Awareness, word of the year

This week I've looped back to my root practice, open awareness.

It is a practice much improved because my environment is more open, less cluttered and distracting. I'm able now to experience my mind as a clear and open space. Within this space the emotional intensity and chaos I grew up in is more visible, as is the pull of ordinary messy awareness. In a cleaner environment I can work to loosen the knots of that.

I sit. I listen to the sounds around me, the traffic, the occasional siren, the night before last, a violent fight between my upstairs neighbours. In that case disturbing memories surfaced, but they don't stick because I'm in a different place. My space is safe from violence and aggression, and I have created a place for  my child that is free of that, directly at least.  There may always be that in the world around him and in the world he's immersed himself in for now, the play violence of his video games. But I haven't inflicted it on him and for that I can feel some relief.

This is the focus of the week, relief. The reward of the habits that have spared me from a bad marriage, abject poverty, squalor, ignorance. That have made it possible for me to produce nurturing things, this journal, educational materials and opportunities for others, and a book that I hope will bring enjoyment, inspiration and knowledge to others.

This relief from intensity, from the feeling of being stuck, from the cumulative dullness of bad habits. This is the reward that moment by moment will change my life.

Looking over past posts on open awareness, I am reminded of a ritual I started a couple of years ago, picking a word for the year, the first time I did this it was abundance, the next year emptiness. This year I've decided to pick awareness. I dedicate this year to keeping this thread of awareness strong and present through all my habits, intentions, and achievements.

I Will Be An Agent of Change

This week in my Tergar practice I am meditating of work, on its problems and its joys.

On Tuesday I sent a proposal to an agent, and all week I feel like I'm waiting in line at a rollercoaster. Will she take me on, will she pass, and will I have to keep waiting in line forever.  If she takes it, I go on a huge up and down experience of finishing and marketing a book.  I she passes, like the other agents have, I need to decide whether I keep waiting, or give up and try another ride.

The evening I sent in the proposal I went to the book launch of an acquaintance younger and now more successful than I.  She signed the book "to the first bookish person I ever knew."  I should be happy for her, and happy for whatever influence I've had on her.  But I'm envious.

So while I was meditating on work this week I sat plunk in the middle of that billious feeling.  It was a very instructive pond of toxic suffering.  It taught me that the miscerceptions that were holding me back in my work was and continues to be the idea that work is about me, this self that I've created.  And so because of this misperception I think that publication or success will add something to me, and that failure will take away something from me.

But those are just the highs of work.  The joys of work are found in being part of something, and believing your part of something that will liberate people from their suffering and help them find more happiness. Without that work is just an empty rollercoaster of thrills and long, punishing waits.

I need to wake up every morning and feel that I'm an agent of change.  An author, but an author that is part of something bigger and more important.

Shifting out of the self-driven path, I feel the joy. I feel the flow of energy that I want my work to be a part of.  I feel the hope.

I feel the possibility that I can be an agent of change.