#1 motivation blocker

I've been thinking this week about the difference between impulsivity and inspiration.

I believe that my impulsivity arises from a need to find stimulation to escape the dullness of a mind trapped by learned helplessness.  According to Mingyur Rinpoche, "faint heartendness" is the #1 blocker of our true, buddah nature.  He tells an interesting story in Joy of Living, about a woman who, early in his vocation as an international teacher, told him about her self-hatred.  He didn't know what that meant. This speaks to the new theory of neuroscience that I'm learning, that all our emotions are culturally constructed. My own self-hatred is a prison constructed from my experience and my circumstances.  When I sit with it I feel its core as a low arousal unpleasantness.

The "stims" that I've lived with all my life, my hand flapping, my grievance collecting, the jumping, the angry daydreams, these are all ways of trying to kickstart my muddy heart. 

But I'm experimenting right now with a different way.  I am following Rinpoche's instruction in seeing life as a dream, and thus feeling this faint heartedness and sense of powerlessness as that.  Seeing it the same way I would if I were in a lucid dream and then allowing the mind to open up to all kinds of possibilities of power.  I'm also spending more time in my meditation in that hypnagogic state, between dreams and wakefulness.

It certainly opened my mind up to changing one pattern.  I imagined that my room was miraculously tidy, and every time I finished my meditation, I felt an overwhelming urge to clean.

I am sitting in this moment in the cleanest room I've had in years.

Narayan Helen Libenson speaks of "don't know" mind, and how practicing this attitude of knowing that we don't know liberates us from all the patterns and habits that we delude ourselves into believing are our identity.

Being comfortable with the feeling of not knowing is what allows life to remain fresh and inspired. It's a natural stimulation that comes from the natural way that life changes, rather than the constant chasing after sensations that comes from a life that has calcified into dull routine.

The Wave

So a few days ago I had an exceptional mind flipping meditation.

And then on cue, a wave of craving hit, Netflix binging on Billie Bob Thornton's washed up alcoholic redemption series.  So, yesterday morning I'm struggling with a splintered chaotic mind.

The one thing I had going for me, apart from my years of meditation practice, was a tidy room.  I sought refuge. Meditated when I felt the craving hit. Examined my options like reading a revolutionary book on How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett, instead of defaulting to Netflix.  And ended up in bed at 10 p.m.

I feel the fruits this morning, feeling a palpable shift from right brain to left brain awareness.

Making more room for healthy energy in my life, literally means making a room for it.

Squalor

Housekeeping has always been a challenge that I struggle and continue to struggle with. I'm not, and haven't been at the level that would put me on reality television. But in recent years i still veer between messiness and first degree squalor.
 
This has consequences on my well-being and my son's. The solution is simple. Routines kept to. Picking up after yourself.  Weekly sweeping and dusting.  Nightly wiping down. 15 minutes a day of detail cleaning. Emptying the fridge once a week.  But keeping to them...so hard for me.

Why is that? Is there some kind of deep insight that will finally free me of this. Because I have suffered so much as a result of this. Isolation, loneliness, remorse, shame. And I have caused suffering to others, and have raised a son who risks causing the same suffering to others. But still I can't find the peace and joy in cleaning.

Or, put it this way, I'm still numb to the peace and joy in cleaning. I could find the peace and joy if I were to maintain a sustained commitment to it, but I don't.

It is neglect and the consequences of neglect.  I know this, but how do I turn this around?

First, by realizing that "I" don't turn this around. The energy that I need to tap into is the only thing that can turn it around.  I know I keep saying this, but I need to make cleaning into a practice.  I need to become familiar with the peace of a solid cleaning algorithm maintained every day for the rest of my life.

I know I can do this, I've made a lot of progress over the years.

The key, I believe, is to keep the sink dry and shiny.  Morning and evening.

And to commit to the algorithm that includes that 15 minute cleaning in the morning.  If the algorithm takes 30 minutes to complete I can get a laundry done and hung in that 30 minutes. Clothes folded at the end of the day. In time "commitment" simply becomes the pleasant habit of peace and order.

Why is that such a challenge?

And yet for mysterious reasons it it.

Retreat--Tidy 2

It's day 2 of a spring self-directed retreat.  A retreat I decided I must need because my home has descended into a mild state of squalor.

The insight I had on the second day of my last retreat was about the importance of my physical health.  This one I'm meditating specifically on the importance of my environment and the tangled emotional relationship I have with housework.

Housework is tightly wound up in all the Buddha nature blockers. Faint heartedness because just looking at all this mess makes me want to crawl up into a ball. Judgement of others because I'm constantly living in reaction toward the people who I feel are imposing these cleanliness values on me. Seeing the untrue as true because the society I live in believes that your home and the state of your home tells everyone who you are, and I tend to accept this and have a low opinion of myself, no matter how much I am self asserting myself through rebellion. Seeing the true as untrue, because no matter how many insights I have about my precious self, when I look at my squalid home that insight gets flushed down the drain. And finally, self obsession. Without consistent cleaning rituals I am constantly being drawn into this recurring game of self-assessment.

I made a decision a long time ago that I was not simply going to accept my messiness. That I was going to work to develop better habits.  It would be great to find a way that meditation gets carried over  into that decision.

In the last two hours of meditation I found myself resting in timeless and boundless awareness, feeling that liberation from the conceptual.  I am not the sock, the dustbunny, the chip bag on the floor.  I'm not even really my body, so how can I be any of these things.

Cleaning meditation is such a nice, short way to liberate oneself from the obsessions and ruts of daily life. May I find a way to free myself and everyone from suffering, one dish, one folded shirt, one dustpan at a time.

Tidying

I heard someone on Oprah once say that the state of one's home is a reflection of the state of one's soul. Actually she said it was the state of a woman's home reflected her soul, which may have something to do with why I reacted so strongly against it. I'm very housework challenged, so it felt like a judgement and a slap in the face. Would she get away with saying that about a woman's body. So why does it seem okay to judge someone by the state of their home?

Disagreement aside, I did notice that after my two day retreat in October, I did suddenly start to develop a cleaning competence I haven't had for a while. So when I looked around at my chaotic surroundings it seemed a big clue that it was time for another retreat.  I don't want to live in spiritual or physical squalor. I want to care enough about myself to keep to good nurturing rituals. 

It's strange though that I have the discipline to sit on a cushion for five hours, which is what I did today.  But feel so overwhelmed by some clothes thrown on the floor. 

It was a lovely meditation today.  Many moments of timesless awareness and insight into what it would feel like to be free of suffering.  Relatively very few moment of discomfort, anger.  Some sadness, some irritation, some impatience. But I rode them. 

So what is this housework thing about? 

This afternoon I'm committed to an hour of cleaning meditation.  Tonight another hour of formal practice. 

Maybe some insight will come...

soft snow

There's a soft snow falling this morning. While I was shovelling it off the entrance I thought of it as all the pleasant numbness that can so easily build up, become ice and block the entrance of energy into my life.

I'm making healing metaphors out of all my housework recently. It's working wonders. My kitchen and bedroom are orderly. I managed to do some sweeping and dusting yesterday. Metaphors, I read in a poem recently, are god's directions.

I talk with my muse more regularly now. And last night while Ben was at piano, instead of reading or watching a movie on the ipod, I just sat. And sat and thought about how through most of my life I've felt really unwanted. Or maybe more acurately, I haven't often felt wanted. Really passionately wanted. In an erotic way, or in a loving way. Ben makes me feel wanted. But that's more needed. And it's not fair to burden him with that responsibility. I sat for a while and it struck me that the best way to be wanted it to actually want others.

I sat there for a long time and just wanted God. Really felt the strong desire for that in my heart.

It carried me through a difficult evening with Ben, who is becoming increasingly angry and rebellious. I took away his video game privileges. I decided that he needed an "evening of acceptance."

I'm worried about the effect of those games on his energy level. He seems to be driven by this rigid angry energy. Almost a rage. I need to find a way to help him unhook from that. But I need to unhook from it myself.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the nigth. I meditated. I read. I went back to sleep and made the mistake of bringing the ipod into the room with me. I slept in and had dreams about my mother. She and my father were sleeping in my room (I had moved to Ben's room in the middle of the night). She seemed sweet at first, but something put her into a rage. I responded in rage. And soon we were fighting with all the anger and despair we have always fought.

I don't want that in my life. I do not want to continue the tradition of that rage. I need to find peace.