Locked In

Today meditation seemed to pass so quickly.

And yet it was momentous. I've been listening at night to Myoshin Kelly's lectures on Bodhicitta and joy. They seem to be seeping into the skeleton of my practice. I am more conscious everyday of the presence slightly behind me to the left. The more I settle into a relatiionship with it, the more the thinking energy in my head seems to move to the left. The more conscious I become of the painful loop of energy that is usually iterating on the right.  If I watch the suffering I can see how my brain has simply developed the mechanical habit of rewarding it.  But if I sit with it, I can see how I can move that reward glue to the left.

This feels like it's going to take a lot of time. I'm still stuck in a mindset that wants to improve myself by moving the energy from the right to the left. Instead of simply feeling the permanence of this left side awareness and letting the rebalancing happen on its own. To just sit and feel grateful.

When I do that, the lovingkindness begins to build, to activate. I remember that there are people right now sitting in caves loving me because they love everything, wanting to reach out to me. I remember that I want to reach out to them.

It's here.  All the love that I need and will ever need it here.  It doesn't matter if I feel it or not. It's still here.

It's easier, perhaps, for me to see this when I'm feeling compassion towards Ben, wishing he could feel the love that's always here for him.

Either way though. In today's meditation I felt locked in.  I felt that feeling of just sitting in love and letting it do what it's going to do.

May I truly be locked in. And may we all.

Daemon Again

It's to the left, above my shoulder, this presence I feel after I've maintained an hour long practice for a significant chunk of time. It's to the soul, what the ego is to the self, or so I've read. This energy that feels like a self, but also something much stronger and purer.

It's the reason I do this, to have a sense of direction, power and connection. And now it's the reason I maintain this practice.

This morning I had such a strong sense of how regular, long meditation practice, at least an hour a day every morning makes of my body a kind of antenna.  I feel connected to this kind of frequency and it keeps me on the right path. All I have to do is rest in it and it penetrates my mind.

But then what?, says the inchworm when it reaches the top of the blade of grass.

To just be. To be the wisdom that shines from within. To help other recognize that wisdom in themselves. To allow ordinary bad habits dry up, and ordinary good habits to glow the extraordinary..

To be rich in this energy and power.

It's Over

This labour day weekend my mother invited Ben and I to Underhill House, a cottage owned by a wealthy friend. So called because it's a house built into a hill. The roof is grass, and light comes in through a series of skylight. Downhill from the house was a lovely man made pond. By far the most tranquil, private spot I've ever meditated in. No witnesses other than the occasional dragonfly.

I had a religious moment, sitting by the glass surface, pines reflecting the emptiness that I aspire to in meditation. I felt the larger witness to it all, that vast presence that is always there no matter how alone we are.

Alongside the feeling of vast presence, was the habit of returning to my petty squabbles with my mother, my anxieties, my feeling of helplessness over the distractions that continue to buzz through my mind.

When will it ever end?

And then in the next moment I recognized this as grasping.  It ended there in that moment.  Of course I want that "ending" to last. But all that has ended really is my awareness of it.  Presence never ends.

Looking for happiness in anything else is like trying to harness a dragonfly for thrills when really the most exciting experience is the pond.

This presence it seems, has followed me home, although the truth is it's always been here in my home, however small and however squalid.

I don't need to harness it's power.  I just need to keep remembering that it's here.

I need to let it harness me.

Breakthrough

The sciatica that was keeping me up all night is now gone.  Turns out I was pre-menstrual. Usually on the first day of my cycle, I would feel drained and exhausted.  But this morning I'm feeling a really nice core of vitality and clean energy. The kind of energy that is going to motivate me to keep this cleanse up for the whole three weeks.  I'll break a little today for lunch with a friend.  But the cleanse is about "avoiding" those things.  So I'm sure I'll find things on the menu with some healthy greens.  Maybe I'll eat something first so that I'm not over ordering.

I had a very pleasant stand.  Twenty minutes of second position.  Then some exercises to open the channels.  Then I just stood in first position, felt the energy in my belly and allowed it to create its own direction.  It started moving first in the right side of my body, lifting my arm, filling my leg and eventually moving up to my head.  The left side of my body seemed to become completely empty. I "leaned"in a way on the right side energy.  Allowing it to simply take me over and hold me up.  Then eventually the left side started to fill up too.  As my palms became parallel, I could sense the energy moving back and forth between them, like a ping pong ball.

I'm going to keep to that practice this week.  Just let the energy do its thing.  And watch what happens.

Hippocampus

Read yesterday that there is a new study which shows that meditators develop stronger bigger hippocampus. This is the part of the temporal lobe responsible for long term memory and attention. What this could mean is that meditation strengthens your long term memory.
It's also an exercise in facing long term memory. One thing I realized this morning is that depression, desperation and powerlessness is my default setting. When I meditate in the morning, I become more conscious of this because I'm forming a different setting. The quiet energy of early morning meditation is really the opposite of anxiety and depression. So it would be great if what I'm accomplishing is changing my memory to return me to quiet and stability and a sense of well being.
I felt a very strong energy rising in me again this morning. And I felt that weird sensation of lack of symmetry. Even though I could see that my arms were symetrical it felt that my body was twisted into a different position. I love this feeling. It tells me that my brain is really changing somehow. I think that it means more energy is flowing into my left brain, perhaps to heal all the extra energy in the right brain from my depression?
Don't know. But I know it's a good sign of progress.