Post retreat

Slept well last night. First deep sleep in a while. Listening to YMR every night is a 2 minute habit I want to develop. 

I feel re-committed to the foundational practices. In particular I've found a new curiosity and interest about the third thought, the consequences of karma. 

I feel so clearly the positive results of extended mediation. Less action, less thought feels better. I feel like I have a wisdom body to rest in. 

But there are still emotional challenges. I'm going through a very stressful family situation. 

I feel the stress as empty lucidity vibrating through my body. I want to remember to add compassion to it.

Otherwise it's just old stale karmic imprints 

Self directed retreat Day 2

Slept well last night. For the first time in a while. Body scan slows down the thoughts, which increases the conditions for sleep. Listening to YMR sleep meditation instructions establishes the view. Also wonderful to wake and listen the gong on YMR waking instructions. I really feel like I'm in retreat. 

Meditation on the 3rd thought (dreamlike nature of samsara)

Essentially this is a contemplation of the reality that there is suffering.  But in directly contemplating the suffering, there is an untangling, and ideally recognition of the causes of the suffering being painful habits built on delusions. 

It's though our friends have been chasing us around in tiger costumes, and they might as well be tigers, because we are traumatized and will see tigers even when we know they aren't really tigers. 

The only way out is to gently let the trauma loosen. Recognize the feeling of recognizing reality and relax in that regularly enough that it starts to become it own habit energy.  That is the wisdom body.  The habit energy that develops from recognizing truth. 

Song of Realization wrap up

 It's hard to put my finger on what feels different. 

Maybe it's having that different understanding of clarity.  Yes there is luminosity, the clarity is in the recognition of the luminosity.  You don't have to shine a flashlight on the candle to see it, but you do have to open your eyes. 

Today I rest comfortably in the awareness that there are things I can't find, myself, my mind, a thinker, a dreamer, a hater.  I see that I can be comfortable in reality. The bonds loosen. 

Teaching:

Interesting that over 90% of people taking this course say they learned something different from other pointing out experience. 

Mingyur Rinpoche teaches exactly what I experienced in my practice.  Feel the clarity in one difficult emotion, trust it and allow it to transform all negative emotions. 

I have mine. Self hatred. My best, best friend. 

The message that resonates with me. "Trust the clarity."

Song of Realization Day 2

 

7 a.m. 

Morning meditation.  Feeling the flow of repulsion and attraction.  Surf this for a while and gradually it becomes balance and stillness. 

This is a precious few days where I get to just hang out in my mind.  I get to feel its power, and its entanglements. I let it sing its own song. 

2 pm.

You can try to know phenomena by knowing the nature of each and everything in the world.  Or you can know the mind, which is that by which we know each and every thing. 

4 pm. 

We practiced the three styles: 

1. Body style, which is a light looking at what is happening in the mind when thoughts arise.
2. Speech style, which is like a combination of analytical and noting. We name what kind of knowing or response is happening, and ask who the "worder" is. 
3. Heart or mind style.  We tap into the experience of simply knowing. 

I resonate strongly with last type. I felt very at ease just resting in the knowing. 

7 pm. 

Many reminders of the dangers of getting attached to blissful, clear and non-conceptual states. And reminders that the rough times are part of the process.

Tim spoke about the wisdom that is at the core of each of the three afflictions.  Craving = discrimation. Aversion = clarity.  Ignorance = non-conceptual. 

So I guess we can allow these to unfold naturally.  

Song of Realization retreat Day 1

Day 1:  

8 am.

I prepare.  This is a momentous event in the unfolding event that is the mind. I want to put into place the conditions that allow me to have a recognition that is going to take, a direct experience of clarity that is a tipping point.  

For this weekend I renounce all my wordly concerns and obsessions. I feel the craving, fear, resistance as support. Cloudy, muddy waters that over the course of the weekend will settle. Causes have outcomes. Non meditation will open the mind to clarity. 

But I need to stay devoted.

5:30 pm

Using space as a metaphor for the nature of mind, everything inside as well as outside feels empty. 

Earlier in the day I am reminded of my first lucid dream, and that sudden shock of total clarity and luminosity.  This is more subtle and gradual. 

At the end of the meditation self hatred rises up.  But as I explore it, I realize there is no real boundary. The heart is just space too. 

6:30

How do I live in this freedom? I want to be careful that I'm not asking "how do I keep living in this freedom." Yes, I want to sustain it, but I don't want to become fixated on maintaining states.  Just see this as a gentle exploration of the world outside the tiny box my mind has been shut up in. 

Subtle Body Retreat

There are two paths into the subtle body.  The path through the body, exercise, body scanning, anything that nurtures, or throws into relief what the body is experiencing and feeling.  Then there is the path through the mind, visualization, deity practice, tummo. 

The first has many advantages. It is grounding. It is nurturing for the body. It is real.  But it is the body.  It is impermanent, it is relative, its joys and realizations will not last 

The second has the advantage of the absolute. It is the mind and as such is connected to the bigger mind that will outlast the body. But the mind is very powerful.  Enter first through this pathway, without a good foundation, without a healthy, skilled horse (body), and you can lose your way, become overwhelmed and disconnected. 

I come out of this retreat feeling deeply rejuvenated by the middle way.  I am doubly committed to resting in the nature of mind as my main practice, with tantra and tummo as the boosters. What is essential is the recognition of the union of emptiness and clarity. 

But I am also more enthusiastic about getting back to my tai chi and chi kung practices. And running. The body is impermanent. The window that I have for enjoying my strength, and building it to enjoy a healthy old age is closing. Next week I turn 60! 

The gros body needs attention too! 

Pure Perception retreaat

Day 1 7:49 a.m. 

Morning

I start this retreat feeling distracted and unsettled.

A week of attending the Canadian Tennis Open, rooting for the local hopeful Felix Auger Alliassime.  He's into the quarter finals. But I have committed to this retreat.  If I'm watching tennis scores all weekend, I will not create the causes and conditions I want to put in place for a real transformation.

Good.  This gives a lot of craving and impulsiveness to meditate on.  I am not going to watch those matches.  He doesn't need me.  I need me and Ben needs me and the infinite number of sentient beings need me.  And maybe FAA needs me praying for him. But time to let him go. 

Morning teaching

We re-visit breathing exercises, but add visualization. Reminds me of chi kung practice.  This is how I am going to bring it back in. 

In right nostril we breath out all the old past trauma and anxiety.  In left nostril all anxiety about future.  Through both the present stagnant energy. 

With vase breathing we are bringing in the five elements.  As we breath out the abdomen naturally constrict like the ocean crashing against the mountain (spine).  

And then the shaking ha to get everything going. 

We do an exercise that informs what we are trying to accomplish here.  Imagine the perfect strawberry. Hold it in your hand, smell it, imagine eating it.

We produce saliva just through that image.

Through Tara practice we produce the feeling of enlightenment and transform through that. 

Afternoon

Struggling with my attatchment to the outcome of that game.  But wondering, what if I could put the intense energy of this devotion to tennis to my guru practice? What impact would that have on my life? 

Evening 

It's all about stability.  Learning from Felix (I gave in and looked at the score) He suffered worst defeat of his career on home turf.  The embodied confidence of stability really does mean something. You can't maintain success if you don't have embodied confidence.

Day 2

Feeling great this morning. Went out for a run.  Had a very meaningful nectar of the path practice.  Starting to feel many strands weaving together with this practice. Going back to the first image of Indra Devi when I was a teenager. 

Afternoon:

Tranformative practice with Khenpo Kunga.  Tara as emptiness, all being a Tara, dissolving into a light before all beings do likewise, dissolving into me, and I dissolve into them. 

Indescribably liberating 

Evening:

Another amazing practice. 

Tennis.  Happy for Carrena Busta!  But I slept too late. Consequences of unhealthy self. 

Day 3

Morning:

Practice steps. 

1. Open awareness
2. Imagine White Tara as manifestation of emptiness, wisdom, compassion
3. Dedication and sing mantra
4. Imagine White Tara as healing light touching you and everyone
5. Recite mantra
6. Become white Tara
7. Dedication
8. Dissolve White Tara
9. Dissolve self
10. Rest

Teaching 

It's not enough to simply recite and go through the motions. To transform you need to be with phenomena, see the pieces, and eventually see the emptiness. 

You can have 100 deities and not tranform. Or one deity and know the essence. 

Tara practice allows us to see the emptiness of this unhealthy fearful self we've created. To create a stronger, more compassionate and impactful sense of self through devotion to a constructed deity.

I take refuge in Tara and feel the saliva. 

Insight:

Om Taré Tutaré Ture So Ha

The tongue hits the palate and natural morphine makes its way down the channel.

Fear dissolves. Pure perception settles in. 

micro-dosing on non-duality

Day 2 of a self-directed retreat. 

Life keeps interrupting, so I'm struggling to stay motivated. Doing short times many times, dropping effort, dropping into timeless knowing.  Keeping in mind parts of Tsoknyi Rinpoche's book, Fearless Simplicity: 

I'm letting my mind get distracted, but then I just let Rigpa take the wheel.  Going back to the knowing that I don't own. 

I get these little moments of emptiness and I rest in them, like micro doses.  I wonder if they will get longer.

Later, after listening to Michael Taft's podcast with Dan Brown, I had a sustained full feeling of awakening, a sense of how spacious rigpa really can be.  

I am coming home. 

Self directed retreat 2021

Today's my birthday, and the gift that I've given myself this year is a week of adapted retreat, ending in a three day virtual retreat on The Wisdom of Emotions, led by Mingyur Rinpoche. 

This was not the kind of deep meditation retreat I've been doing since I went to Dhamma Sutta in 2018. This year, I've had to adapt it to the realities of my father dying and be available for the support, emotional and other that my mother and my brother needed.

The most important thing I learned on this retreat is there is a sea of distance between believing in basic goodness at an intellectual level and believing in it truly and intuitively. This is the whole purpose of meditation, to know deeply in our heart, throughout our body and beyond, that we are good. Only when we do, will we intuitively see the good in others. 

In my retreat of 2019, I had peak experiences, but I'm not sure I really saw the way out of the prison.  And in the end I went back to many of my bad habits, although I did maintain my meditation practice. 

In retreat of 2020, I moved down to the heart, and learned more about non-duality, but I'm not really sure that I understood then, or truly developed an understanding of  what it was to live from the heart. 

In one sense what had been missing from all of them is this simple practice of open awareness, which I let go of when I took the time to explore Theravada.  But taking this time to experience concentrative meditation has had its learning benefits. I know have a felt understanding between the difference of object oriented and subject oriented meditation. And from that, I now have the felt experience of non-conceptual awareness, which I started to really feel and understand in the Mingyur Rinpoche  teaching. 

But it was in my exploration of my self-hatred, this thought and feeling that has been dogging me for as long as I remember that I feel like I finally found the key. No amount of concentration, or theory, is going to change the reality that I still believe, and thus feel that there is a fundamental badness in me. That needs to change if the bell of my "hate myself" mantra is going to decrease in number and intensity.

Rinpoche teaches there are three levels of mind, the emotional, the conceptual and the habitual. This lines up nicely with Lisa Barrett's theory of emotions.  At the first level we have affect, the basic sensations. The conceptual mind sorts these into pleasant and unpleasant sensations and makes guesses and applies concept, words, labels to explain these sensations. The habitual mind makes them automatic so that we don't have to keep repeating the process. 

If we want to change our habitual feelings from negative to positive, then we have to go down, find those bad guesses, and labels, and then make those positive emotions habitual. 

Easier said than done. But Rinpoche believes that every habitual emotion, even the negative ones, contain the key to their transformation. Every sensation is a desire to be happy, or cease suffering. Our basic impulse is towards this state of joy and equanimity. We don't have to go in and re-label and conceive every emotion. We need to make intuitive this basic truth, that we are basically good and have access to a powerful transformative energy. 

Meditation both formal and informal makes this transformation happen. 

If I go back to my top insights of 2021, I remember the first one is that in knowing we don't have to change, we change. 

Acceptance of our own mind, and of the powerful synergy of all minds together is the thing we need to make habitual, if we are to be liberated. 

Sensations

Yesterday I did a one day Vipassana retreat.

How fortunate I am to have this strong sangha of meditators in this tradition that has had so much impact on the practice of meditation in North America.  Almost 40 years ago S.N. Goenka visited Montreal, his first North American lecture. The community he seeded grew into this strong and resilient charity that runs a beautiful retreat center an hour outside of Montreal, and then these one day retreats in the East End of the city.

Despite the 10 day retreat I did back in September, the two hours a day that I've been doing, and the one hour group sitting that's a 10 minute walk from my apartment, yesterday I feel like I finally "got" it.

Goenka's technique attunes you to the sensations flowing through the body, and cultivates the ability to look at these constantly changing sensations with calm alertness. I also cultivates the ability to see where these sensations are rigid, giving the impression of solidity and permanence.

Developing this intuitive relationship with our sensations, in their true impermanent and continuously changing state, helps us to develop emotional and intellectual agility. We make emotions out of our sensations, and then our sensations respond to these emotions.  It's how we get into these ruts.  Goenka's technique effectively deconstructs our emotional patterns so that we can start again.

This morning a 2 hour meditation flew by, largely because I was focussed on just being present and directly aware of the the flow of sensations. I had some moments where my mind flew off and started working out some work problems.  When I returned to my body,  all I had were these weak solid little spots of sensations and it became so clear how much the overthinking of life damages our ability to just feel it.

When it become more habitual to sit quietly with sensations, face them with equanimity, and be willing to be with whatever arises--be it warm sparkly vibrations of warmth and ease, or rock solid terror--then we are truly free to live.

New Stage

With the commitment to bodhichitta, my practice has entered a new stage.  As I make more habitual a dedication to enlightenment for all, I feel a force field build and emanate from me.

Writing this feels grandiose. But living it doesn't feel grandiose.  Maybe it's wrong to write that it is emanating from me.  More accurately I am surrendering to a force that supports and emanates from anyone who is aware of it.  It's both me and not me at all.

As I enter my third day of retreat, I feel a deep thriving in my heart. Every hour I meditate is like a deep diving expedition.  I go down and find a sharp shell of self-hatred or despair.  I work at it until it unlodges and boom the energy lifts me up.  I feel an anchored and abiding motivation to do whatever needs to be done to make my life happier. Clean my home, exercise, eat more vegetables.

I feel more open.  My mind is naturally quiet. My job is now to get comfortable with it. Assimilate it as a trait, the way a superhero gets used to having power.

Bodhichitta

The best way to achieve emotional stability, freedom from hatred, self-hatred, craving, and all the suffering that controls us, is to deeply and truly desire these things for everyone.

Earlier this month I started a course in the six paramitas. These are qualities, like the four immeasurables (compassion, loving-kindness, joy and equanimity) that cultivated, over time, become bodhicitta, the spontaneous and natural love of all beings.

It's been such a busy year, which I can see by how little I've been writing. Once again success threatens to derail my spiritual development.  But it's certainly not the self-sabotage I've seen in the past.  I'm still managing to meditate every day.

This weekend, I've decided to retreat and log some hours.  I've signed up for Vipassana in the fall, a  10 day retreat. I want to be ready for that, but also I'm feeling the build up of work related emotional poisons.  A lot of envy, pettiness, need to control.  I don't want to add to the confusion that already exists.  I need a strong heart and clear vision. For myself, and for everyone that I work with.

Wanting for other people, the same things that I want, happiness, freedom from suffering adds power to my wanting.  It has a massive impact on my practice.

10 years

It's been ten years since I started this blog.

My life is different. Much better in some ways, much more challenging in others.  For the first time in my life, money is not an issue. I'm making ten times what I made when I wrote my first post. I have a great job as a director of a thriving non-profit. Meditation has helped me build the confidence and clarity it takes for this role.

I'm settling down from a whirlwind month, traveling across British Columbia, staying in hotels and eating airport food.  My lifestyle is not as healthy as it's been.  Trying to circle back to more sustained exercise, healthier food, earlier sleep.

This weekend I decided to do a self-directed retreat. Much sitting, some standing, and some napping. My spiritual energy is taking its proper place again. Awareness of awareness. The more I'm with that, the stronger my mind.

It's snowing out.  My son, now seventeen, is snoring away.  I could conceivably go out every morning at dawn. For six months.  And change.

What would I want to change?

I could still become more diligent with housework.  I could still be a more responsible parent.  It would be nice to finally finish a book.  I could become more values driven and goal-directed.  I could find a life partner.

But there is much that I wouldn't change.  Much that I am grateful for and want to build on. My meditation practice. Mingyur Rinpoche is coming to Montreal in June. I would love to meet him.  And maybe I will.

I am reading his brother Tsoknyi' Rinpoche's book Open Heart, Open Mind during this retreat.  If I take away one insight, it is this:  It is not the job of others to earn my trust. It is my job to maintain my faith in them.  People need to keep believing in themselves, and if I can help them discover that spark, I've had an impact.

My greatest power is faith, the ability to get up, despite all the indignities and faults and broken commitments, and keep at it.  Keep at something.  This is how I keep my life an adventure, not a trap.

This is how I open the door every morning and step out.

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.

Easter Retreat 2

Any sense of agency I have is illusory.  There is a self that has been programmed by my biology, my culture, my family.  I am stepping outside of it from time to time, but it is still driven by that programming and the central drive of that programming is anger.

I can feed the peace, the happiness and joy.  The mind is telling a story, a series of events.  If I watch it, there's a possibility it will settle into a different rhythm. The Buddhist story is that these are the natural and essential qualities.  I can't attest to whether this is true, but it's certainly a more pleasant story that the one where we are essentially angry and discordant.

In the meantime though, my most normal patterns are towards anger. And this anger is ultimately very rewarding, or I wouldn't keep going back to it like a rat on a wheel.  It's my quickest and surest path to dopamine.

After going for an hour long walk, my meditations are focussing on that energy in the tailbone. I had a couple of interesting hours sitting in this energy, feeling bliss, feeling my anxiety and aversion to bliss, trying to hold it in equanimity by shifting between the bliss and open awareness.  I started to feel that liquid warmth, even some uncoiling.

Is this what we lost from our Sapien past. This wonderful feeling around out pelvic floor back when we used to be more of a squatting sitting around species?

It didn't last. Eventually I started to feel a restlessness, a boredom, an urge to get it all done with. But the insight that remains is that this self really doesn't have as much agency as I want to believe. There is this self that is mostly motivated by angry parents, a greedy, hierarchical culture.  I will never know if humans are basically good or basically bad, but I do know that when I feel good I am more generous and kinder to others.

In one meditation today, I thought about my family, and felt such anger towards them. That dissipated and for a while I felt good. When I though of each and everyone of them I had an entirely different feeling towards them. When I was a different person, they were different people, I was willing to cut them more slack. My perceptions of people are changed by how I feel about myself.

Nearing the end of day 2.  I've watched a teaching by Mingyur Rinpoche on finding  basic wisdom in "defilements."  It feels like the entire weekend has been leading to this.  There are five defilements, hatred, craving, ignorance, pride and envy.  His meditation technique is to ask "what do I really want."  It's possible that the answer to this will often be surface and related to these states of mind, states he believes have been created by culture.  But if we keep asking we will find our true nature, our deep, true essence, which is pure, pristine, beautiful.  Down there we want happiness, love, peace.  And if we ask long, enough and deep enough we will get there  Don't grasp at it, just get there and be there.

This is what the last two hours of my meditation will be.

And after that, the insight.

Yes my superficial, man, woman or parent-made desires, are strong. Maybe even stronger right now than the desires of my wisest level of self.  But I am extremely fortunate to know that, and even more fortunate to have a reasonably well-worn path back to wisdom. I can look at my messy home and remember that this is happening because I'm letting my cravings take over again. I can sit with them and I can sit with my peace and get the energy and wisdom back that I need.  I can look at the scale and realize that I need to spend an extra hour a day sitting with my healthiest drives.  I know this.

And I know I can do it.

Easter retreat--day 1

I don't know where to begin.

This retreat is not unfolding as easily as it usually does. Maybe because I stopped doing my insight practice a couple of years ago.  But also some things in my life.

Easter dinner canceled because my parents had a blowout.  Ben doing poorly in school.  My work seems to be going well. Though little progress with my book.  Also, I've let my running really fall off in recent months.

The end result after hour four of meditation is that I feel like I've got a few tons of impacted anger in me. Hour one was nice. Hours two and three were bearable, if unfocused. Hour four is like sitting with a burning rock of coal in my tailbone.

Something's got to give.

Also, I've been reading Sapiens, a book about how destructive our species is, with our too often self-rationalizing stories. It's hitting me how much suffering there is in the world, and around me. And how much my own life has been a repeated effort to justify the narrative of progress, when there isn't much evidence that we are progressing. At least, according to Sapiens.

Apparently, Yuval Noah Harrari author of Sapiens meditates at least two hours a day and goes on a two-month long retreat every year.

Hour five was, again, more anger; but something interesting happened. It began to pulsate and grow and I could feel very clearly the pleasure that anger, particularly the anger I feel towards my mother was. Anger does give pleasure when we reach a certain state. If can make us feel strong and make us feel clear. It can alleviate fear. At least for a while.

In hour six I returned to this anger I felt towards my mother and had an interesting insight.  I see my mother as an object that I think I know, that I think produces these burning aversive feelings in me as a matter of course, as though she were some kind of poison rock that necessarily produces a particular side effect.  But of course, she isn't. She's a multiplicity of values, drives, states of being, sometimes hateful, sometimes kind.  I'm the one that is producing the poison in my ingrained reaction to thoughts of her and memories of her.  I don't have to feel this way if I don't want to.  I don't have to see her as one solid reality and I don't have to experience her as that.  This was very liberating and soon enough I started to feel that magnetic, solid feeling peace.  And then it got really interesting. I could feel myself rejecting the peace, as though some kind of aversion was magnetized into me to reject this peace at a certain point.  I could see how this was habitual and that if I were to choose to recondition my response I could live more easily and more sustainably with peace.

Later:  I sat in this repulsion place for a while, informally.  And gradually it seemed to shift from a repulsive energy to a magnetic attraction energy.  I know I'm sounding annoying new age, no doubt. But I suddenly felt all kind of new things could be possible if the core of my consciousness was pulling in peace and love, instead of repelling it.

Something to continue working on tomorrow.

Patterns

Today I'm doing a self-directed retreat.

My life is in a state of transition as I work more, succeed more, and take on more responsibility. The old patterns of fear and reactivity emerge. I remember my professional family, chaotic, stressed, feeling enslaved to so many forces. Samsara. The ordinary whole catastrophe.

Sometimes when I head into a retreat, I have a hope that somehow I can make this all go away.  But a kinder, more viable plan is to simply see the pattern and look at where I have a tendency to let things spin out of control.

It's okay to be anxious and feel overwhelmed. But it's also okay to be calm, lucid, focused and resilient.

This week as I prepare for my half marathon, I've been working on resting in the relaxation that emerges from a fit and vital body. Resting in that relaxation creates a positive loop of relaxation.

The same thing happens in loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The more habitual these qualities become the more they grow. For many years I have wrestled with their shadows, attachment, over excitement, pity, passivity. But I feel less desperate and greedy for the fruits of meditation these days.  I am deeply grateful for the insights and perceptions that have evolved as a result of this practice. And I am excited in a very real way for them to take root.

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...

Self-directed Retreat Day 2

In my first hour of meditation today I had this insight.  Just as thought is impermanent, so is the consciousness and the life that is driven by thought. In my life, and I imagine in the history of humanity.  We are, right now, in a society wrapped up in the neocortex, as though this were the only part of the brain.  But the brain extends all throughout the body, and increasingly I believe that the most important part is the gut.

Certainly it's the most important part for physical health.  And wisdom, for me, begins with the decision to do what I can to stabilize my physical health.  So in hour two sitting with my Tan Tien was not the most comfortable feeling.  The neocortex feels like a safe abstract place.  But the gut is full of toxic, uncomfortable, sometimes weak feelings.  No wonder everyone wants to hang out in their brain.  Or at least that's where my habits bring me.

Hour three I decided to stand. But first I did a little reading from Bruce Frantzis Opening The Engergy Gates of Your Body. Somehow I seem to have skipped over the part where he recommends at least six months spent with an instructor, just on stabilizing the tan tien energies.  Longer if you're doing it alone!  Okay, well, I have spent about what now?  Twenty years?  I have made some progress.  But I've got some work to do to make it really stable.   I think this has something to do with the erratic parenting problem.  But I need to believe that I will get the stable love I didn't always get.   I stood for an hour and started to feel the hope that I can give myself this stable energy.

And then I can give it, to myself, to Ben, to my parents and my brother.  There are according to Mingyur Rinpoche four Buddah nature blockers, the first two being self-hatred and the second being hatred, or contempt towards others.  In hour two I started to feel the dissolution of my self-hatred, and finally in my belly joy.  A really nice joy that I reconized from the moment I learned I was pregnant.  This was a a creative, delightful joy, and if this is the kind of joy that tan tien generates than put me down for the next six month, or next twenty years.

Whatever, there is no time really. It's a fabrication, like sense of self.  And this is what I played with in hour five.  I love this freedom meditation that I learned in JOL3.   Letting go of self, and time, and with it agency. Once I let go of that I can feel the chi charting its own agency.  I got a big dose of self in the last 10 minutes, when I started to feel that familiar restlessness and craving.  But I decided to let the chi deal with that, and like a lovely, competent parent, it soon distracted me with a blissful warmth.  That is what will be driving me for the next twenty years, not my thoughts.

It's not that I won't have thoughts.   But I volunteer my life to the path that this energy will open up for me.