going deeper

After the great circle the next posture in my cycle is "going deeper." I sink down lower, let the gravity loosen my hips and my spine. My hands rise and I begin to feel a magnetic energy create a pathway to my brain.

This increases the tension in my body, but like a good stretch it also releases it. I feel like I'm stretching my brain. But after it's stretched I feel a calm. Kind of the calm you feel after an orgasm. But this is more sustained. It feels like my hands are holding the calm in place with their magnetic energy. And all I have to do is surrender to this calm. The fact of this calm. Just surrender to it.

This is surprisingly difficult because we don't think of calm as a fact of life, or a sustained state of being. We think of life as sustained stress and suffering, relieved from time to time by moments of calm. But when I'm in this state I feel that it's really the suffering that is artificial. This calm is the state we are naturally programmed to feel. The stress is a result of cultural programming.

I'm not saying that's true. But that's what it feels like when I'm in that state of being, and I make a choice to step out of it and back into the culture of stress that I've been born into.

Shenpa smack-down

Still wrestling with the shenpa. I'm pretty good at the first two steps, recognizing I'm hooked and feeling the negative energy. Don't seem to be as good at the third step, moving on.

But isn't this the story of my life. I'm good with beginnings not so good with endings.

I realized something this morning while standing. My original vision when I started this standing was to stand and see how much it affected the rest of my life. More and more all I want is just a better, deeper, more satisfying standing practice. The rest of my life is just the rest of my life. This is and should pretty much just be about standing, cultivating that energy that allows me to stand for an hour in the morning, and allows me to continue with the habit of standing first thing in the morning. I do that because I believe that this energy is an endless supply of peace and happiness for me.

If the only thing that changes after six months is that I've cultivated an early morning practice that I will return to again and again. Then that is all the change I need.

Shenpa

A couple of days ago I received a great book by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun from Nova Scotia.

Now I'm working on the concept of Shenpa, the magnetic pull of bad habits and afflictive emotional patterns. This came in incredibly handy yesterday at my son's "intervention" meeting at school. I seem to have expressed myself poorly in French and said something that really offended Ben's teacher. Normally I think I would have given into old patterns of defensiveness, and believe me I'm still feeling them. But I'm also able to stand and just feel them and not let myself get badly sucked in.

It's a huge relief even to know that I'm capable of resisting these obsessive, defensive patterns.