Daemon Again

It's to the left, above my shoulder, this presence I feel after I've maintained an hour long practice for a significant chunk of time. It's to the soul, what the ego is to the self, or so I've read. This energy that feels like a self, but also something much stronger and purer.

It's the reason I do this, to have a sense of direction, power and connection. And now it's the reason I maintain this practice.

This morning I had such a strong sense of how regular, long meditation practice, at least an hour a day every morning makes of my body a kind of antenna.  I feel connected to this kind of frequency and it keeps me on the right path. All I have to do is rest in it and it penetrates my mind.

But then what?, says the inchworm when it reaches the top of the blade of grass.

To just be. To be the wisdom that shines from within. To help other recognize that wisdom in themselves. To allow ordinary bad habits dry up, and ordinary good habits to glow the extraordinary..

To be rich in this energy and power.

Tough with myself

A week of two steps forward, one step back.

My daimon is more a flickering presence in my life than it was a few days back.  Maybe because I've been disregarding his advice and peeking at television.  Ah, The Good Wife.  Such sweet trangression.

But seriously. I don't want to keep drifting back into bad patterns. I want to really cultivate this daimon and achieve my dreams of happiness.  I have a son and he needs to know that happiness is possible.

My first psychotherapist once brought my attention to the difference of being tough on ourself and tough with ourself.  When I think of what tough with myself means, it means that I need to be truly willing to see reality. And then once I've achieved that willingness, I need to want to see it. And I need to prepare myself for the inevitability of some pain and change along the way as I see that reality.

For instance.  I need to get more sleep.  I'm in a bad cycle that impacts my creativity, energy, happiness hugely.  But for some reason I don't want to look at that.  For one thing, because to get a good sleep I need to probably go to sleep before Ben. That's going to mean a change of routine. Probably some arguing.  And then I may end up giving in.

That routine needs to change. There's no point beating myself up about it.  But to really make that change, there's going to be some difficulty. There's going to be some nights where I'm not actually able to get to sleep that early. There are going to be some nights where I have to sit with my financial anxieties. But they are made worse by lack of sleep.

So, how do I start to change this routine in a way that is tough with myself, but not tough on myself?  I need a nurturing voice that is also able to tell me what I need to hear.  Compassionate, but also tough.  Something that says, yes you have natural intelligence, openness and spirit, but you can't let television and poor sleeping patterns muck with that.  You can't because the consequences are incremental and really serious over time.

Tonight is Daylight savings time, a return of the clock back an hour. It's a good night to start this because Ben will actually be more primed for an earlier bedtime. And maybe I can sneak a half hour of meditation in in the morning.  

Dictation

This week I am no longer alone.

I've noticed of the course of many years of practice that if I manage to maintain a one hour meditation time for more than a couple of months that I start to feel an intelligence in my life. A voice starts to speak to me, to reassure me, to guide me, to bring my attention back to the present again and again. At times I've thought of this as my muse.  But from now on I'm going to think of it as a daemon.

Not a demon. A daemon, in the Greek sense of the term, and energy that drives the soul.  Thomas Moore, the Jungian psychologist, writes in Original Self, that the daemon is to the soul what the ego is to the self.  If we are to live from the soul, from chi, from kundalini, from whatever vitality we've chosen to cultivate, having that intelligence that keeps us on the path is an essential drive.

Ben's been studying the Renaissance this week at school. So I'm conscious of this shift we made several centuries ago as a civilization to place man at the center of the world instead of God. What we ended up placing in the center was the ego. If we could shift again what would we place at the centre? I would like to think it would be the soul.  Perhaps consciousness.  Whatever this energy is that transports us to a better place, a more peaceful place, a more joyful place.

This week I have felt it become more central to my life, not just because of my daemon emerging.  I've started to feel this kind of double body. Almost like double vision, but it's more like double feeling. Sometimes I see my heart as a green energy pulsating a little bit outside of and to the right of my body. Sometimes I  just sit with waves and the rythms of the universe.

Last night I did a long meditation.  Almost two hours and felt the undeniable deep warm coil of energy. Not the whole flow yet,  distinct parts in my neck and my upper abdomen.  Nothing imagined there.  This was a physical energy.

Daemon has instructed me to stop watching T.V. and Netlix, so I don't have much else to do but to become aware of it.

The adventure continues.