Bearing down

Okay I get it, I'm going through a mid-life crisis.

My life is changing in significant ways. I'm aging. The rut I've been clinging to, my half job as a book critic, has been pulled out from underneath my feet. And so, in many ways the future is uncertain.

Except it's not. This too will pass. I know it.

It's like when I'm running and there's this voice telling me to stop, that I can't do this, that really I should just let myself get stronger, naturally, and slowly over time. Be a beginner forever. Just have fun.

And then there's this other voice that's saying: no, you can do more than you think, and it's worth it to deeper and longer and find it in yourself to release whatever stress is blocking you from the next level.

It's time to bear down and come through this crisis stronger, wiser, more stable, more masterful than before.

Taking it to the next level

For reasons that’ll probably be interesting to explore at some point, I’ve never really pushed my ZZ practice beyond the very basic postures. Not with any sustained commitment.

I’ve experimented with some of the tougher postures and had some pretty trippy energy experiences. But mostly I’ve stuck with the basic Wu Chi and holding the balloon.

This year, though, I’ve decided to go for it. I need the power to break through some of the blocks that are keeping me from something I feel I need to accomplish. Writing my book. To write a book you need marathon like stamina. So, also, I’m going to run a marathon.

It was really the decision to run the marathon that has led to the decision to push the envelope of my practice. The other day while I was training, I realized there was point where I felt I couldn’t go anymore. Before I made the decision to quit, I scanned my body for pain. There was nothing. The pain I suddenly realized was almost all psychic. Something in me was deeply resistant to becoming stronger, becoming powerful, and this something wasn’t physical.

There’s an inner block in me, a deeper anxiety that I haven’t really tried to dissolve yet.

So that’s the project.

Helping me along the way is a master I discovered through my friend Jeff Warren. Shinzen Young. He has a great series of guided meditations on youtube. One of them I like in particular: creating positive feeling. Here the meditation focus is on the positive feeling arising in the body from positive thoughts or images. In doing this meditation I realized how much focus I put on the negative feelings when I meditate. I have a tendency to sit with the negative feelings, rather than take the time to sit with the positive ones.

So working with the positive feelings of ZZ is this week’s focus. ‘

Later this same day:

After watching a Shinzen Young's post on the fourth axiom of his practice, "Recycle the Reaction", I've had an insight. I'm in an intermediate rut in my standing practice, and my life. I'm afraid of the fear of moving on to a more advanced level. I'm not going to go into reasons for why I'm afraid. Just in a more concrete way, in terms of my practice, I'm afraid to stand with my fear. To just stand with it in the same way I stood with any other of the uncomfortable feelings in the beginning stages of standing practice. As a result my power really hasn't stabilized in a way that helps me move on to the next level.

Earlier today I went for a run. I'd say I'm at an advanced beginner level now, and I don't plan to move on to intermediate this year. But it's still hard for me to maintain the advanced beginner level. So I experimented today with creating a positive feeling while I run. Creating a body memory of the "I can" feeling. I remembered all the times I had run the distance I had committed to running, and when I wanted to give up I remembered what it felt like to know that I could do it.

I'm going to do the same thing in my standing practice this week. I want to bear down a bit this week, and when I start getting the fear, I'm going to stand with it for a while, not create an extra layer of anxiety, and then invoke the 'I can' feeling.

Hopefully this will also transmute to my writing. I'm afraid to move on to the next level in that too, which is why I'm coming up with a bunch of beginner practices to avoid it. I think these beginner practices are fine. I think coding is a great way for me to develop algorithmic thinking, whether I become a developer or not. And I think it's interesting that Shinzen uses the algorithm as a method as often as he does.