This morning in meditation I truly lost my sense of time. I couldn't tell if the chime that signals I'm five minutes from the end of my meditation was the chime that signals that I'm 35 minutes from the end of meditation. I suspected meditation was almost over, but it flew by so fast I really couldn't tell.
So I rested in this place of not knowing. I'm going to have to get used to that place because the direct approach that I'm now on means giving up the fixations I'm used to. Fixations on my sense of threat. Fixations on this "self" I want to improve. Fixations on this sense of not having enough, being enough, doing enough. These are my guideposts to the place that I know, which is a place of struggle and suffering.
I don't know this new place, even though my true, absolute self is home. In the end that's just a concept too. I can't imagine ever forgetting what I've learned in the last few weeks, that this place of affect is my escape from the painful patterns that have become my conditioned life. But I know I can, so I write this down.
Yesterday I understood from Stephan Bodian's book that I have these fixated themes in my life. Well actually one fixated theme. That I'm under attack. I don't like criticism. I particularly don't like being criticized for giving criticism. The theme that I'm fixated on is that I can't live a life of candour, but also that I can't handle a life of candour. My mind brings me back again and again to this. This it not a failing on the part of my mind. It's simply bringing me back to this place that I need to resolve and let go of. Or at least loosen, if I am to live a life with more ease and balance. I need to learn, rather than struggle with it, I can let it pass through.
But I also need to get down to the core emotions that are at the root of this reactive pattern. I care about myself. I want to protect myself from attack, and I want to protect others from attack. I am fixated on this theme because I want safety, and I want others to be safe.
First I need to know this place of enough. Or know, more deeply, that I don't know it.
