Year 10

In December of this year it will be a decade since I started this blog.

It certainly feels like a decade. And yet, here I am, starting another round. I started writing this with an inkling that zhan zhuang might be the purpose of my life. Then I promptly abandoned my three year practice, re-starting from a very humble place a year later.   It did bring me back to beginners mind and then a strong six months of solid practice.  I changed.  And then I let go again, struggling with something of a midlife crisis. The ZZ was spotty, but I did keep up the writing. Transitioned into sitting practice for a while, developing the more spiritual elements of meditation practice. Did some running, which has kept the chi building in me, even while I stopped my formal standing practice for too long.

Last week I sat down, did my best to look into the future, and what I saw there was the fruits of this blog, and my standing practice. This is where I need to be. And where I need to stay for the next ten years. No more breaks. This is what I do.

Remorse

As I become more fully and regularly in touch with the basic goodness, the awareness of which arises and is strengthened by my hour a day morning practice, I'm confronted with other feelings.  Grief. Remorse. The need to forgive and be forgiven.
  I spent so much of my life just wandering around looking for help and healing. The path is clearer now, but now I'm processing the realization that the path was always there, but I chose differently.  I chose television, hopeless relationships, isolation, numbness and escape. Not always. I also chose books, made and maintained friendships, psychotherapy, Zhan Zhuang.  But sometimes I only see the confusion.
This may be because I've been wandering off the path of late. Looking for other teachers and not quite devoting myself to the Tergar program, as I kind of vowed to do.
  Kind of vowed.  That says it all.  I'm still not committing. Not committing to this, to my writing career, to the non-profit I'm starting, to Ben. To any one thing really.
  And I'm beating myself up about it.
  Let's look for this moment at the things that I am committed to.  An hour a day practice, which is no small thing. My Tergar retreats, which take time and money.  My running.  And I have been editing my book every morning.  It feels ready.
  There's a commitment there that arises automatically out of the energy that I build through these commitments. It steadies me, even when I wander off.
  This week, I will return to my level three practice routine.  Keep to the algorithm of the path I've been engaged in.  I'm not ready to commit to Ngondro. It's interesting, but I'm not there yet.  So I'm going to keep to the secular path for now. It's more sustainable in the life I'm living. If and when I feel grief and remore, I will recognize them as signs that I'm making progress, deepening my awareness, which included the recognition of where I went wrong and the consequences of those behaviours, and letting go, which always brings with it the sharpness of grief.  These are purifying emotions.  I can handle them.
  But for now I return.

Liberation

This week I've been feeling a shift in my practice. An awareness of awareness at an almost machine like level. When the spine is straight, energy flows naturally, the belly fills with oxygen like a reservoir and vitality thaws and then runs hot. It is the technology of the soul. It is the mechanism of liberation.

I understand it. I see it. Why is it so hard to make it permanent? Why can't I just be free. Free of suffering financial anxiety, loneliness, self-hatred. Why is that part still so hard?

Because I don't believe in it.  I don't believe it's possible.  Or because I feel I would have to give up something for that belief. To be truly free, I would have to renounce things. I would have to renounce the belief that lasting happiness is found in money, success, fame.

Another reason that it's hard is because that level of pure awareness takes commitment. I feel it because I've been practising for an hour in the morning and evening. To keep it up, I would have to maintain that level of practice and commitment.

What I want is effortless liberation, but to get there I have to expend the effort of commitment. Endure productive discomfort, make commitment the driving force in my life, not desire.

Without that commitment, awareness has no foundation. Motivation is always going to be fluctuating, and so will happiness.

The foundation to happiness and liberation is awareness, the profound, pervasive presence of awareness. And awareness I can feel. An awareness that has an energy and force and power of it's own.  An awareness that is committed to me, and that I can only perceive when I am committed to it.

Silent Retreat

This weekend I did my first silent retreat. With three other people, and the retreat director, I lived in silence for 20 hours, no eye contact, no words, beyond some talks by Mingyur Rinpoche. We went to sleep at 10 p.m. and woke to a 5 o'clock gong. Doing an hour and a half of meditation before breakfast.

The single most important insight I had this weekend was an instruction Rinpoche gave to us at the outset, pay attention to our motivation.  So many times I caught myself meditating because I wanted the cool experience, meditating because I wanted to see myself as an exceptional meditator. meditating because I wanted to be, or think of myself as enlightened.

But my motivation is to be happy and free and suffering, and to help Ben, my family and everyone that I can possibly help to have peace and joy as well.

I thought that as I go to deeper levels of meditation that I would be confronting my most painful memories or feelings. But I realized that the most "important" feelings in my life were really the trigger feelings: the irritation, the boredom, the dissatisfaction. The impatience.

The impatience to be enlightened, to be free.

That impatience is probably in many ways the biggest block.  It's why I don't want to face the dullness and pain that an hour every morning would bring. Because I would have to face that I'm not actually as far as I think I am.

And of course I would have to face that to really be liberated from dullness of mind and suffering, I'm going to have to do an hour of meditation every morning on rising.  Every day for the rest of my life.

Root Teacher

This week I decided to make Mingyur Rinpoche my root teacher. What this means, if I understand the term correctly, is that I will practice his method, and only his method, for an extended time to create a solid foundation for my practice.
  I've been meditating in some form or another for almost twenty years, so it does feel a little strange this declaration that I am only now building my foundation. But there is that island off Japan that I read about once, where they consider 50 years old as only the start of adulthood. I'm feeling the longing to commit to something, and there is something about Rinpoche's teachings that resonate with me in a way that no other teachings ever have. Maybe it's his light touch, his sense of humour, his simplicity that feels closer to the Taoism that I've always been attracted to. Whatever it is I'm ready to make his school of being my home.
  Which means I'm heading out on what I'm going to start thinking of now as a three year retreat. For the next three years I'm going to make him my my only meditation teacher.  When I'm feeling lost or overwhelmed I will turn to his books, his videos, his organization. When I feel lonely I will see his face.
  I need his steadying presence because I'm heading into a big transition in my life. My agent says there are a couple of New York editors keen on seeing my book proposal. I'm optimistic that this book will be published and I'm going to need grounding during a process where I know I'm going to be experiencing a lot of over excitement. I'm going to need all the emotional and spiritual mentorship I can find.  I may not have much time to be wandering around trying to find it. Having one teacher, one way, one practice will probably be the lifeboat I'm going to have to cling to as I get used to fulfilling my dreams.
  There's that.  There's the fact that in the next month both my parents turn 80.  This may be their last decade.  So the next ten years of my life are going to be filled I expect with elation and grief.
  I'm going to need solid ground, solid friendships, a solid community to get me through.  After almost ten years of travelling that I've been recording on this blog, this is where I finally put down roots.

Acceptance

It's been almost a month since my birthday.  For the record my life is not being propelled effortlessly by the will of the cosmos liked I'd kind of hoped it would be by now.
  On the plus side, after the Joy of Living course, and six months of running, I am feeling it easier to access what feels like a higher frequency of energy in my life. It's clearer, more powerful, more solid. But it's far from the default mode of my brain. Default  mode continues to be concerns about career and money and economic health and a general mixture of resentment, compulsions, etc.  If anything, I'm feeling this power wane.
  Usually this happens when I'm about to make a career move. Getting close to success in some way. I let my formal meditation habit go. Enthusiasm becomes over excitement, and I burn up all the joy.  I think this might also be happening because I'm getting to the point of mastery in my Tergar course, and there's a strong force in me that wants to undermine that mastery.  I could be really internalizing this wisdom now. Instead I'm suddenly career focussed.

Maybe instead of making running my most important habit for September, I need to really keep to my formal meditation and look out for the subtle ways in which I may be undermining this fundamental habit in my life. I need to recognize that I'm not as enthusiastic as I was with all the peer support around me.  But that I need to do this with acceptance if it's going to become a core part of my life.

Book

I'm going to get a book deal,

If I can stand for an hour a day, I can do that.  I can sit with my self-doubt and self sabotaging feelings and do what needs to be done, finish the outline, finish the overview.  Send it out. Write down the goals, schedule the time.  I know I can do that.

So now it's time to see what is stopping me.

Inner stress. Some kind of psychic stress that is awakened every time I try to make a career for myself.

Rather than try and solve this stress, I need to diffuse it a little.  Accept that writing and working is always going to be  a little painful for me.  But it's a good pain.  Like running.  Like standing.  It's a pain that's worth facing.  Because at the end of the day I have something that I can send out.  I have something that is going to connect me to the world.  And I have something that is going to bring me peace, because there is no peace than the peace of having valued, necessary and useful skills.

It's a pain that I want to avoid though.  A pain that I struggle to avoid.  A pain that I have developed avoidance habits around.  So I need to sit down and look at the obstacles that stand in the way of me sitting down to do that one hour of writing on my proposal every day.

These obstacles are:

Compulsive distractions.  My tendency to surf and avoid.

Not knowing the ending of my book. Makes it hard to complete outline.

Ah well.  I know the ending.  The book ends happily with my great book contract.

Making Standing My Default Behaviour

I've had an insight this morning.  A life changing insight.

My way out of debt, out of despair, out of this mid-life crisis really is this simple.  Make standing the default behaviour for whenever I'm feeling anxious, bored, distracted, lost, lonely, afraid.  I do that and I'm on a non stop path towards vitality and growth and power.

It's science.  It works for me.  It always works for me.  Standing makes me stronger, emotionally, psychically, creatively.  There has never been anything that I've done that has brought as much well being and pure energy into my life.  I don't have to believe in "myself."  I just need to believe in standing. Because standing put me in touch with all the energy and power that I need.

The beauty of this is that all my "negative" emotions become fuel for this positive energy.  Like fossil fuel.  Always renewable energy.  I don't want them to go away, because they are useful.  They help to feed the loop.  This is stress management, not stress eradication.

With this I don't have to imagine becoming rich, or becoming successful.  It's just a matter of course.  Just a matter of course correction.

Meaningful Goals

I'm back to standing regularly.

Not because I have an urge to stand.  Not because I believe, at this moment, that it's good for me.  Not for any of the reasons I did in the past.

I'm back because I have written this out as a meaningful goal.  To continue my morning standing practice.  It is a goal, like getting a book contract, that is important to me at a level deeper than just feeling.

For the next while, I'm going to place less trust in my feelings and intuitions.  More trust in what I know works and doesn't work in my life.  Standing works to make me feel better and stronger and more vital.  It always has.  It helps me manage my stress, and keep my body and energy strong.  It makes me feel powerful, whatever the circumstances in my life.

No let's correct that.  It doesn't make me "feel" powerful.  It makes me powerful.  If I work on the exercises and push myself, it makes me powerful. Through it I tap into power.

I am, and have always been afraid of being powerful.  Because there is anxiety in power.

I made a mistake a while back, I think, in deciding that I was no longer going to be driven by anxiety.  There is healthy anxiety and that can be a good force in one's life.  If one taps it, it can be really helpful, make you focus, get you moving.

Right now I'm feeling a lot of anxiety and I can use that to make a better life for myself and Ben.

I can use standing to manage that anxiety, and to manage the anxiety that comes with having a thriving, busy life.  I want to live quietly, but having a rich life is still important to me.  Seeing and living with life's complexity is important to me.

So, I stand.

Day 2

I agree with the students that one of the challenges for people who practice Standing is that it's so unusual and people think you're weird. After years of experiencing its benefits, I'm over that problem. But I do wish that standing were more common. For me, as a single mother, who can't really find the time to go to classes, the hardest thing has been maintaining this practice without a community.

At the same time, it would be difficult to keep it up if I didn't have a high tolerance for solitude. I'm a writer. Solitude is the foundation of my career. So it makes sense that I would choose a physical practice that would cross-train with that skill, as it were. Community it important, but you do probably have to have a strong sense of self to keep this up. And I believe it's helped me to build a stronger sense of self.

Commitment

So here I am back after two months.

My mind has been on other things. My book, which drifted off to limbo when the editor quit the major publishing house. I got into hypnosis, which has been an interesting experience and has, if nothing else, helped me to lose that fifteen pounds I've been struggling with. A major online magazine asked to do a recap of a show that I love, but that keeps me up late.

But my body is stiff and I really miss this quiet morning time. And I miss the energy, and I'm sure that if I let the practice go it will affect my writing.

So how to really, really get that commitment to stay solid inside of me?

There are two ways that I know of. Visualize it daily. Visualize the rewards, the energy, the confidence, the power. Feel it. Step into that body that I would be if I made a lifetime commitment to this.

Be aware how much my reality is affected by not practicing. Feel the manic energy and buzzy stress that seems to be taking over again. Feel it and know that I don't want that to be the thing that drives me.

Keep the navigational tools pointed up....

My new lifetime commitment

I'm a little flu ish this morning. Up early standing and then not sure if I really want to stand. Wrote for a bit, because my monkey mind thinks sometimes that's what I should be doing to make my writing better. Writing more. And there is truth to that. But I think it's a mistake to make writing the primary purpose. Being is the primary purpose. I think it's a more effective way to live, and to create.
That's my theory.
But the reality is that standing is hard. It is the hardest thing I've every done. To keep it up I have to believe that this really is the best thing for me to be doing. The best way to use my time. The best way to start my day.
The only way to start my day. The only way.

The clearer path

I'm a little over three months into this, and the path is becoming clearer. I know that what is pumping through my body is the same natural opiate that pumped through my body during breastfeeding. And when I stand what I am for now is the letting down, that state when the milk flows, the opiate flows, and the bliss flows. I know now that if I commit to this that opiate can be there for me daily. And if what Norman Doidge says is true then I will be able to forget some of my past self-destructive behaviours and lean ones that will guarantee this steady flow of natural high.

Is this how I want to live my life? Of course.

The question is how do I enable other people to discover this?

My first stage is to trust in the process. My next stage is to get people to trust me.

But right now it's all about commitment. This is the commitment opiate, so they say.

My life suffers from a lack of commitment. A lack of structure that allows this learning drug to flow regularly and create more structured action in my life.

So what's the plan?

I guess #1. Get the flow going stronger.

more metal

Still having some focus problems. But the metal training is taking root.

One of the things I realized is that metal is a symbol of endurance, permanence and commitment (although, sadly, if we really wanted a symbol of endurance we might want to consider plastic training. From what I've read McDonald's happy toys have as great a chance of being around hundreds of years from now as wedding rings. But I digress because my mind is digressive.)

Anyways. Maybe if I work on my metal training I'll be a little less at the mercy of my anxiety drives.

What I'm doing right now is imagining my tan tien as a magnet that sucks in all the little distracted thoughts that keep buzzing around in my brain. Another thing I imagine is having a couple of big axes that cut through the scattered thoughts. Or little blades that quickly slice them into mulch.

Mostly I just try to imagine my inner strength as something extremely permanent. A permanent grounded force that will be there no matter what.

This is My Purpose

I agree with Eckhart Tolle that allowing consciousness to flow into us is our inner purpose.

So why is it so hard to maintain the practice that allows this?

Why is it so hard for me to get up early in the morning? Why is it so hard for me to stick to my hour? Why so impossible to do a bit in the afternoon when I need that energy boost? Why can't a I do a little before I go to bed?

Why would I rather do all the distracting things I end up doing? If I know, If I believe that this is my liberation?

What do I need to do to commit to my inner purpose?

Well it's easy to commit. But what do I need to do to maintain this commitment? How do I marry my Zhan Zhuang? Because I do believe this is the primary purpose of my life.

I'm going to brainstorm 10 ways.

1. I think the first thing is to do as much of it as I want and can. The more I do it. The more I want to do it.

2. Do it at dawn. Be prepared to hear a voice saying it's too hard, saying I don't feel like it. Be prepared to override that voice at all costs. This is the purpose of my life. My life's mission. No more sleeping in. Believe Ringo. Every day at dawn for six months and "you will change."

3. Make this commitment to the universe. Not to me, but to all sentient beings. Ask the question, repeatedly: Would I be walking away from this commitment if I made it to someone else? Know that I am doing this for the world.

4. Do it like my life depends on it. Because it does.

5. Let Ben know that I'm going to be meditating in the morning from now, and that he has to accept that.

6. When I hear that voice that tells me I can do it later, answer "should I do it later?"

7. Do it as though an audience were waiting for me.

8. Cheer myself as though I were an audience

9. When I'm tempted to go back to sleep, watch the news, avoid my meditation time, advise myself as though I were advising someone else.

10. Know my mission: Who I want to be, What I want to do, What I want to have.

commitment

Feeling the struggle with commitment. Back to my seeing the ball exercise. And the insight I have today is to remember that this energy is committed to me. My job is not to commit to it, but to open up to its commitment to me. Such a hard thing to do. Much harder it seems sometimes than an act of will. To just be and allow the will of this energy to direct me.

I have a lot of work and a lot of responsibility coming up in the next weeks. A cover for Quill and Quire, sending Ben to Israel as he finishes school. My So You Think You Can Dance Updates. I'm worried that I'm going to let this practice go, right when I really need to be stepping it up so that I can make better decisions.

Writing helps me with opening up to commitment. The words form their own path for me.