Inner power

In my last post I kind of tossed off inner power as though it should be an addendum to character. But no, let me take that back. Character is something that should grow out of the natural confidence that comes from a strong sense of our inner vitality.

For many years in my practice I've seen vitality and chi as something that exists outside of me.This probably has a lot to do with the dyspraxic thinking that always has me seeing power as and outside thing. Something I need to either surrender to or flee.

Until I can surrender to the power inside of me I'm probably never going to lose this nagging anxiety that continues to block me from getting the things in life that I need and want.

Locus of Control

Just read about an interesting psychological concept, the locus of control. Apparently children who suffer from dyspraxia (like my son, and probably myself) tend to have what you call an "external locus of control." They believe that external circumstances are more in control of their lives than they are. People who believe that may be more prone towards underachievement, depression, addiction etc.

So I took a questionaire, just to get a baseline for myself. Apparently I'm 57% leaning towards external.

I wonder how standing might change that. When I'm standing I feel as through there is an outside force controlling me. At the same time I don't connect with that force unless I'm keeping to my regimen (which I confess, I haven't been of late. Stress taking control, or maybe learned helplessness in the face of stress) . So I believe, when I'm standing regularly, that my actions control my external environment. Even if the external environment feels more powerful than I am.

I'm not sure I want to be 8% more internally locus. I like the idea of being a balance between the two.

I'd be curious to take this test again in a month, after really sustained commitment to standing.

Getting the Inside Right

"If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place." Wise words from The Power of Now.

Wise words that I keep forgetting. Especially in difficult times. But can I trust these words? Is resolving this financial and personal stress really as simple as staying relaxed inside?

It's experiment time.

For the rest of the month of February, I will stay focussed on my inner tension, breathing through it, allowing it to be a fuel for presence. How will my external cricumstances resolve?

I already saw a bit of this earlier this week. I went to see my mother in the hospital. She was so demoralized by days of diarhea and stories from friends about infections they'd caught in the hospital, and of course facing her mortality in such an irrefutable way. I stayed compassionate, but wry. I could see there was a part of her that was fueling her anxiety because she felt somehow that God would take pity on her. It's a superstitious habit she'd learned from her mother. One I intend to break. All I did was point it out gently to her. Anxiety is not going to protect you, I said, it's going to drain you. My mother felt immediately better. I could see her mood shifting. She told me that my presence just gave her so much more energy. The next day she called me, she felt so much better, she was eating, the diarhea stopped. The tests came back last night and there was no infection. We could all tell she was on the way to recovery.

I need to be that presence for myself now.

Stillness Saves

Tolle writes that stillness will save the world. I don't know if that is true. But stillness is saving me. Every morning I wake up and stand, stillness grounds me. It builds a hub of awareness in me. If I make a conscious effort to pay attention to the silence and to the post of energy that holds me up, I feel the particular pleasure of stepping out of mental conditioning. If for whatever reason, I forget to do that and start getting lost in my thoughts, stillness is still there working its way through my body, working its way through my psyche. As long as I maintain a strong devotion to stillness, I will lose myself less and less in the things that are weakening me, consumer culture, ego driven careerism, entertainment overload. I will return again and again to that place in me that is a rest from all of that, and in time none of those things will have the power to drive me.

temporal lobe

Finished The Midnight Disease, a book about writing and the brain. Alice Flaherty has an interesting theory. Creative drive is closely related to religious drive and originates in the temporal lobe. Or at least the temporal lobe is more important to it than what we normally think. When TMS stimulates the temporal lobe we feel a presence. Artists along with religious devotees, tend to be the people who feel, or strive to feel this presence in life without the aid of magnetic stimulation tools.
Meditators also build activity in the temporal lobe. Whether or not the sensed presence is an actual presence may be somewhat immaterial. The skill of sensing a presence, sensing an invisible self other than your own may be an important skill in developing creativity, integrating the brain, and having more control over our sense of well being. Maybe this makes us less prone to all the stuff people are trying to sell as well being.
It makes sense in terms of our cultural metaphor of "inner strength". Perhaps this inner strength is temporal lobe strength. Perhaps what I am doing with I do standing meditation is gently and slowly building all the good things that come from the temporal lobe, primal emotion like joy, primal drives. Maybe there is a way that we can bring all the secondary emotions, processes, etc. back under control of the temporal lobe, but in a healthy integrative way. Not with the usual things we associate with the temporal lobe, like anger and lust and other primary drives.
Something to think about.