locality

Been thinking a lot about the truth that data works most efficiently when it is localized, i.e closeby, easily accessed.  This is why, for instance, AI is most powerful when all the data is stored in one place and why Amazon and google aren't going anywhere, anytime soon.

It's why to make well-being absolute , we have to bring our attention to the actual place where that well-being is produced.  The gut, the serotonin motherlode

I've been experimenting with renewed attention to my dan tien for the last week.  It's very powerful. I feel the intensity of that energy.

But I've also been experimenting this weekend with the direct path.  Being aware of global awareness, the reality that there is inter being and that there is awareness outside the material location of well-being. This big awareness that unites us will always be more powerful, collectively, than what we can harness in one body. In the best and wisest world, both yield their power towards the liberation of all.

The use of locality should ultimately be the ability to create global interdependence and sustainable peace throughout the world. In the same way we focus energy in the dan tien so that we can engage with everything that exists outside the centre.  We focus on the the dan tien so that in time we can let go of the dan tien.

Only

To whatever degree we know that we deeply have what we need within ourselves, we will let go...

Cognitive Body

Sometime around last summer, I started to notice an energy that seemed to be stabilizing in my heart area. Like a kind of ballbearing, but composed of clear moving energy. Now in the last few days after my retreat, I've felt this energy sinking down. Now it's stabilizing in my gut area.
  Everything for the next few months in my practice is going to be about stabilizing this gut energy because I believe this is the seat of wisdom.  This is the place from where wisdom shines.
  In the meantime I need to allow a lot of frozen energy to thaw. Okay it doesn't actually feel frozen as much as fossilized, or solidified to the point of carbonization. Yesterday I could feel a lifetime of self hatred in my gut and my body, and it seemed impossible for me to be anything but a big, block of self hatred.
 This is where The Mirror meditation is probably useful. The more I see the world around me as reflection and illusion, the easier it is to feel this about my inner life.
 I'm curious to see how my running practice affects this belly energy.  I know that I felt an increase of energy in my heart after six months of running, but I want to start working on my core strength so that I can get faster and run for longer periods and protect myself from injury. Will this translate into an actual feeling of wisdom, physically as well as spiritually?
  What I'm starting to feel the more I bring my Tergar and Zhan Zhuang practice together is a kind of "cognitive body."  This is a body that has been created from years of thought and emotion that have become habits, not always good, but often quite good. When all I see is the bad, it can feel pretty hopeless.  But the more I practice, the more I remember all the work I've done towards finding these feeling of peace and joy.

Self Directed retreat, day 1

I noticed in my JOL3 guidebook yesterday that I'm supposed to do a two day retreat at some point during my six months of practice.  Because I'm actually at midpoint--14 weeks into it--and because I'm not sure I'll have the time again in the next few months--or ever--I decided to do it now.

I'm supposed to do at least six hours a day, each day.   It's possible I've actually done that in my more enthusiastic stages.  But I've never done that much meditation formally before.  It's kind of like doing an ultra marathon of meditation. At first it felt incredibly daunting.

But I'm up to it.  I've just completed five hours of meditation.  I'll probably go out for a run, and then I'll do another hour tonight before bed.  To make it a retreat, I'm staying away from news, internet surfing television, even as much as possible, imaginary conversations.

So far it's been an interesting trip.  In the first hour, I felt a pleasant all over vitality that seemed to originate mostly in my brain and felt like what I would call, a sort of spirit molecule awakening, as though my body was heading into the either and was kind of connecting with all the awareness around me. Towards the end of this first hour though, I started to wonder if this was really happening, or this was just come kind of intellectual concept I was framing my experience in.

Hour two was more challenging. The excitement of starting a meditation retreat was starting to ebb, and I found myself sitting in boredom, restlessness, all the feelings I try as much as possible to avoid during a normal day.  Doubt starting setting in about this path, about this decision. Shouldn't I be doing something more important with my life.  It started to become clear to me how much I really do believe that happiness is a result of staying with the program, the job, the status, the security of a respectable life.  I doubt myself, deeply, because I feel I've permanently fallen off that track, that debt will weigh me down and money problems will win out, and that this is my due.

Hour three I found myself a little happier.  I felt a joy in my heart that I know has very little to do with money or status, and everything to do with my spiritual beliefs.  Nothing wrong with money, an important job, power, status, respectablity, any of those things.  But the joy in my heart that I've cultivated out of my spiritual practice is not something that can be bought, or given as a reward.  It's there because of many, many hours of faith in this energy.  So it felt good to get my faith, the ground of my practice and my power, back.

I broke for a light lunch and did a little reading of Rinpoche's book, and found myself drawn to a passage about Buddah nature as a nugget of gold hidden deep under a mountain of waste and mud. As I set into hour four, I had that story priming my mind, and I felt the energy move down from the joy of my heart to the discomfort of my gut.  As yes, my gut, the mountain of waste in I hide, ignore and forget my most powerful feelings, the most powerful seat of my practice, the dan tien.

Hour five was really about explore the literal, experiential truth of gut wisdom.  This insight is such a flickering fire fly, or so it feels like.  Man I hate resting in my gut.  But it's where the wisdom is, and if I don't accept that, I'm like a banana (or is it a cocoa) tree.  The fruit of my practice gets cut down once a year, and everything has to start again.  If I want my power to have staying power, even though I recognize that the fruits of that staying power will never be permanent, I need to really root myself back in my tan tien.

I need to keep working on that energy.

For mysef, and for everyone who might be open to this teaching.