. My own life.

So, what's the plan?

This time around it's this Ngondro practice.  I'm going to sit with these emotions, and all the the power that I have from my Tergar community.  And I'm going to feel and release those emotions for my benefit, and for the benefit of everyone my life touches.

But it's not going to be easy.  Because I have a lot of anger and combative energy to sit with. There's an awful lot to clean out.

I will try to remember that there is also a lot of power in this practice.  I have allies in this project.

Precious Life

Day 5 of this cleanse.  Some back pain last night, but I feel like I'm on the other side of the hump.  Feeling a strong appetite for fruits and vegetables.  Feeling a pervasive energy.  All the signs of renewed vitality.

So how do I make this last?  Or is that the right question?

My liver, my kidneys, my skin, these organs that manage all the toxins are such remarkable feats of engineering.  They will continue to clean me up, regardless of what I put in there. But I don't get to take advantage of their power when I'm overloading them with junk.  So the better question to ask is, how do I maintain my awareness of this energy that is always available to me so that I don't muck it up again?

Smile into the liver.  I read advice in Elizabeth Gilbert's book.

Today I take that to mean, take pride in this wonderful life. Take pride in the Buddha nature that is available to us all. Feel how precious this life and this energy is and treat it like the jewel that it is.

Gratitude is one of the most powerful forces there is in the psyche because it multiplies whatever you apply it to. This morning I feel really grateful for this energy and this body and this life.  I have taken steps to wipe the mud off this treasure, and I hope I have the will to keep it clean.

Pervasive Suffering

Day 3 of the cleanse and I'm feeling better. Two hot baths, about three hours of meditation, lots of water. And four Tylenol's to get me through this hump. And I think I'm pretty much through.  Bit of back pain this morning, and a tiny cold.  But I think this time around is a slight improvement on the last.

Now that the worst of the sludge is cleared out, it's time to start digging a little deeper.  It's time to start facing that pervasive, low grade suffering that I don't want to face and prefer to numb with food, Netflix, all the things that are available to us that allow this to build up.

There is, apparently, no scientific support for the theory that a dietary cleanse clears out "toxins."  But my body is telling a different story, that when I cut out addictive things, sugar, caffeine, animal products, gluten, there's a strong reaction. And my past experience tells me that after a while, I start to feel less compulsive in my eating. I feel a purer, cleaner energy supporting me and my wisest decisions.

I know that eating well is important to growth. But I haven't been living that knowledge for too long. Let this be a path that I return to regularly to find myself rooted in my best qualities.

Famous Last Words

What I said yesterday about getting through the first days of the cleanse better than last time.  Strike that. Last night I was hit with the full catastrophe of whatever it is I'm putting in my body that's not good.  I'm not really a sugar addict, so it must be caffeine and gluten. But something has been building up a lot of stuff and I felt it deeply in my joints. This morning I feel it in my stomach.

The strategy today. Drink as much water as I possibly can. Tai Chi, stretching anything to get the joints to loosen up.  Eat a lot of greens.

And be gentle with myself. Really be with this suffering. It may not feel like an opportunity to deepen my awareness and compassion, but it is.

Cleanse

It's been over two years since I've done a dietary cleanse. But already on day two, I notice how differently my body is responding to this detox than last time. My meditation practice is stronger and I'm running longer, so I'm feeling the positive effects much sooner and stronger.

I'm still feeling the muscle tension from giving up caffeine, and a bit of bile from whatever junk is down there being cleaned out.  But I'm also feeling, and tasting that particular pure energy that arises from a cleaner gut.

I am in such denial though, still, about the effect of crappy food on my life, on my mood, on my creativity and energy.  I wonder what I can do to make this insight more stable and permanent.

I need to reframe it, I think, as not a giving up of pleasures, but a gaining of deeper, purer more permanent joy. The sublime bliss that the Tibetan Buddhists talk about.

If I focus on the abundant energy that arises during a cleanse, that energy in turn will keep me on the path.

I also need to make a commitment to cleanses, the way I now make a commitment to retreat. At least three times a year.

I will not let another almost three years pass before I do this again.

Confusion

This week I continue to explore the path of refuge.  As I try to create a refuge that is healthy and sustainable, I become conscious of the habitual refuges that are not healthy and sustainable.

There are the obvious one: television and food.  But one thing I don't consider is how emotional states are used as refuge. Anger, irritation, petty bickering are a refuge for me.  Anger brings a sort of clarity, however illusory.  But confusion is a refuge as well.

Feeling confused and helpless is a refuge from taking action because if I don't know what to do I can't act. And then I avoid all the risks that come with acting. That I might fail, that my actions lead to a worse situation. But inaction is a refuge.

To have clarity in my life, I have to act. And I have to act in consistent ways. Routines, meditation, cleaning, shopping, preparing and eating healthy foods.  These bring clarity. Writing brings clarity. If I really want clarity I need to surrender to these.

Does this mean, I never have uncertainty?  No I don't think so, but I can't make it a refuge. I can't make it a comfortable place that supports inaction.  I have to feel that uncertainty and chaos deeply and learn its lessons and then move on.

Clarity

This morning I started my practice feeling confused, hungover, angry after a very painful and infuriating conversation with my mother last night.

There was little I could bring myself to do but sit in this pole of energy.  I had no will left, really.

Yet by the end of this meditation that passed quickly, almost effortlessly, there was a pervasive state of clarity in my body, in the room around my body.  Just clear, empty, lucid peace.

I saw that my mother just wants to be happy, and I saw how sad her confusion really was.  And I saw how fortunate I am to have this energy in my life.  This awareness of awareness.

This awareness that awareness is always aware of awareness. Like breathing.

As I focus on that, I kind of feel that pineal gland, or whatever it is that allows us to feel this pervasive, pure awareness.

I am running more.  My home is clean.  I am conscious of my desire for happiness, and for the effort that brings about happiness.

I feel closer to that place of liberation.  I feel solid in this place of refuge.