Top 5 insights of 2022

 1.  My Happy Losar insight. Taking refuge and becomming a Tibetan Buddhist creates the conditions of being "locked in."  Like RRSPs, like marriage, like any lifetime or longterm committment, there is an accumulation of resources and rewards. Having a Sadhana practice bears emotional fruit, and strengthens the subtle body in ways that a more variable practice probably doesn't. But the real driver is devotion. The increasing sense of inseperablity between my essence and that of all the buddahs, gurus, and deities, is what created the condition for sustained non-duality. 

2.  The paradox in the Way of the Bodhissatva of the something that doesn not exist, and yet is not nothing, creates the conditions for rest.  The result is the ground of wisdom and an understanding of the true nature of mind. 

When something and its nonexistence

Both are absent from before the mind 

No other option does the latter have.

It comes to perfect rest from concepts free  

3. The mind is not a thing, but an event.   If we can see it this way then we can see feelings as events, and "clarity as an infinitely expansive state of awareness." This helps us see the mind as a flow, not a fixed thing.  And as a result everything is simply part of this flow. 

4.  It is a very powerful practice to remember a dream and ask "who is dreaming this dream?" Stay with it and any sense of integrated self soon dissolves.

5.  If the key to sustaining wisdom seeing yourself as pure, or purifiying how you see yourself?.  Or maybe both.  During Tantra immersion I will toggle with both these insights.  

sleep retreat--day 6

Tonight I had the sleep I'm aiming for: a four hour slow wave first sleep, followed by about an hour of calm, awake "repose," followed by a second sleep of vivid memorable dreams.

I followed this with an hour meditation to process the feelings that I remembered from the dream, shame (walking around in a t-shirt not sure I have underwear on) fear, vulnerability (discovering that someone has forged my signature on a personal cheque), excitement (I interrupt a mountain bike trip with the teenage son of a friend with an insane steep water slide) grief. (what happened to my friend's son, he seems to have disappeared into a space pocket, how will I explain this to her!!!)  At the moment of the most intense grief I realized that I was dreaming and that I could bring the person I thought I had lost back to life just through this recognition.

Relief.  Just huge relief.

I wonder if, in the end, this is the feeling that I'm really aiming for with all this. Relief.  Relief to be finally able to sleep with some regularity.  Relief at knowing that a better life is still available to me.  Relief at knowing that I have a good chance of having that life. Relief at knowing that Ben has a good chance.  Apparently this relief is prolactin.  But whatever it is for now, bring it on.  I could use some progress.

I've Had A Dream

Last night I dreamt that I'd turned a corner, both literally and allegorically.  I dreamt that I now had the power to be happy, that depression was permanently behind me, like a very bad life long cold. From now on I was just on a permanent path of emotional health, joy, the ability to love and be loved, work hard and thrive and everything that comes with that.

I also dreamed that there was a new invention. It was 3D goggles that children wore in the car that would make the scenery look more interesting.  Make it look like they were driving through the best, most interesting city in the world.  I could see the world through the eyes of a child wearing these goggles. But what she was seeing was Montreal, the city I now live in.

I realized that what other people can only have through technological innovation and re-creation, I have naturally.

All I need to do is live my great life and appreciate it.

It's interesting that I have this dream during a week where I've been very much seeing my consciousness practice is a way to see what goes on in my head during the day as dream like.  Meditation trains you to wake up regularly throughout the day from the dream like stream in your head.  It helps me to sit for a moment and remember what it is I'd like to do if I had the power to do it.  Just like I do in lucid dreaming.

To wake up and regain my sense of purpose.