The Four Thoughts

Another Saturday of meditation and fasting.   I started the day with a reading of Tsoknyi Rinpoche's  writing on the four thoughts that turn the mind. Of course I have read about and contemplated these thoughts before, but..

"...repeating a teaching is not just for your conceptual mind. Once your conceptual mind understands, you think you understand. But that kind of understanding is not enough because repetition is for your mind's emotional understanding." 

The dharma needs to become a stronger, wider, less rickety wheel if it is to become an intuitive, protective and nurturing set of emotions that make sense of our constantly changing affect.  

I had a glimpse of this earlier in the week after discovering some Goenka guided meditations on my Insight Timer.  Goenka points out a number of times that equanimity arises from the understanding of impermanence.  It's not enough to know conceptually that we are impermanent.  When we make intuitive the understanding of impermanence, we  have the insight born of all the four thoughts: that life is a precious opportunity, that is is indeed impermanent, that suffering has causes, and that suffering is not worth the effort of all the habits we have to maintain to perpetuate it for ourselves and others. 

During my two hour meditation I took my time with each thought, taking the time to rest in the emotional consequences of each.   I felt gratitude, equanimity, bliss, and a deep sadness for everyone still as hooked on suffering as I am. 

This morning I brought those thoughts into my meditation and finished with a strong clear connection with absolute well being, vast infinite and always here. 

The weekly quote from Tergar was the insight that I started the year with.

I am committed.  My job now is to document these changes.

Why is gratitude hard?

I have not brought gratitude into my practice, my day, my routines as I intended to back in January.

Watched a cute video about new years eve resolutions that suggested that instead of annual goals we create annual themes.  So far I've lost that theme, but I could put that up on my mission spreadsheet as a way of re-directing myself.

But first if I am going to make gratitude a practice, I need to recognize that it's hard. That grievance is my habit loop, not gratitude. Grievance collecting is something I was raised on, with two parents who were union officers. In times of stress this is what wakes up in me, this pattern of collecting all the slights and injustices real and imagined.

Can I train my heart to recognize how it closes around my vulnerability and how it can open to a stronger energy?  And how do I keep to that training? 

I can commit to the algorithm of Padmasambhava's Natural Liberation.  First awareness of our disillusionment,  then awareness of the preciousness of life. Bring that 1-2 in every practice. 

New trauma

A few days ago my mother fractured her hip.  This is going to put some old traumas back into play.  She's in the hospital and I don't know what the next three months hold for her, or the next year. A good percentage of seniors never recover from this.  My father, who has been struggling with depression for the last few years is in deep distress.

Widening my window of stress around this might be a way of repairing old wounds, and going though some psychic rehabilitation myself. I feel the stress manifesting as cravings and a desire to escape into Netflix. I hope I spend that time instead developing a stronger sense of the preciousness of this life, and this awareness that we all have access to.

What would this rehabilitation look like? Maybe it is me make the intention to follow that bardo course.  To begin to prepare for my parents' death and to help them to prepare for death.  Hospitals are a profound place of disillusionment  and reminder of our transience.

May I be compassionate towards my parents. May they both live as long as they need to. May they both connect with the awareness that is their birthright.

Survival brain

One of the themes of this journal since the beginning has been growth and recovery from trauma.  I go back again and again to the idea of traumatic sprouts, re-growth that is at high risk of early death because of a major trauma that cut off the mature and healthy boughs.

I've been reading a book this week about using mediation for trauma recovery.  The author sees the danger in two systems, the thinking brain and the survival brain being out of balance.  She pointed to gratitude as too often being a positive thinking scheme by the thinking brain used to control the intensity of the survival brain.

Re-reading my post last week on creating a "gratitude algorithm," I realize I might have been in danger of one of those poor thinking brain band aid solutions.  A better solution might be using the algorithm of the precious refuge. The three gems, buddah, dhamma and sangha. In contemplating how precious these places of safety are, gratitude arises naturally from the survival brain and growth comes from a deeper place.

I had a chance to put this into practice this weekend.  I had another one of my work spats that set in motion the intense ball of insecurity, anxiety and shame that gets released every time I get into any kind of work conflict.

Trying to do a lot of breath watching to bring back that sense of how precious refuge in the dhamma is.

Making an algorithm of gratitude, and other things...

I forgot to bring gratitude into meditation practice this week. If I'm going to actually make it the word of the decade it needs to be part of my spiritual algorithm. Meditation on the precious gift of this life is a standard Buddhist practice. A ritual that is a building block of natural awareness.

This first building block, though, is awareness of death.  I felt its fiery touch this week when I received news that a work acquaintance died on the flight shot down accidentally by Iranian forces.  It was tough looking at the bodies on the front pages of the NYTimes, knowing one of them could be this lovely man who had moderated a panel I spoke on a year ago, who died with his sister. In meditation, the day after I heard this news, I went deep. I hit the core of the truth that however random this seems, we will all lose every single person we ever cared about. And anyone who cares about us, will lose us too.  Not that horribly, by inevitably.

If felt right to go back to that grief, as I went back in my memory, to Nairobi, to start writing what I hope will be one of the final chapters in Code For Life. Eight years ago an idea came to me that changed my life entirely. Have I done this idea justice? It has given me so much. Have I given it enough? Does it know how grateful I am?  I am re-reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic.  I miss her world view, that ideas are living entities, that inspiration is only part of this world, but also part of an immaterial world.

I ordered a book on the innovation that is happening around the world, Beyond The Valley. I'm going to take that leap of faith and believe that the dhamma, the big magic, the substance, the tao, whatever it is, exists and that I can take refuge in it. That we can all take refuge in it. I will not let another day go by where I do not express my gratitude to it.

In my essay, and in my meditation, I am playing with the notion of circular versus linear time. People who live in one place are closer to the joys of experiencing time as something that returns again and again to our beginnings.  People who travel, who sell things, who depend on the new and on the story of sustained growth, live on linear time.  Either way they are mental frameworks, not true or untrue. These days I try to find pleasure in both.

Yesterday an interesting piece in the NyTimes on memory.  Adults think they are losing their memory, but really they are only losing a bit of short term memory.  The problem is that they have too many memories. But they are better at patterns, at seeing this circular iteration. It seems to me we are trying to replace this precious wisdom, this ability that our elders have of giving context to things, with artificial intelligence.  Good, very good at short term memory, but not much else.

It's overwhelming to think about the apocalyptic future.  I take refuge, but I remember, also, that nothing lasts for anyone.

Gratitude

This is my word for the decade, gratitude.

It is the key to liberation from craving and aversion. It is the antidote to common misery and stress. When grateful there is none of these triggers. Only joyful being. I sit comfortably in my orbital frontal cortex, the part of the brain that stores the relative reward value, remembers it so that I don't fall too easily for immediate gratifications that do nothing for my wellbeing.  I see clearly that gratitude is its own reward,

What can I do this year to make gratitude stick, as a habit, as a way of being? How do I develop and live an algorithm of gratitude?

1. Make it part of my meditation practice.  Open and close all meditation with a prayer and a feeling of gratitude.

2. Think of every person I'm grateful to before I go to bed.

3. Let people know, every day, how grateful I am.

4. Maintain a gratitude journal.

5. Bring it into other routines, eating, working, cleaning

6. Be grateful now for the good things that are going to happen

7. Make it part of my new contrasting practice. When I visualize success, visualize gratitude for that success. Visualize gratitude to myself for overcoming my addiction to delay.

8. Show people my gratitude by sharing my wisdom, my wealth, my success.

9. Be regularly grateful for those things that are eternal, that I don't have to strive for, or ask for, that I receive as part of being blessed with a life.

10.  Every Sunday morning, be grateful for this journal and all it has done to ground me in happiness.

10 things I'm grateful for since 2010

Writing

This has, and will always be my first practice, my skill, my salvation. It's how I tap into my life force. It's how I remind myself that I am more than all the bad and impulsive decisions I've made in my life.  It's my lifeboat.  I hope in 2030 to say that I was able to find more ways to share my writing with others, to use it to create strong, sustainable momentum towards a safer and happier world, and to inspire others to keep writing. 

Banff

Getting this literary journalism residency in 2011 changed how I saw myself.  I felt what it was to be successful and to be with successful journalists. I experienced the  beauty of Western Canada. I felt the responsibility to care more deeply about the world and to think more seriously about it. To be less glib and more committed. I started to feel the glimmers of the bigger picture, that there was something, some kind of power that we needed to harness, if we were going to make it out of this publishing wasteland.  As I head back to Calgary in February, I hope that I can tap back into the place in my soul that I found in that refuge. 

Learning to code

This changed everything for me. Not just because I learned to code, but because I learned to think more algorithmically, make better decisions about my life and discovered a subject in which I could show thought leadership. 

Grants

The money was a life saver for me in one of the darkest decembers of my life. But more than that, the affirmation from peers. The chance to explore and think deeply about a subject and spend a few years, instead of a few days thinking about an idea. I hope I can finally deliver on that vote of confidence. 

CanCode

This money helped kids and teachers across Canada. Helped the non-profit I built, and helped me start to dig my way out of credit card debt. 

My teachers

Where would I be without Mingyur Rinpoche and S.E. Goenka?  They introduced me to my buddha nature, the dharma, and provided me with sangha that made sustaining this life changing practice possible.  It's hard for me to pin down whether the incremental improvement of my life happened with coding, or meditation, since I started them both at the same time.  But the algorithms that I have received through these teachings and trainings are my most precious and important tools. 

Ben

He's a tough teacher, but his affection, intelligence, humour and sweetness are a constant blessing every day. 

My family

When I hit a financial crisis near the beginning of the decade, I don't know what I would have done without my parents. They are still a challenge, their volatile marriage still a mystery, but I don't expect them to be around by 2030.  They have given me so much, emotionally, financially, culturally, intellectually. My brother is still one of the funniest people I know, and I hope he makes it though his psychological challenges. 

Insight Timer

I had no idea when I first logged into this how influential it would be to my practice.  Almost 2000 hours later, I can't imagine my life without it. 

Insulin

This big discovery of 2020 and the decade was the role that insulin was playing in my weight problems.  I'm less than 10 lbs away from a healthy weight and feel more confident than I've ever been that I will not only get to that weight, but stay there for the rest of my life. One thing I'm confident I will still be grateful for in 2030. 

Word of the year, gratitude.

Read a very interesting article in the New York Times about the impact of gratitude on self-control.
More important than grit, gratitude helps us to avoid temptation.  It's easier to say no when you feel full.

I decided yesterday to make gratitude my word of the year.  It's tough because my monkey mind prefers to believe that the only way I can have love, respect and connection is if I have those things that will make people love me. I can only have them if I want them, and if I stop wanting, where will my drive come from?

Well it could come from motivation, and it could come commitment. 

Today I read these wonderful words from Tsoknyi Rinpoche. He is candid about tulkus. They are susceptible to temptation and delusion as well. But they have an advantage.

"We're trained from a very early age to do the best we can to help others break through whatever ideas they learn and lead them to discover the spark with which they are born.  We're trained to love every living creature until he or she can love themselves.  Until every person on earth ceases to view one another as a threat or an enemy; until every person, in every job, every relationship, every encounter, can see the wonder, the beauty, and the potential in everyone with whom they come in contact. Until we show people how to let go of their stores, then fill within themselves the sense of disconnectedness, our job is not done."

That's plenty to want right there.

What I've learned from a decade of writing about stillness...

So, I've learned some things.

First that if you stand or sit still regularly for, on average, an hour or so a day--in one session, in shorter sessions, in a park or in a messy, cluttered room--you will change. Or maybe more accurately you will change back. You will recover a deep calm, and pleasurable sense of well being that is our birthright. For whatever reason, we unlearn it, but it is always there to re-connect with.

It has been my experience that this power transfers into other parts of my life, that it has given me the energy and cognitive tools to be a better parent, a better writer, a better activist, a better educator, and develop abilities I never realized I could have. It has slowly and surely lifted me out of poverty, and into a good, solid income. (To be frank, this journey has not been a cruise, but more of a white water kayak trip, often without a guide.  So I would never recommend meditation as the quick path to money.)

It is also my experience that calm, used well, is a motivating force, not a driving force.  I experience it, but I'm not addicted to it. Calm does not make me apathetic. It gives me the courage to feel more and do more. It protects me from the drives that would lead us to harm.

From the reliable and sustainable supply of calm and pleasure has come compassion, the desire to help others manage their displeasure and agitation and the build-up of suffering that comes from my desperation to escape the natural ebb and flow of sensation.


From this experience I've started to develop some beliefs.  But I recognize these as beliefs, not facts.

I believe...

That this is true for everyone, that it would be impossible for anyone taking the time to be still, every day, to not eventually recover the power and joy that arises out of stillness.  I may have beaten down a wider neurological path to it. But I have nothing that is not innate in anyone.

That compassion is our greatest tool. It is the fundamental technology that allows us to increase this well being for ourselves, for those around us, and if we get it right, to make this increase exponential.  The more and deeper calm we are capable of, the more it spreads to those we love, the more it comes back to us.

That the calm cultivated through meditation connects us to a palpable energy in the world. Maybe it's dark matter, maybe it's the Tao, or Buddha nature, or the Holy Spirit or some other human attempt to describe it. This I don't know and I don't know if anyone will ever know. But I believe this deep and powerful calm gives us access to a kind of substance that has impact on our lives and on the world around us. And even if it doesn't exist, faith in this energy transforms us in powerful ways too important to discount as magical thinking.

And in this place of calm, we can cultivate perhaps the greatest and most liberating emotion of all, gratitude. If compassion is our best technology, then gratitude is our best magic.  Something happens in the grateful heart, a spark, a nudge, that over time becomes like compound interest.  Gratitude makes us wealthy because gratitude tells us we are wealthy.  Even in those moments when objectively we have nothing.

So at the end of this wonderful and ultimately lucky decade,  I feel tremendous gratitude.

I feel gratitude for gratitude, and above all for the fruits of stillness.

Ideal Day

This is an exercise in living.  My Ideal Day:

I wake up profoundly well rested from a deep, dreamless healing sleep.  I rise, in a feeling of grounded peace and equanimity. I meditate for an hour in a state of pure lucidity the energy rising in my from my core, like the sun.  I miss Ben, but when I wake up there's a sweet e-mail with a picture from the wonderful life that he's having.  I don't know what it is yet, but I know I can trust him. I am driven on this day, like most days with a sustainable feeling of faith and gratitude. I dedicate my meditation to every being. May all our suffering be transformed into peace. My all our hearts be open. May all of our wisdom shine from within.

I walk into a clean kitchen: dishes put a way, tables and counter tops wiped down, grime gone, floor swept and mopped. I feel like a very different person and my environment is the first and foremost clue to how much I' changed.

I weigh myself, and the number is data on a healthy life with well chosen indulgences and plenty of exercise.

Breakfast is healthy and delicious, green apple and cheese on baguette, or stone cut oatmeal, berries, cream and sugar. My gut feels really strong and full of a diverse pack of bacteria.

I love my home, bright, quiet,  well located.  Near the mountain so I can run.  After reading the newspaper, I write for an hour. The ideas, feelings, images, insights flow easily from a clear vision. Why not, they are coming from that place that is me and also everyone. I am remembering my life with some pain, but also joy. I breathe in all the despair and loneliness and alienation that I felt for so many years, and breathe out candour and humour and hope and power. A power that lifts up everyone who reads my words.

I look around my home, so clean and comfortable and fun.  Having the money for a cleaning lady, helps, but I'm also effortlessly tidy and I still stick to the basic routines that got me there.  I have cultivated the cleaning habit and it's not going anywhere, ever.

Phone rings. It's a fascinating new friend. We're having dinner with our other fascinating friends later on.  Cool friends, not narcissists. Real laughter and warmth and reciprocity.  I can't believe I have the money to buy them dinner, but I do.  Yesterday I got another great residual cheque.  My debts are gone  I have a stable writing career. Martha is happy and so is my NY publisher.

I've finished that book tour, which went so well. It's such a wonderful feeling to look out into a crowd of people who feel enriched by my writing.  And I'm researching for my upcoming trip to Africa.

I have lunch and read for a while, as I've always done. Do a little editing on some of the work I've done recently.

Around 3 p.m. I head out for a run. I feel great. I'm at a healthy weight.  I'm running effortlessly and strong. Still doing a little parkour. Ben still thinks I'm hilarious. Only the occasional aches and pains. I return home, settle into a bath, get into my comfy dressing gown. Watch a bit of T.V.  Thank God the Trump administration is over! What a relief that people finally shifted the balance of sanity back.  Probably won't have quite the same restful sleep tonight after a rich meal.  But I'll adapt and find my way back the next day, or the day after that.

Door rings. It's my boyfriend.  I'm getting dressed and offer him a drink, but he wants to fool around first, and so do I. I'll get back to this later...

Thanksgiving

Canadian Thanksgiving.

Much to be grateful for this year.  More money, more work. A stronger connection to my basic goodness, intelligence and warmth.

I have a healthy, fit body. I have an expertise that's valuable. Gratitude is the emotion that enriches and accelerates whatever good habit I've been able to cultivate. It's important to give thanks for all that has been given to us.  But also for the goodness that we have cultivated through our own efforts, decisions and commitments.

Gratitude makes us feel safe. It signals to the body and the brain that we have enough and that we are enough.

More than enough .

Absolute Love

A few years back I wrote a post about a pivotal moment in my practice, the night my depression died. This morning I write about another such moment. The morning my self-hatred healed.

The process started last night, in much the same way, with insomnia. To try to nudge myself asleep I listend to a Tergar meditation on essence love, a meditation where we forget about lovingkindness and compassion, and practice being, without concept, without cognition with whatever suffering we're feeling in its rawest, most present energy. Only there is transformation possible.

I followed that up with a Rob Bell podcast on grace and peace. Grace is that energy that allows us to receive the gifts of life, and its abundant rewards that are always available to us, whether we deserve them or not. I usually fall asleep half way through a Robcast, but not this night.

Finally, tired of every virtuous option available to me,  I watched the last episode of Downton Abbey on Netflix, until eventually I drifted off.

This morning I was too dull in my brain to read or think much, so I meditated during the hour that I've been trying to devote to tidying. During this meditation, the completion of the triad I started two weeks ago with Absolute Joy and Absolute Self emerged.  Absolute Love, the love that is always there, whether we see it or not, regardless of what we have done in our lives.

Then it came to me that before I assimilate this sense of Absolute Love, I need to deal with the deep block, such a strong part of me, so persistent a presence, I'm not even aware it's there.  Self hatred.  My legacy of years of rage, frustration, unkindness. That self hatred is like this lump of carbon in my heart.  But it  is also  in its way the gem like flame that Walter Pater writes about in his famous essay on the Renaissance. It is love gone hard. But it is love.

My parents successfully maintained their hatred for over 50 years. And I wonder if this has been a great gift to me in a way, because al I need to do is turn it into love.  I have the maintenance part down, I just need the antidote.

That night my depression died, did not mean the end of depression, but it did mean the end of depression having a death grip on me.  It still visits from time to time, but it's never been as strong in me again.  This has happened now with my hatred.  I don't expect it to leave me, but it will never rule me in the way it once did. And for that I am deeply grateful.

Sufficiency

"May we be free of hunger and discord,
 And have joy and a world at peace."

I quote the same lines as last week, because this week I want to focus on the second line. Last week I focussed on the hunger I feel, emotionally, spiritually as well as physically.  And I've learned a few things. Like, when I'm angry, it's usually because I'm feeling emotionally hungry and needy, and that if i stop for a moment, I can trace that feeling back to the trigger, calm myself down and then focus on what I really need, which is not usually to win a fight or argument.

If I weren't hungry any more.  If I had what I needed, and knew deep in my being that I will continue to have what I need until I leave this body, how might my life change? How might all our lives change if we knew that.

Or let's start a step back from that.  If I spend more time focussed on what I have, on the fact that I have enough to eat and a roof over my head, and this month at least enough money to pay the rent, how would my life change.

I can have joy and peace now.  Or at least many moments of profound joy and peace thanks to my meditation practice. I don't need to make that permanent for myself, and perhaps it's better that I don't if I want to spend a life in service towards a bigger goal of joy and peace for others. I want to feel the pain and anxieties and hungers of others. I want to feel it, so that I can understand it, and help others to understand it.

But I'm also most helpful as someone who can help others understand joy and peace, and how to get there. Being in that joy and peace, being someone who manifests that, maybe that's the best way for me to move people forward.

Impact

What is the impact of my practice?

A year has passed and it's time to pay attention to what I've achieved, accomplished, learned.

I've maintained a longer morning practice, an hour in the morning ever since doing the silent retreat. I feel the impact of that practice on my energy level.  I feel a very concrete connection to pure awareness, much stronger and solid than I have in the past.

I have more willingness and courage to face emptiness. But it's still hard. Time and the self have their grip on me.

I've realized how strong my addiction to anger is, and how much it's an escape from sadness and anxiety. I'm very afraid of giving it up. But I also know that sadness is magic.  It's the sign that blocked energy is loosening up and it's the earth and moisture that joy grows in. So I will try to stay open to any sadness of grief that happens this year.

My book is getting better. My challenge this year will be to trust in that as my mission and to have faith that the funding I need will come.

I've decided next year, to make emptiness my mission, my word, my challenge.

My Gratitude

December 2012, three years ago, my life was in crisis.  I’d lost my job, I was out of savings, I had a twelve year old son to support, and I felt terrified and alone.

This, after decades of meditation, tai chi, a wide ranging curiosity about eastern philosophy and many, many hours of practice.  But I’d never really had a teacher.  I come from a highly intellectual, emotionally intense and chaotic Catholic family, and while I’d always been very interested in Buddhism, I had a deep resistance towards taking on a whole new complicated set of concepts and rituals. I did, however, benefit greatly from the sitting and mindfulness practices. Though not, apparently, to the point where I was immune from disaster.

In a moment of desperation I turned to someone who I don’t usually turn to, my younger brother.  As the older sister, I’m usually the one giving him advice, telling him how to live his life, and rarely, but occasionally, the one he turns to for wisdom in his own times of crisis.  My brother, while not an expert in how to live a perfect life, had much more experience with crisis. I noticed that he seemed happier and more relaxed than he’d been in a while. Maybe he had some kind of lifeline he could throw me?

He did.  He pointed me to Mingyur Rinpoche’s introduction to meditation video.  The moment I heard the “secret” to meditation, that listening to sound is closer to the true spirit of meditation than “meditating” on sound, I knew I’d found my teacher.

I’d never looked for a teacher because I didn’t feel like I needed someone to teach me more meditation.  I didn’t know that I needed someone to teach me less meditation, and how to slowly start letting go of the accumulated emotional and intellectual clutter of a very privileged and concept rich upbringing.

I needed a teacher who could give me a glimpse of beginner’s mind, so that I could take some refuge in that, and start re-building real clarity and peace.

I still have challenges in my life, but I also have place within me of refuge, that I now know is enduring and nurturing and there for me no matter what external circumstances arise.

So I thank you Rinpoche, for your books and videos, and for Tergar. For your light touch, and the tremendous courage you’ve shown in taking your wandering retreat.  You are living proof of the power and strength of your peace and joy. And even though I may never be or become a Buddhist, I know I will remain your student, however, wherever and forever.

The Pond

This week I have the most perfect meditation spot I may ever have in my life. Peter Pond is outside my bedroom deck, where I have a view of the sunrise over both the ocean and a placid, mirror still pond.

I need it.  My family situation is as always unstable, drinking, fighting, the usual.  But I've made progress since last year. The fights are more like sudden storms, than bitter weeks of winter. This may be because I've given up the evening cocktails and wine with dinner. I'm running more, eating better, physical energy translates into emotional energy.  It may also be because my meditation is longer.  And I suspect it's been because I've been rooting myself in compassion meditation.

What would it be like to have lived my life with no insight into my emotional suffering? Or into the suffering that I cause others? I still spend much of my life blindly chasing after distractions that I think will bring me happiness, but at best bring me temporary relief from suffering.  But at least I know this. So many people go through their lives with no idea. Just following the recipe society gives them with no questions. And then at the end of their lives, they are physically and emotionally tired and confused, unable to communicate with the people whose love they desperately need. Unable to feel real compassion for themselves and others.

I don't just have this pond.  I have the capacity to see the astonishing gift that this pond is.  I have the ability to find joy in this pond. I have all I need to be happy, no matter whatever happens in my life. I'm good.

Precious Life

Day 5 of this cleanse.  Some back pain last night, but I feel like I'm on the other side of the hump.  Feeling a strong appetite for fruits and vegetables.  Feeling a pervasive energy.  All the signs of renewed vitality.

So how do I make this last?  Or is that the right question?

My liver, my kidneys, my skin, these organs that manage all the toxins are such remarkable feats of engineering.  They will continue to clean me up, regardless of what I put in there. But I don't get to take advantage of their power when I'm overloading them with junk.  So the better question to ask is, how do I maintain my awareness of this energy that is always available to me so that I don't muck it up again?

Smile into the liver.  I read advice in Elizabeth Gilbert's book.

Today I take that to mean, take pride in this wonderful life. Take pride in the Buddha nature that is available to us all. Feel how precious this life and this energy is and treat it like the jewel that it is.

Gratitude is one of the most powerful forces there is in the psyche because it multiplies whatever you apply it to. This morning I feel really grateful for this energy and this body and this life.  I have taken steps to wipe the mud off this treasure, and I hope I have the will to keep it clean.

Gratitude

I bought Ben an alarm clock yesterday.  I've decided to extend my morning meditation practice to an hour. Part of my mission. 

I did this a few years back. Standing first thing in the morning for an hour. Today maybe I'll take a look at my journals from that time.  Back then I wanted to see what would happen.  Now I know what will happen. My concentration, optimism, and self-esteem will increase.  I'll have a more fully developed ability to bring joy into my life and into the lives of others.  As far as I'm concerned, this is science.

There's an energy I feel, as one writer I've been reading recently puts it, this is a "thinking substance." I rest in this energy and I feel this clarity and lucidity that I know is a permanent quality in my life.

Unfortunately I still struggle with a lot of feeling that feel permanent when I'm feeling them, doubt, self-hatred, resentment, despair.  But I know that feeling of permanence is a delusion.  I don't try and fight these feelings, but I do try to become more conscious of their impermance.

The feeling that comes back to me again and again, which I consider one of the "technology" feelings like compassion, is gratitude.  Like loving kindness, these are feelings that have the power to iterate positive liberating feelings in the brain.  Gratitude is like a recursive feeling.  It reinforces the good in life, which in turn reinforces other goods, and before you know you're seeing patterns of good in the world. Before you know it, you have a solid foundation for abundance.

As always, it's important to rest and allow feeling like gratitude and compassion some assimilation time. Walking through life, blissed out and silly, isn't practical and will eventually lead to a reaction.  So small sips of joy, and gratitude, and hope are fine for now.

Objects

I had a crucial insight this week.

In Tergar's Joy of Living program we're meditating on neutral objects.  Mingyur Rinpoche suggests something in the distance like a patch of color on a wall.  He also describes a process by which our sense of distinction between self and object dissolves after a while.

I wasn't sure what he meant until I experienced it myself. For one meditation I picked a boring white square pattern on the apartment building outside my window. I steeled myself for what I was sure would be the dullest meditation I'd ever experienced.  But in time something happened.  I began to see the contrasting bricks and then the bricks that were diagonal to it. In time, I saw that pattern as a symbol of myself.  Solid, negative space around me, brick upon brick, held in place by gravity but able to hold people up way above the ground. The next day I had a similar experience with the excess cord on a clothesline.  I saw myself in time as that piece of cord, suspended in the sky.  Not heavy enough to fall.  But strong enough to stay in place.  I saw the perfect tension of the clothesline as the tension I need to maintain in my practice.

If I  see myself in nondescript objects, then surely I must see myself in everyone I meet.  If I'm feeling vulnerable and stressed and angry and closed hearted, then I'm going to see everyone as that.  But if my mind is strengthened and renewed by compassion and gratitude, then I'm more likely to see everyone around me as compassionate and generous.

Now the dedication I do at the beginning of my meditation makes sense. This meditation really is work I do for all beings. I'm more likely to see the good in people as a result of this practice, and in seeing the good in them, I'm more likely to feel good.  It's a positive feedback loop that in time develops its own momentum.

One day I will not have to work so hard at this.  And when I say I work for the welfare of others I will mean that I "work," in the sense of I function mechanically how I'm supposed to.  Like the clothesline, like the bricks, which I rarely notice, but for which today I am deeply grateful.