Awareness is as effortless as fear and terror

 "The experience of awareness is like being frightened or terrified. It is that kind of intense non-conceptual experience."

This from the commentary on Creation and Completion.  

It has hit me light a bolt of lightening. If pure awareness is as effortless as fear, or any other intense emotion, then those emotions are the gateway to enlightenment.

When I sit with fear, it gives way to fearlessness.  The concept that the fear was based on has burned off.  All that remains is for the fear to burn off. 

Pith fear

In my meditation this morning I revisited one of the most groundbreaking insights of last weekend's retreat.  At the pit of all my suffering is the fear that I won't get what I want.  But if I rest calmly in that subtle knot of fear, I connect with the deepest reward of living, that complex loop and flow of neurotransmitters in the limbic area of my brain, serotonin, dopamine and neuropeptides.

This is the mechanism of the grasping.  The reptilian brain fears that it won't get what it wants, the body responds with anxiety, the brain reaches for any of the multitude of options that exist in my current landscape.  And the next thing you know I'm eating cake and watching Game of Thrones.

More and more my formal meditation is about reaching down into my gut, feeling the displeasure and restlessness that trigger this fear, and sitting with it until absolute well-being sets in. The serotonin starts to flow from the source, my limbic system starts to loosen up and soon I'm sitting in the bright clear pond of calm and pleasure.

Of course,  then the fear sets in because my first thoughts are a) will I be able to make this feeling permanent b) if this feeling were to become permanent, would I lose the motivation to want anything? And the loop starts again.  I rest in the fear as the object of meditation until absolute well being starts to flow back again.

Will this absolute well-being become more intuitive?

Are there any reasons why it wouldn't?  Maybe the fear becomes deeper and more reactionary because I'm spending too much time trying to cram a lifetime of wellbeing into the painful hole of a life motivated more by depression.

Be diligent, but also, be patient.

fear factor

Day 4 of this cleanse.

I started this cleanse in large part because I was becoming more conscious of my kidneys. I'm starting deep breathing into the part of the diaphragm that extends through my lower back.

I'm sure I've read many times that kidneys are as important as the heart in chinese medicine. But I've never really used my kidneys in a way that has made me conscious of their importance.  For the Chinese they are the source of vitality and the main filtration system not just for physical waste, but for fear.  I read this a few days ago in Bruce Frantzis's book, but I didn't really feel it until today.

Terrifying dream last night. I was on a bus with a group of terrorist/assassins.  Fortunately I was sitting with a woman with a gun, also some kind of assassin. She was able to shoot some of them, but we had to make a run for it. We ended up in some kind of building, maybe a school, maybe a YMCA, and we found ourselves hiding in a sort of long shower with sliding doors.  By this time my assassin companion was limp and naked. Now I had to take over and take care of her.  But it was hopeless. I was trying to take care of this woman, but there was no way I would be able to save myself if I didn't leave her behind. This was heartbreaking because she had saved my life.

I woke up feeling all the fear that could be felt in my kidneys.  I tried meditation, but could barely sit for twenty minutes.

It's still there as I write.  At the same time it's exciting, because I've never been so conscious of this raw fear and where it lives in my body.  It's so clear why I would want to do everything I could to numb this feeling. It's a particularly resonant feeling for me because I suffered from two kidney infections as a child, and I remembering how terrifying that feeling was. That lying in bed in agony.

I'm not in agony, now on day 4.  Rather, I'm in a place of awareness. Starting to understand how all the puzzle pieces fit together.

Fear of Power

Over the last week I've been noticing how I feel when I choose to shift my sense of self from the powerless feeling of ordinary consciousness, to the more powerful feeling of pure consciousness. If I see myself as driven and created by this powerful psychic force, and I see the drives that diminish my energy--my ordinary sense of self, as puny in its face, it's inevitable that my life will change. And change for the better.

So what is this fear about? Well, change for the better means more work. It means greater risk of failure, or perhaps bigger more noticeable failures. It means risking criticism, envy, contempt. Having a dream, where I grew up, meant contempt if it wasn't the dream that was the dominant dream.

It means living up to your potential, and paying back the gifts of life.

It means the solid realization that the strongest most powerful part of me, the part I share with all beings, whether they realize it or not,  wants to communicate what I've learned and what I'm learning to others.

It's an entire shift of my locus of control, and that makes me feel a little unbalanced.  In the past it has made me feel extremely unbalanced, but slowly that shift to a different centre becomes more intuitive.

It's an interesting optical illusion because the "self" that I'm afraid of letting go of sees the locus of control outside myself.  Whereas the "self" I'm trying to give more control of feels like it's outside of me, but is really the self that has the most inner control.

Patience.

Success

So, I have an agent.

Set a goal. Accomplished it.  Now the fun.  Or the undermining begins.

Yeah, you read that right.  I'm afraid.  I don't deal well with success.  Once I've achieved something, I find myself manic, overexcited, then anxious and convinced I'm going to fail or disappoint the person.  I find myself tangled up in expectations and before I know it I'm sitting with a bunch of crap at my feet.

How will this be any different?

I need to see the self-sabotaging persona as just that.  A persona that simply cannot be allowed to rule my life anymore.  That doesn't mean I kill her.  I just don't give her the control and power she once had.

The plan today is to use my calendar.  Stick to the tasks I've assigned myself. Particularly the cleaning tasks and my 30 minutes of zhan zhuang.  Be conscious of this persona that wants me to do what I feel like and not the task I assigned.

I will work on both deconstructing my body (because that's the JOL3 challenge for the week) and deconstructing the part of myself that is emotionally driven.

I do not have to be driven by anxiety, distorted beliefs and fear. That's what's undermining me.  But my wisdom will change the course I've been on.

Two Hour Stand

This afternoon I did a two hour stand.

I'm not sure if I've ever done this before.  But I hope I'll have the stamina to do it again.  And to do it regularly.

The goal of this stand was not to experience any altered state of conscious, although I knew that would be inevitable.  It was really to be able to stand with this energy in an open and warm way and explore the fears and blocks that would arise as I did this.

I left with one profound insight.  That the erratic love I received from my mother, sometimes warm and deep and generous, sometimes cold and cruel and manipulative, is tightly wound and tangled and that many of the problems I'm having in my life have to do with my difficulty maintaining any natural, and consistent warmth and affection towards myself.

My father I remember as a mostly distant figure, sometimes gentle, often angry and hungover, and sometimes violently angry.  Later in life he underwent a period of remorse that led to him reducing his drinking, cutting off ties with his old drinking buddies. He became warmer and more loving towards me, but also isolated and dependent.

Nevertheless my parent stayed together, and my relationship with them is an exhausting and ongoing project. And probably won't be getting easier as they age.

Where does standing fit into this.

Standing gives me that stable nurturing that I have such hard time softening to. That's the stable nurturing I'm going to need if I'm going to be able to take care of myself and my son.

If I'm ever going to get rid of this fear of being loved, it's going to happen through this.

Today I could feel it happening. I could feel this gentle energy slowly softening my deepest pain. At one point, I cried like a baby, remembering the deepest, worst moments of loneliness when I was pregnant. Recognizing how alone and afraid I still feel sometimes. At other moments I could feel it playfully loosening me up and getting me ready, physically and emotionally for happiness.

Sometimes it felt sexual.  Sometimes it felt like a really nice, long lunch date.  I tried as much as possible to keep in simple and gentle.  That's what I need right now.

But two hours is the kind of deep, transformative commitment that I need right now.

May I care about myself enough to make that happen.

Wholeness

I had terrible, weird, vivid dreams last night. Dreams about the most disturbed people I've ever known. Violent dreams about sexual torture. Strange dreams about art shows with wooden pterodactyls flying across a room.

My fear is working its way out of my body and mind. But first I need to become more aware of it. That's hard to do with all the clutter I'm putting into it with the internet, and t.v. etc. I need to break the loop. This week I started a habit of fasting two days a week to get rid of some excess weight I've been carrying.  I wonder if I spend two days off the internet and TV what would happen. Two information fasts a week. Sunday, lets say and Wednesday.

Sundays are hard because its all my favourite shows. But I can catch up at another point. I don't need to see these shows at the same time as everyone else. And it's important to me to wake up feeling clear and calm on Mondays. Not tripped out by whatever hyper dramatic show had captured my mind. Also having a clear calm mind will help me better weather the discomforts of the food fast.

I need to do this because I know my writing is suffering and this book has to be good and near completion by the end of the year. I'm way behind what I wanted to be. But I can't get impatient with myself, because impatience is the root of writer's block. I need to keep that fine balance.

So what will I do on this day of digital fast? I'll meditate often. I'll centre my mind at that spot where I know that I am whole, that I am connected to a power far greater than this feeble sense of "self." I'll give my mind space to store up on confidence and calm.  I'll think about my book, so that on my food fast day I'll be primed for a busy work day. I'll read a lot. And I'll continue to weaken this cycle of fear. I will tap into my stores of insight.

Where is it coming from?

Yesterday I went to a mini-retreat at the Tergar Centre.  It's the last small retreat before the Joy of Living -level 2 weekend retreat. It was sort of a free for all retreat. We went back over basic concepts, like open awareness. And watched a DVD on the concept of retreat, the outer, inner and secret. As we practiced on this inner retreat, Minyur our Tibetan meditation leader, encouraged us to start some light analysis of our practice.

The question she encouraged us to keep asking ourselves, as we accessed the deepening calm that grows with a diligent meditation practice, is "where is this coming from? Is it coming from inside me, outside me?"

I've been struggling the last day with fear. A job I thought I would have in September doesn't look like it's going to materialize, so I'm struggling with financial anxiety. During the retreat it seemed to be okay.  I sat quietly with my fear, even felt a little energized by my ability to just sit with it. But last night I felt like I was in its iron grip.

This morning I seem to be able to access my calm again. It's like the fear, which I know comes from my desire to be happy, is a sort of nucleus, and the calm awareness is this protective outer layer. When I ask where it's coming from I remember that I sense this awareness that is both in me and outside of me.

Physically I can feel it in my middle forehead. I've always been able to do that. But I've never labelled it in quite the same way I do now.

Where does this come from? From now I'm going to call it storage. The storage of all the goodness in me and in the world. I forget, but I have access to this storage when I need it.

And when I want it.

One of the the most challenging aspects of this meditation practice is to stay close to my desire for happiness. It's so easy to get caught up in the other desires. But if I stay close to this, I will cultivate the habit of calm awareness that is the foundation of happiness, of love, and of strength.

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.

stress management

In The Way of Power Master Chuen write about stress management as a natural strength. Right now I'm dealing with a few tons of stress: an upcoming court case, a mid career crisis, a huge transition about to take place in Ben's life. I've been having difficulty falling asleep so I'm tired and more vulnerable to identifying with the sense of panic in my brain and body.

Chuen's words remind me that I have the resources inside of me to deal with this stress. If I keep the focus returning again and again to my tan tien, if I return to my foundation postures and re-connect as often as I need to with the natural warmth and the natural relaxation I've been building over years of practice, this stress will be lesss likely to take me over and block my intuitive abilities.

Chuen says over time this develops fearlessnes. What an idea, to be fearless. We have normalized fear so much in our culture that to be fearless is something for action heros and movie stars. Not something for ordinary people who need so much strength just to fight against the social forces in their lives that are allways threatening to take away job security, rights to shared resources, etc. And then there are, of course, the natural forces the bring stress: ageing, death, grief at the ageing and death of others.

We need a cultivated resilience to deal with all of these things. That's why I stand.

I'm connected

Just now I did a simple 20 minute stand. Just noticed the energy and trusted it to ease physical and emotional tensions. Eventually I had a sharp stabbing reminder that I might hear from the editor today, or this week. And with that reminder the fear of rejection.
And then a reminder that as long as I'm standing I'm connected to this energy. And a contemplative thought that this fear of being rejected by an editor might be a smaller version of a deeper fear. That one day I will be rejected by this energy.
And then a reminder that one day I'm going to die and feel what might feel at that moment like the ultimate rejection.
And then an insight that this energy might--no let's say will--step in at the last moment and take me for the final moment of connection.

Interesting talk I saw this morning by Victor Frankl in which he argued that living is a lot like flying a small plane. You have to adjust for wind currents. If you aim directly for where you want to go, the current will usually bring you to a spot below. To go where you need to go, you actually have to aim for a spot above. If we aim to be who we are in reality, we will probably end up below that. If we aim to be better than we are, then we usually end up being what we really are. Frankl links this to Goethe. I think I'll go find a quote to inspire myself.

"All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green."