Interdependence of Thought

This week in my meditation practice I've been exploring interdependence of thought. I'm still not entirely sure sometimes what is meant by the term "interdependence."  But this week I took it to mean the way my thoughts depend on different aspects of being, the way they depend on my body, on how strongly attached I am to concepts like the present, the past, the future, the self.
  I paid special attention to strong, recurring, persistent thoughts, what these were dependent upon, and how I might be able to loosen them.
  The first path that I started to explore is how dependent the quality and tone of my thought is on how embodied I am.  If I'm having an anxious or negative though, it's almost guaranteed that my limbs are stiff, my hands tense, my neck out of alignment, my breath shallow. If my thoughts are wandering it is absolutely guaranteed that my eyes are not focused on anything.  Formal meditation is a way of correcting this. Informal meditation is a way of re calibrating throughout the day. A way of stopping my thoughts from their habitual chaos.
  My thoughts by the way are quite dependent on my environment, and that seems to be changing. I'm a better housekeeper this month, in large part because I'm practising some habits of commitment. Making sure my life is driven by decisions, not impulses. I've been keeping with my housekeeping rituals and everyday I'm feeling a different energy in this home. It's still messy, but deep down it's cleaner, more organized, less overwhelming. As a result of sticking to these commitments, I'm cultivating self-trust.
  The two persistent thoughts I've been meditating, is this recurring mantra of "I hate myself" and "What do I want more than anything in the world."  The super ego and the id.  One way I've been dealing with the first is with tonglen, and a Pema Chodron trick I discovered.  I breathe in that hatred, feel a space for it in my body and in my belly.  Let it expand, let that blocked, stiff energy flow.  I need to be patient.  I was raised in an environment of chronic and constant hatred and hostility between my parents. These memories are deep in my body, in my nervous system.  They aren't about to evaporate in one breath or six.  But I can say at the end of this week that I do feel a little better. As though the space I'm creating in acknowledging and accepting this hatred, will one day be filled more easily with love.
  Which brings me to the second thought.  This week I sat silently with this question and waited patiently for an answer, instead of my usual tendency to want to rush in with a whole bunch of answers.  Finally it came to me, so obvious, so inevitable.  Love.  I want love. There is an answer to this question, and that is it.
  My body, my life, my son's life, so much dependent on that answer, that thought.
  What kind of persistent thoughts could arise if I knew better how to love.

Interdependence of Body

This week I've been investigating the various ways that my happiness, productivity, sense of self and sense of time is dependent on my body.
  The insight I come to again and again is how when my attention is brought down to my gut brain I immediately feel more present. In general being conscious of the body brings us immediately into the present moment. To be caught up in the tangled relationship between the present and future inevitably means a disconnect from the mind and the body.  And a disconnect from the mind and the body sends us evermore spinning into the invented world.
  As a result of this investigation I've been paying more attention to the seven points of meditation posture: The anchor, my hands, my spine, my shoulders, my neck, my mouth, and my eyes. Attention to all of these points grounds me and grounds my mind. Paying attention to the eyes has been an especially important investigation this week. I have developed the tendency of closing my eyes in meditation, which is pleasant, but it does allow me more room to get lost.  I'f I'm really committed to the present, I need to keep my eyes open.
  It all comes down to that, doesn't it? Commitment. Developing habits not because you feel like it, but because you've made a decision to become stronger, wiser, happier and you do what has to be done to re-direct your energy. The challenge lies in redirecting the energy incrementally so that you don't throw the whole system off balance.
  That means working as much on accepting your body and mind as you do trying to change it.

Deconstructing Emotions

This week I start to deconstruct all the things that emotions are dependent upon.

Of course the tendency is to start with the unpleasant emtions, shame, anger, self-hatred, boredom, anxiety.

One of the things that has struck me so far is how much emotions are dependent on the interplay of stillness and motion. Shame and self hatred feel as still and solid of rocks in my body.  But they are of course dependent on the movement of unhappy memories and judgemental thoughts.  Whereas happiness feel fleeting, but it's dependent on cultivating that deep feeling of stillness and stability in the gut.

Or what I've come to start calling the nucleus.  I've been getting this feeling lately of expansion, with the growing energy in my tan tien as centre to all the power and energy in my body.

Tolle calls stillness a more advanced intelligence.  And that's certainly what it feel like.  As though if I could be dependent on this, instead of thoughts and emotions to drive me, I would be operating from a more sophisticated level.

Deconstructing The Senses

This week in my JOL3 practice, I'm deconstructing the senses.

Yesterday when I started this I wasn't quite sure what that meant.  I thought perhaps I was supposed to be deconstructing the sensations in my body.  So in my early morning meditation today, I did just that largely in my Tan Tien.  I felt this big block of numbness that I often felt and start to feel the different layers of anxiety keeping that numbness intact.

But later, when I did 30 minutes of standing meditation, I actually started deconstructing sound, hearing, and began to realize what an important practice this is.

Hearing is such a complex sense for me because I spend so much time listening to the sound of my own voice. I forget to listen to the sounds outside me,  I forget to listen to the sound of my breathing.  I forget to pay attention to the data that tells me that I'm alive.

And then there's the inner ear, the most important component of balance.  If I'm not listening then I'm not exercising the inner ear, and before I know it my life is off balance, everything goes off track.

Deconstructing the senses means looking at how there are so many levels to hearing, what I hear, how I hear, that there is no such thing really as a unified hearing or purpose to hearing. Yes i need to hear my inner voice, but I also need to hear the pauses between words, the length of my breath, the world outside.

"Are you listening to me."  This is an instruction I hear from myself again and again and again.

This week I use it as support for my practice.