Addicted to thought

I crave thinking. 

This week in meditation I felt that craving deeply, and when I did, a whole new path opened up. I guess I could call it a jhana.  But I felt the release that came from letting go of thinking and allowing all that is not thinking take over. 

Of course I've done this before, but I'm not sure I've ever really focussed as much as I did this week on the impulse to think.  

It was magical. 

I wonder how I can apply that to my writing.  This morning I saw my stack of old writing practice journals.  It's been so long since I tried to bypass thinking in my writing. I've been struggling with the BDW.  Maybe this would work. 

Hello, Hungry Ghost

This week I re-started my mindful eating habit core modules at Eat Right Now. 

I discovered this program about two years ago shortly after I launched an experiment.  On my screensaver I put a rather disturbing buddhist painting of The Hungry Ghost, the being with a large stomach and tiny mouth who represents that part of us that can never be satisfied.  I was struggling with my own HG, having hit the highest weight that I've ever recorded, putting me solidly into the medical definition of obesity.  This app/community of practice is the work of Dr. Judson Brewer, psychiatrist/buddhist, and for me it was exactly what I needed.  It was program and supporting community that helped me transfer my mindfulness skills in meditation to my eating habits and get my cravings under control. It also pointed me toward a low insulin food plan that helped me to lose about 30 lbs in the next six months.  

I kept this off for a good while, but at the beginning of the year I started to struggle again.  Tried to shift to a vegetarian diet with complex carbs that started to bring my insulin levels back up. Tried to balance that with fasting.  By March I was on a rat wheel of uber eats, and my weight was steadily climbing back up to obesity.  Ben was hitting a high weight as well. 

So I'm back in the program.  This morning's module is about The Hungry Ghost.  My tendency is to want to satisfy my HG with substitution strategies, getting busy, doing other stuff.  But these are just band aids on the wound. The prescription today is to just be with the pain.  Eat some small healthy meals throughout the day.  Know that the suffering will eventually ease

through the power of awareness. 

Sit. Stay. Heal. 

 

Three months

It's been three months since I posted on this blog.

What happened?

Well I started an essay on my Vipassana retreat that I hoped to finish in a weekend, and that I'm still writing.   Bliss is The New Black, frames my experience in the choice I made to binge watch the last season of Orange is The New Black, which had me taking it in on my phone up to the last minute.

I discovered on day 1 that I'd forgotten to hand in my moleskin notebook, and though I didn't write in it, I thought about writing, and I thought about narrative the whole retreat. Suffering is of course, a side effect of narrative, so there was a loopy satisfaction in considering all this.

But three months later I have a scrappy draft, but feel very far from finishing this essay, which feels more like a weight around my neck than a gift to myself or anyone else.

Begin again, in this journal, and at whatever I need to learn and let go of from this experience and this particular block.


I did, however, take this as an opportunity to re-read my blog from January:

Here's a quick list of greatest hits.

Both of my posts on one day Vipassana course

What I learned about high intensity low intensity emotions through How Emotions Are Made

My Habit House dream

In insight I had about serotonin and the right balance of hormone cocktails after reading The Obesity Code

That my struggle keeping my house clean is part of an Aversion Loop, as compared to my struggle with weight being part of a Craving Loop

Fast--Day 2

It is said that day 2 is the hardest.  Hormones increase like grhelin, which signals hunger, and cortisol, which raises blood sugar to deal with stress.

From the chart I read in a blog, by Dr. Jason Fung, a Toronto nephrologist, Ghrelin and cortisol is highest in the morning of day 2.  I certainly felt that this morning, but by 8 a.m. it seems to be passing.

I expect about three really strong waves throughout the day.  But I've been learning a method for dealing with them over the last month.  Don't fight it. Dial anxiety down to curiosity.  Recognize that the hunger is a fact. Sit with it and notice what if feels like in every part of the body.  Get specific with the notations. Sometimes I even time it.

Then, notice how it feels when it passes, which it always does.  Than hunger doesn't last is also a fact. What I'm trying to do is make that more intuitive.

The brain adjusts.  It pulls the energy it needs from stored fat.  It's been built to do this, and it may even suffer if it never gets the chance to exercise this mechanism.  There's a time to grow, and a time to decompose.

This is the theory behind fasting for health.

Later

Interesting article on how fasting can re-boot metabolism.  Interesting in terms of my post-traumatic growth theme:

Loving Kindness week

It's hard to live a life that isn't motivated by cravings.  It means being motivated by love, and that takes time to make intuitive.

So it makes sense, as I'm trying to change my eating habits, to take the time to make loving kindness the mission of my life.

In his new book, Mingyur Rinpoche repeats the belief that sitting still is the most radical and impactful thing we can do for the world.

This is a difficult thing to believe because it goes against all the learning we have received.  Action is what changes things.  Action is the only thing that changes things and can bring about happiness.  Or so we are taught

But sitting still is action.  It is the action of connecting to the driving force of the universe. It is the action of liberating ourselves from the suffering that chaos and poor habits create.  It is the action of recalibrating our lives with the deepest and most enduring wisdom.  It is the action of being determined to know reality as it is, not as we want it to be.

The bough of healthy eating

Aversion and craving.  This is what wipes out the sprouts that never quite make it to bough in my growth.  Last week I wrote about how being in a state of high arousal can trigger some of the old habit patterns that I hold from living in ongoing trauma.  But of course, being in low arousal can trigger these too.  Being calm, the memories, the pain, the patterns, the sensations float up.  Being bored, which is the most challenging kind of low arousal state, is what triggers the craving for drama to shake things up.

I experienced this yesterday in my one day Vipassana retreat.  Of course I went into this hoping for peak meditative experiences.  I had one early in Anapana, my breath became so short and shallow it became like a small circular pump at my nostrils, and breathing became more like a quiet, beating pulse than a whole body process.  I became anxious, but with equanimity, I was able to see how this quick breathing could really help me in reacting to the inevitable stresses that arise when the past aversions and cravings arise.

Aware, equanimous. Goenka's sonorous voice became a one two anti-punch, as I sat with the subtle waves of pleasure and displeasure.  Be aware of the sensation, respond with equanimty.  Break the cycle of proliferation of aversion and craving. Old habit patterns rise up.  New habit patterns take their place, and with diligence, ardent diligence, they take root.

I ate my lunch slowly, very slowly.  So slowly, I couldn't imagine even finishing a small and simple lunch I had brought, in the time that I had.  Not if I wanted to have time to go for a walk. If I could implant this new habit, the cravings and aversions that derail healthy, wholesome eating might have the chance of making it into a bough.  But I need to be patient. Boughs don't grow overnight.  I have the advantage of looking at almost seven years of data on my weight loss and gain.  I've gained a little over a pound a year to where I now hover at the cusp of overweight and obese.   I don't want to find myself a decade from now normalizing obesity.

But more important than that, I don't want to be driven by the hungry ghost that makes that happen.  I want to be driven by the awareness and equanimity that will reverse this trend. I want to look at this graph a year from now and see a cliff, then steady ground, maybe even a valley.  That can only happen if the cravings have dried up.  The ghost has finally been allowed to find peace.

But I want to look at this graph seven years from now and see the evidence that this bough of healthy eating finally got the support it needed to flourish and mature.

The Wave

So a few days ago I had an exceptional mind flipping meditation.

And then on cue, a wave of craving hit, Netflix binging on Billie Bob Thornton's washed up alcoholic redemption series.  So, yesterday morning I'm struggling with a splintered chaotic mind.

The one thing I had going for me, apart from my years of meditation practice, was a tidy room.  I sought refuge. Meditated when I felt the craving hit. Examined my options like reading a revolutionary book on How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett, instead of defaulting to Netflix.  And ended up in bed at 10 p.m.

I feel the fruits this morning, feeling a palpable shift from right brain to left brain awareness.

Making more room for healthy energy in my life, literally means making a room for it.

Post Vipassana

Two weeks ago I finished my first 10-day Vipassana retreat.  I'm still writing it up.  I'm still processing it.

At the risk of reducing a complex adventure into bullet points, the most profound insights I had were the high level of stress, misery, and hatred I have been living with all my life, and the power of equanimity to reduce this suffering.

Post Vipassana, I'm realizing how deeply in grip I still am to the deep cravings I've lived with all my life.  I didn't experience much in the way of craving while I was in retreat, which is surprising given that I had to give up internet, reading, writing, and eating anything substantial after noon.  Very little of this bothered me,  perhaps because I was more than distracted enough by the habits of petty aversion and ruminative memories of anger.

I've given up meat. And for a good week when I came home, I didn't feel any strong need to watch Netflix, or binge eat.

Craving found it's way in through the Kavanaugh hearings.  Like many North Americans, particularly women, I was glued to the television, as though somehow the confirmation, or shaming of Brett Kavanaugh, will wash away all the shame I experienced as a lost teenager in the era of private Catholic schools.

By yesterday I was watching, non-stop, the last season of Nashville and inhaling a bucket of pasta in cream sauce.

This morning I woke up with a bloated stomach and a headache, feeling as though every thing I had learned had been washed away.  But I sat, and it suddenly hit me how intense the sense of peace and balance had become in my life as well. I was able to rest in equanimity, make a vow to correct, maybe by visiting the weekly sitting in my neighborhood, and giving up food this evening.

I've only got one episode of Nashville left.

Craving

Here is a journal that I wrote earlier this week:

I’m at the danger hour for craving 8 p.m. this is where I might normally plan what I’m going to eat while I watch TV. Instead, I’m going to describe the sensation of craving, the perceptions and the thoughts that hold it into place.

I start in open awareness. Resting comfortably in my sense of basic goodness. This is, of course, what I really want deep down, this feeling of being nurtured. But for some reason, I have mixed this up with an addiction to sugar, carbs and fat.

Now I recall it and quite quickly this painful feeling of dissatisfaction flows up to my head, and a voice now says, as I write this, “what’s the point, the craving is stronger it's going to win, it’s always going to win”  For the moment I’m not going to question this voice or perception. For the next few minutes, I rest in this craving, I rest in this belief and I consider the possibility that this craving is too far entrenched for me to change. I think of it as an old, dear friend, a spouse, a family member.  I consider how linked this craving is to my family, and how it feels almost like a betrayal to give it up. No, actually it does feel like a betrayal. It is a betrayal, there will be uncomfortable consequences if I walk away from it. Ben who is also addicted to junk food will be unhappy if I’m not a companion in that. My mother who needs validation through massive dinners. Then I think when I look at the odds, I’m probably not going to be able to let this craving go. Not in my lifetime, but maybe I can at least let it go tonight. Or maybe I can sit and feel a tenderness and warmth towards it.

That’s what I do, and here’s the interesting thing: the love and the warmth that I’m feeling toward the craving are the things I really want. Now I’m switching places, the craving is the loving force, and it loves that part of me that is pristine and free of cravings. At first pristine energy felt like a new friend, a guest, but actually I recognize it as well as a close and dearest friend, my parent, my legacy. Now it feels like both the pristine and the craving energy can merge. Of course, the pristine energy will win. How long is not within my control. Maybe another perception is maybe the pristine energy will win.

It comes down to a choice, being with the pain of craving, or being controlled by craving. It’s the same with all the other “defilements” I guess. Being with the pain of hatred, ignorance, envy, pride, or being controlled by them. But I like this process of liking them like old friends, or members of my mind family. Resistance towards them makes them hard and dull.