Fruition as the Path

Not a rose apple, but close enough

There's a story about the Buddah that's useful for understanding the theory behind awareness meditation. 

You may, or may not know that the Buddah spent many years of travelling with a gang of pretty radical believers. They trained in extremely rigourous meditation practices intended to eradicate all desire, all ambition, all thoughts of anything that might possibly corrupt the heart or the mind. But one day on this path, he just hit a wall. 

At that point, he had this childhood memory. He remembered when he was a kid and he snuck away from a big festival in his village and discovered this beautiful rose apple tree. He sat down, and sitting there under this gorgeous fragrant tree, just being, with no pressure to be anything or do anything, he remembered this pure, sweet feeling of bliss. As the story goes, this memory was the gateway to his enlightenment.

The point of this story is the tree

It's important to understand that in awareness meditation the starting point for achieving happiness is not that quiet subtle feeling of being present that we might have had when we were kids. The starting point is the big beautiful amazing tree. The starting point is being able to see that tree as our mind, right now.  

The challenge is that we don't often see the spectacular beauty of our mind, and even in those rare moments that we do, we struggle to maintain that recognition. 

There are good reasons for this. First we often mistrust big experiences of happiness. This may be particularly true if you've come from any background where there was childhood trauma. You might have
developed a lot of mistrust of happiness, especially big happiness, because too often big happiness meant that big unhappiness was right around the corner.  

But awareness meditation invites you to consider the possibility that the kind of happiness that inevitably passes might be a different kind of happiness that we experience when we truly recognizee the power, clarity and natural wisdom of the mind.

Happiness and the causes of happiness

That said nobody is claiming this isn't a challenge. Awareness meditation does not ask or even recommend that you recognize the power of your mind, experience bliss and then try to lock into that as though your life and everyone else's lives depended on it.  It's perfectly fine, and even wise, that we start with brief glimpses of that big happiness, or what is called in some buddhist traditions "fruition as the path." In other words we start with a glimpse of the happiness that is actually available to us right now, get some energy from that, but then take a break a explore the kind of step by step path that might still feel more intuitive. 

The step by step path is described as using causes as the path. 

We all know the step by step path of starting with a seed and planting and watching it grow. So that might be the path more commonly understood as "mindfulness." The path of relaxing into subtly pleasant feelings like, just being, or gentle curiosity, or kindness.  For many of us that path feels more comfortable because society encourages us to think small, and likes us to work at things. 

Imagine, however, that you're a farmer who has never seen an apple tree, and someone tries to sell you some seeds, and convince you to make room for a pretty big tree, and then  plant and them and tend them and watch them for a year. That's a lot of work and diligence to expect from someone if they don't know what it is exactly that they are growing. 

The risks of taking the cause as the path

If your mind is anything like my mind, it might get excited for a little while about the project of tending tiny seeds for results long into the future. But then a week or two, or a month or two, the mind remembers those seeds and then re-discovers them all dried up, because it's way into some other seed project. 

So it's very important to keep coming back to this big vision of what your mind is. You don't have to lock into it. But you do need to make the space in your life for that recognition to become more intuitive, if you are going to experience the kind of sustained happiness that awareness meditation is promising you. 

The great news is that you don't have to wait until some day in the future to experience that happiness. You can do that right here, right now, anytime and anywhere that you want.

 

Laurie Anderson "Be Happy"

Feel the sadness, don't be the sadness

I can apply the consciousness practices to this. 

And I can be the happiness. 

Top insights of 2021

1. The most difficult emotions contain the seed of deep compassion.  I discovered this in a self-directed retreat, and later in retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche.  In fact, if I really have the courage to sit with self hatred, it starts to move around become three dimensional, reflect the space around and inevitably becomes joy.  Joy on tap. 

We are of the universe and the universe is always well, even if every part of it is dying.

2. Emotional understanding requires repetition, says Tsoknyi Rinpoche

...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.

3. If emotions are predictions as Lisa Feldman Barrett convingly theorizes, then joy is the prediction of wellness.  Both relative and absolute.  

4. By this logic equanimity is the prediction of balance. 

5. Intentions are more stable than emotions. This helped me through the worst days of my father's death. 

6.  I was struck by the idea that gratitude is the cause of happiness not the effect. Feeling grateful for what is going to happen is a prediction feeling that is tied to intention. 

7.  I developed new words to describe my feelings: incrementum, the feeling of maintaining a small change that will in time create well being. Remomentum, restarting a habit that will restore well being. Being aware of these feelings is driving in second gear. Noticing they have become automatic is third gear. 

8. I had some peak meditation experience from fasting.  It's possible that  skillful fasting can contribute to longevity. 

9. Reading the last chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva to my father before he died has created a bond with that text that will last for the rest of my life. 

 As long as space endures, and being are to be found, may I remain to drive away the sorrows of the world

10.  Confusion is responsible for my mistakes not "me." 

 

 

 

Joy on tap

A Saturday of meditation and fasting. 

After the first 2 hr sit I asked myself how I would feel if it was a successful day.  Joy.  I can say that now because I feel that this is a dependable emotion for me now.  That isn't to say that I didn't feel any painful emotion.  I certainly did.  

During my second 2 her sit, I felt such a strong wave of compassion, it was like I was feeling for all the suffering in the world that I could fit into my heart.  I was dense and immeasurable despair. Then suddenly, a wet trickle of warmth began to flow in my heart, as though a trickle water was emerging from a crack in the ice.

I still hear the familiar hate myself refrain.  But I practiced RAIN on it, bathed it in acceptance, and eventually it began to loosen, like a 3D hologram turning around beneath my gaze. I could see the hatred as simply solid energy, surrounded by other kinds of energy.  All was energy, all the calm ocean like pleasure, all the pain, both petrified and sharp.  All was awareness. I felt what Mingyur Rinpoche speaks of when he defines happiness as the experience of absolute wellbeing.  

We are of the universe and the universe is always well, even if every part of it is dying. 

During my last meditation, I just let go.  Let go of my pain, of my self, of the content of my past.  I let go as though I was dying, returning home.  It was a happiness that could sustain itself.  It was joy as achievable as a water pump.  No more waiting around for the ice to crack. 

December of Digital Declutter

  I end my year with a digital de-clutter. 

This is largely about un-hooking from streaming. I'm tired of all that video content pinballing around in my head. I'm tired of my head. What would it feel like to be happy? More and more I see it as the ability to just rest in wellbeing.  Stop the constant search for drama. 

Once I unhook, I will have to be with my aversion. That tight cable of tension that runs through my heart, my forehead, down to my belly. What would it be like to let go?

I sit here on day 1.  The only news of the day, the tightness that holds me to the past. 

Chocolate current

Apparently twenty per cent of the population is born happy.  They have a genetic pre-disposition that supplies more anandamide, a well-being transmitter, to the brain that the average human. A woman in Scotland had such an overload of anandamide that she couldn't feel anxiety, pain, fear,  had a tendency to get hurt, but her wounds healed much more quickly than most people.

Chocolate is apparently a trigger of anandamide. One study found that dark chocolate had potential as a natural anti-depressant. When I found this out I experimented with a meditation I was calling chocolate intravenous, imagining that I had just the right amount of chocolate in my veins, not so much that I felt sick but enough to sustain a stable feeling of enjoyment.

Knowing that enjoyment is something that can be sustained seems to be juicing my transformation. I've been thinking back to Echhart Tolle's assertion that on the New Earth we will live in three modes of being, acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm.  Enjoyment will replace want. I'm experimenting with this idea as I continue with the rest of the world in COVID 19 lockdown.

I don't think the economy will ever be the same again, because we will find it harder to accept the myth that ultimate happiness is found in stuff, intimate relationships, and careers. It's not that these things don't bring happiness, but none of them last.  The only thing that lasts is awareness. And even that only last for the duration of a life, which will never seem very long at the end.

Doing what we can to contribute to collective awareness, so that this truth will carry on after we are gone. That's all this is about.

Construction Retreat

A couple of years ago, I started Joy of Level 3 with a meditation that felt literally groundbreaking.  I forgot that the fire escape outside my window was being replaced, and ten minutes into my meditation I was meditating on jackhammers. Fortunately, my enthusiasm was such that by the end of my meditation it had become a blissful metaphor for a feeling of complete reconstruction and renewal.

I had a similar experience on this two day retreat, which I did while Ben was visiting his father in Israel.  I forgot about the ongoing construction that is being done on the road outside my house.  This is not jackhammers for half an hour.  This is screechy old backhoes, scrapping metal and massive road digging.  It was ceaseless and unpleasant, and I got through it with construction earplugs and white noise.  But still, it felt like a very powerful metaphor for what was happening in this meditation.   Nothing less than a complete rebuilding of the old and crappy roads in my mind, so that I can have a quicker and easier ride to absolute reality.

Mingyur Rinpoche defines AR as emptiness, a condition in which perceptions are intuitively recognized as an infinite and transitive flow of possible experiences.  Most of my life is still spent in relative reality, "the sum of experiences arising from the mistaken idea that whatever you perceive is in and of itself real."

And so I live with this entrenched fear that I won't get what I want or need to have the happiness that I believe can only come from the things my society says will bring happiness. It's not that these societal values  won't bring me pleasure or satisfaction, it's that because none of these things are inherently real, i.e. lasting, they can't be the basis of lasting happiness.

What lasts and what can only last is the flow presence, the flow of perception and also the emptiness and clarity in and around it. To recognize absolute well being more intuitively, I have to build a quicker, wider, better infrastructure.

Roads aren't built in a day, or two days.  But I believe this weekend I have made a very good start. I have come away with a better understanding of the onion layers of reactivity.  What I've been watching with calm abiding is not the pain, the thoughts, the feelings, but more importantly the mind's reactions to the pain, the thoughts the feelings.  I am cultivating a bare awareness of bare awareness, hoping to catch the thoughts, feelings, sensations as they arise, and then once caught, do nothing much more than greet them with equanimity.

Hey nice to meet you, self-hatred that is really fear that I won't have what I want, even, especially absolute well-being!  The more I recognize this fear, the more misguided it so obviously is. Absolute well-being isn't something you can have, hold, preserve.  Absolute reality is a flow, an unfolding of events.  The well-being is our ease with that flow.  Self-hatred is a major pothole.

The emptiness I experience when my thoughts and fears and reactivity has settled down is wordless and indescribable. It has always bothered me that something wordless is something that can't be passed on. If you can't share it, what is the use of having it? But then I had the insight that this wordless experience is like my spiritual capital.  The fruits are like the interest that grows from it. The fruits can be passed on. The joys and pleasure and transient things that I can enjoy more because I have the capital that is permanent, those I can pass on.  The capital is something that I can inspire others to have.  But I can't give it away.  Everyone has to earn their own. Or better yet, everyone has to realize on their own that it is simply there for the taking. But I can't make them see it, take it, or have it.

Definition of Happiness

"It's an experience of absolute well-being that radiates through all physical, emotional, and mental states--even that that might be ordinarily labeled as unpleasant."

I've been trying to convince my son, Ben, that there is such a thing as happiness. He has read Camus and believes that the rock is always going to be falling back on him.

So I started re-reading Joy of Living and came upon the above quote as something to work with in advancing my argument.  It's a tricky and interesting quote because it's easy to misread it and think that happiness is the absolute well-being.  In fact happiness is the experience of this  state of peace. It's not being in a continuous state of blissful calm that constitutes happiness, it's the intuitive knowledge that this state is there.

Many people who meditate, myself included much of the time, have an intellectual, conceptual grasp of this ideas.  Formal meditation, regular practice, is what makes it truly understood at the physical and emotional level.

But note, this definition also encompasses the unpleasant sensations.  Happiness can actual radiate from and radiate through stress.  This morning I read this really interesting article in the NYTimes on How To Be Better At Stress.  The theory is that perceiving the stress response as something that makes you stronger, as part of a thriving body, makes people both physically and psychologically stronger.

My goal in the next month, and in the next year (birthday on Tuesday) is to work on having an intuitive of how deep abiding calm and stress can work together to make me stronger and healthier.   The trick is to be able to experience both at the same time.  To be able to thrive from the benefits of both.

Awareness

Awareness allows me to see the impermanence of my thoughts and above all the impermanence of these stages where my thoughts are stuck in a chaotic jumble.  

Right now for instance, I am committed to becoming more aware of the effort that I need to put into my environment to keep the normal standards of cleanliness.  I am defining them now as a  few forever loops; keep the dishes washed and put away: keeping the kitchen floor swept once a day; wiping down the kitchen table and counters once a day; wiping the bathroom sink, swishing toilet, keeping an eye out for clutter; doing a five-minute room rescue.

There is a mathematics to cleaning.  If I keep those loops going forever I will be able to maintain a normal standard of cleanliness without too much effort.  And then my efforts will go into the deeper cleaning, rather than the restarting after everything has descended into chaos. I hope.  So that’s the method. But no method will keep the house clean.  Only cleaning will keep the house clean.  Only activity, not theory, will maintain the feeling of being nurtured and cared for.

I have had an easier time doing this with writing. Why am I keeping this forever loop of brief daily writings happening?  Because I want to make sure that my thoughts do not become a chaotic, frozen jumble, and that I am cognitively flexible. This is how I connect to awareness.  This forever loop of writing is and has always been the way that I connect to the awareness that is stable and unending that will be there as long as life is here. That life may and probably won’t be human life. We may very well be exterminated, or exterminate ourselves.  I don’t know. These are some morbid thoughts.  But I enjoy this kind of contemplative energy, even when it’s dark. This is how I keep my writing going. Keep on writing.  Just keep on writing.   

I don’t seem to be able to maintain the same daily commitment into cleaning. Or exercise.  Or into wholesome, healthy eating of greens and fiber.  And frankly, those things are more important to my happiness. Writing is not the cause of happiness. Awareness is the cause of happiness, not writing. Writing every day and being successful at writing is a secondary activity. It is not and will never be a prime cause of happiness. That is energy and power that results in sustainable happiness.  But a life of mild happiness with occasional, typically human, disruptions will produce creative writing. For mild happiness, I need a clean home.  I need a healthy body and mind.  So the primary forever loops need to be cleaning, eating healthy food, exercising and meditating, nurturing a sense of family and community.  The same old same old My secondary forever loops are writing, making an adequate living and political and cultural commitments.

And then there's the random stuff in between, and then there's the awakening to the awareness that is forever without my efforts or participation. I supposed we could call that the Tao.

The logic of loving kindness

In Tibetan Buddhism loving kindness is one of the four immeasurables.  It is a quality associated with happiness and in cultivating it one prays for happiness and the source of happiness. But it is a quality that is in us, whether we realize it or not, so what we're really praying for is the constant awareness of the lovingkindness that lives in each of our hearts. From that seed of awareness it can be cultivated beyond any measurement.

The traditional loving kindness prayer is something of a sleight of mind, because happiness is there, always. Even our awareness of this desire for happiness is always there.  What we often lack is the awareness of this awareness.  To be happy in a sustainable way, first you need to know that you want to be happy. A surprising number of people don't know they have this unconscious longing, or won't admit to having it. Their lives, they say to themselves and others, are about more important things than happiness. Or they know they want happiness, but they confuse happiness with the object of happiness. They fall into the delusion that their happiness is dependent on the having a loved one, or the making that  loved one happy. This is why we say that attachment is the "near enemy" of loving kindness. Why family relationships are such a tangle, because we can't separate the healthy longing to understand ourselves better, and the unhealthy longing to have and control others.

It's the ability to remain curious and  rest in the longing for happiness that is the one most significant cause of happiness. Rest in that and happiness quite simply is.

And soon, within moments really your prayers are answered because happiness is familiarity with the healthy desire for happiness.  We have what we're asking for all along.

Wake up!

There is a place in my heart that wants suffering. That actually craves it.  I've buried under a lot of numbness, but the truth is I want to be hurt. I want to fail at relationships, at my dreams, even at my aspirations for happiness. I want the transgression. And I want the harsh cost of the transgression. This may be in large part why I'm a writer. Because I love the suffering.

But I also want to be free of this. I certainly don't want Ben to live like this.  And I wouldn't wish this endless cycle of dissatisfaction, shame and heartache on any one.

So how do I step out of this cycle. Maybe tonglen. Maybe think of all the people who crave misery, and choose habits and behaviours that loop them into it again and again. Love those people and feel the frustration of loving them and then realize that I am one of those people as well.

But don't just pray. Really feel the desire to be free. Know that it's in me to want more.  Be awake to that desire.

If I really want to awaken the world, I really have to want to be awake. I really have to be awake.

Happiness and The Causes of Happiness

Last week I started working on compassion.  But I think this week I will focus on loving kindness. It's easier to be generous to yourself and to others when you're happy, than when you're feeling depleted and driven by suffering.

May I have happiness and the causes of happiness.

What are the causes of happiness?

One a firmly rooted aspiration to be happy.
A strong meditation practice.
The recognition of emptiness.

This week, I keep it simple.

The Plan

The first step towards real abundance in my life is transforming a lifetime of poor sleeping habits and poor evening rituals.

Falling asleep and keeping to an early bedtime has always been a struggle for me, going back to a painful childhood.  Evenings were when the fights broke out, the tears began, the deep, deep sadnesses and truths of my parents unhappy marriage emerged. I am, frankly, afraid of bedtime. It's nothing but painful memories and the consequences of those painful memories.

But my life, and Ben's life, and the rest of my life, depends on changing this. I really believe that transforming my sleeping habits is the single most important thing I can do to achieve lasting and stable happiness.

I need to be gentle with myself, though, because this is going to be hard.  Or maybe I don't want to discourage myself with the word  hard.  This is going to be challenging.

My plan for the next six months is to revisit my JOL 1 course.  Do very simple, basic, meditations every evening to calm my mind.  Make that commitment every evening for 20 minutes. Then maybe the decision to forego television will be easier.

Recognizing the deep calm that is available to me every evening may help me to let go of the stressful patterns that have driven me for too much of my life.

Happiness as default mode

I've made the switch.

This month I prepare for level three of Tergar's Joy of Living program. As part of the preparation we do an insight meditation called The Mirror meditation.  After preliminary relaxing of the mind, we "see"  everything in the visual field as though it we were looking into a mirror, as though everything that seems solid is really just a reflection.

The more I practice this perceptual mode, of looking at the world as though it were not as solid and real as it seems, the more I start to feel, at an experiential level, how transient my suffering is.  It feels as solid as a chair, a building, a city. But really it's not.

In ordinary awareness, and often in meditative awareness, I conceive of life as heavy, overwhelming suffering with transient moments of happiness and lucidity. That is the narrative my brain spins without any direction. That unfortunately has been, as it is for many people, my default mode.

But this week I am reversing this. This energy, this vitality, this state of being, this happiness, this warmth, this effervescence in my soul,  this is the solid ground.  The boredom, the anxiety, the lethargy, the despair, these are what come and go.

What is keeping that suffering rooted is my subconscious belief that the suffering is immutable, inevitable.

My intention this week is to catch this belief in action. Gently correct it and then get back to the default mode that I want to have.  The default mode I know have.

Joy.

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.

Who is this self that I want happiness for?

This morning I did a mini-retreat at the Tergar Centre. In the second video Mingyur Rinpoche said something that hit me in a totally new way.  Who is this self that we want happiness for when we do lovingkindness meditation? When I think back to all the times I've done this meditation it seems to me that this self I wanted happiness for is usually a wounded, weak self that is very needy for a joy it hasn't had.  For the first time, however, I realized that this would be a much more effective practice if the self that I wanted happiness for was my natural, unconditioned, buddha nature self.
  Lovinkindness, especially for myself, too often feels like pity. Wanting happiness for an already complete self is less of a grasping process. And this already happy, good self, so clearly wants happiness for the self that is meditating. So it's a recursive activity. An activity that reinforces my best and deepest nature.
  When I'm only extending love to a "flawed" self, I'm actually reinforcing this perception of myself as incomplete, needing love.  When I'm extending love to a self that is already complete, I am reinforcing a sense of completion.
  I'm curious how a week, a month, of this kind of meditation will influence my motivation to act in my best interests.  Perhaps it's been hard to keep up the will to take responsible, nurturing action for a self I have to work so hard at loving.
  And if I were to start to see myself as this naturally good self, how will this affect the way I see others?

Why is mindfulness so hard!!!!

Ah, it was all going so well last Sunday. I managed to get my enthusiasm under control, but now I've lost that golden thread of peace that was holding things together. Obsession with problem at Ben's school.

There was a moment in formal practice today when I started to get the presence back. But it's gone now. Or maybe it's better if I just write that I've surrendered.

I don't want to surrender to suffering. I want to surrender to the reality of our natural awareness.

I need to find a way to make a fresh start.

Last night while I was up late, I found myself clinging to the first noble truth. There is suffering. There is some kind of pleasure to this obsessive mind wandering or we wouldn't do it. But I know it's not the good, healthy pleasure of mindfulness.

So I repeat to myself this morning. There is suffering. And once I'm sitting with my suffering for a bit, I remember the next truth, that there is a cause to this suffering. Then I remember that last night I went to my parents where there were baby back ribs and red wine, and then a drunken late night Twizzler and Dr. Pepper binge. And now I know that my digestion is probably not the best, and that I never quite got around to making yogourt during this busy week and that I need some bread and some fresh vegetables. Maybe the freshest start is with a big glass of water, and then a green smoothie, and then a mindful walk. And then a re-reading of Mingyur Rinpoche on the first noble truth.

As I cycle through the four noble truths I remember that there is a cure to this suffering, the sublime presence that I feel at the core of my brain and my soul.

Why am I so blessed to know this presence? Oh yeah because I'm human and we are all blessed, though some of us have the tremendous luck of realizing this blessing.

I remember that and then I look at the title of my post, and I remember that it's not mindfulness that's hard. It's suffering that's hard. Hard on us and hard on everyone around us. Mindfulness is soft and easy in the best way, and it protects our birthright, a life of abundance and joy.

I need to remember that by cultivating it, I'm protecting not just my birthright, but Ben's too.

If not a friend, then at least an interesting companion

It is five in the morning, the Sunday before Christmas.  The year is coming to a close. And I think I can safely say that I have grown.

I feel a different energy in me. Something more sustained and sustainable that I've ever had.  I sit quietly from time to time and just feel it, in my heart, in my gut, in my brain. Sometimes it's warm, sometimes it's magnetic, sometimes it is liquid and sometimes effervescent.

I hope to be in constant conversation with this energy all my life. Creativity I'm beginning to believe is a state of conversation.  Sometimes we go off and have this conversation with ourselves, taking great care to make sure that our contribution to the conversation of civilization is the best it can be.

Sometimes we just blurt it out. But what's important is that we show up, seeking to understand and be understood.

Today, I just want to rest in gratitude for this wonderful year.  Last year it ended with money.  This year with some stature.  An award and a great writing credit.

Next year, I have to score a book deal if I'm going to continue writing.

But that's just writing.  If I'm going to continue being happy, sustaining the mild happiness that is so essential to writing, I'm going to have to keep meditating.  I'm going to have to continue cultivating compassion.  I'm going to have to work on going to bed early in my tidy home.

Above all I'm going to have to continue believing that my happiness is of greater benefit to the world than my misery.

Here's What's Happening

The suffering is dissolving.  As the energy in me rebuilds, the deep entrenched habits of stress and suffering in me begin to dissolve naturally.  I feel it happening, the pain arising, sometimes physical, sometimes emotional, sometimes sexual, sometimes just a deep dullness.  It comes up and I watch it and then gradually it gets washed away and dissolved by this liquid magnetic energy that is filling me up mostly from the top down.  But sometimes from the bottom up.

I don't assume postures anymore.  I stand in wu wei, first position.  Usually after about five minutes my right arm begins to rise on its own.  Sometimes I feel my arm start to dissolve.  Sometimes I feel my head get looser on my neck.  My lower spine begins to stretch as I relax my knees and sit into the gravity.  Then at some point I start to feel a natural warmth in my gut, or at the back of my neck.

When I start to feel the warmth I remind myself to feel gratitude.  Of all the techniques there are to iterate the energy, the one I believe works the best is to get it spinning emotionally, because we do this to be happy. And happiness is both the goal and the fuel of unleashing this energy.  The gratitude keeps me focussed and lightly harnessed to the energy, especially when I feel my mind drifting off to ordinary awareness.  Love keeps me coming back far more naturally and effortlessly than will.

Today I had three experiences of suffering  that convinced me I'm on the right track.  And ickyness that I know is usually a resistance to pleasure.  Pure aversion, that once dissolved is usually a gateway to healthy joy.  A deep sadness that came out of nowhere that felt as though the energy had simply hit a part of my brain, in the same way a neurosurgeon might probe it during open heart surgery.  And then this deep pain in my neck and shoulders that made me realize that my alignment was being corrected by the more natural flow of energy down my spine.

I had two brand new experiences of pleasure.  For most of the stand I let my left arm hang limp.  But towards the end I felt a bracelet of energy, as though a hand was taking my arm around the wrist.  Gradually this bracelet pulled my arm up in a floating motion.  I felt such fluidity in my body that when the energy began to move my upper torso towards my right I felt like I might actually be able to twist all the way around.  In fact I almost did.  I stood there for I'm not sure how long, feeling the energy work its way around my spine. And then gradually I turned back.  After that I was able to just stand in pure quiet, pond like energy, as though most my body had dissolved.  There were still some remnants of suffering, and I was almost happy to have them there as markers.

This is always such a challenging place to be in, this peace.  Because there's no direction.

But there will be.  A different energy will eventually fill me.  It will fill the best parts of me, the parts of me that lead me to happiness, not to more pain.  And my good habits will have double the energy they had before. My talents will be more focussed and effective.  And the people around me happier.

To be filled and guided by this energy and power.  This is joy.

The immutable calm and power of the tan tien

There are so many experiences I am grateful for this morning it`s hard to know where to start.

I`ll start with the most recent and perhaps from that I`ll find the energy to move back.  I`m sitting here this morning with a full belly of calm and vitality.  About ten minutes ago I felt the right side of my tan tien open up and the warm vitality begin to flow like water.  Earlier in my practice I felt the urge to concentrate my energy there, like a ball of sun.  Like the shining pink sun of dawn over the pond at Fortunes Rocks.

I felt solid.  Like there was this solid core of stored energy that would last all my life.

No let`s switch that. I knew I was solid. I knew there was a solid core of energy that would last me all my life. I knew this. I was grateful for it.

I knew that this was happiness. That it was mine to have and to give, and that I would have access to this for every day of the rest of my life. I might lose my way, but I would inevitably find my way back.

With this knowledge of happiness, it is inevitable that I will find the outside circumstances to support it.   The community of people who know this happiness to be true. The resources to live in a decent home, eat good healthy food and have leisure activities that energize me instead of drain me.

With this knowledge of happiness, I have an entirely different sense of self. The self that I felt at the end of the 10K I ran yesterday. With little training, I was able to hook into a web of energy in the last 3K. I felt people pulling me towards the end. I was running fast and effortlessly harnessed to this communal energy.  I was a node in the universal energy that propels us all towards joy, and healthy and wisdom.

I am privileged and deeply grateful for these experiences and this life.

Now I let this calm flow into the more conditioned channels of happiness, the urge to keep a clean house, the vision and confidence to keep the flow of money happening. To clear up my debt and see this power and energy expressed as the usual markers of happiness. To express and use my creativity towards the books that will help people unleash their own power.

May all of our wisdom shine together like the morning sun.