Surrender

Achieving this state of pure awareness is getting easier as the days where I begin with one hour of mediation accumulate.  But living, writing, being from this state is a different challenge all together.

How do I write from a place that is empty of thought? Who is doing the writing when I've let go of self narrative?

Running from this place makes sense.  I just move my body. Cleaning house from this place makes sense, I just do the basic tasks.  But writing?  Writing is complex.

But is it?  Maybe the problem is that writing from the place of self-generated suffering is complicated.  And so I expect writing to be complicated. I resist the possibility that wisdom has something brilliant to say and that all I need to do really is listen.

I resist the possibility that this is enough.

Words are tools, my brain is a tool, my consciousness is a tool. Natural intelligence and creativity come through me and my brain and vocabulary and reasonable facility with language are the tool that it uses.

Letting go of this writing self is a process of familiarity.  Feeling the tightness, the anxiety, the bad habit energy that sabotages my progress. It's all part of writing practice.

It's all part of living practice.

thoughts

This morning I'm starting to feel some of the chi return. I've been in the grip of a lot of anxiety. Some of it no doubt useless. But I am clearly in the grip of thought. Not in the grip of chi.

For a small moment while I was holding the balloon I remembered the importance of surrender. I remembered to stop trying to hold the balloon up, to just relax and rest in the magnetic energy that will do a far better job of holding this balloon up than I will. I forget that again and again and again.

Much of this has to do with the continuing dominance of the ego in my life. My ego is still convinced that only it can, should, will drive my life. And for the most part I still seem to be in its spell. I don't want to be there anymore. I want to be allied with nature and with consciousness, not careerism, ego building and status obsession.

I've been writing recently about The Muse. To work with a muse you have to be willing to surrender your creative ego. I'm not there yet. I'm trying, but it's still hard.

Surrender

The most difficult thing about standing is not standing, but surrendering to the energy that would enable me to release all the effort that goes into standing.

So the most difficult thing is not standing but not-standing.

This is difficult on several levels. First psychological, or maybe more appropriately, cultural. Surrendering to something bigger than ourselves is kind of against our North American programming. Or so we think. Of course we surrender to things more powerful than ourselves all the time. When we allow the government to manage civic affairs. When we allow the television to hypnotize us. When we participate in our market and consumption based economy, we are surrendering to something we have accepted is bigger than ourselves.

Why so hard to surrender to a pleasant energy? I know this is an energy that increases my well-being, and increases my quality of life. I've experienced its benefits over and over. Still, it's so hard to surrender.

Why does pleasure and health make me so anxious? Or rather, why am I anxious about increased pleasure and health? Why would I be anxious about well-being?

A little story came to me this morning while I was doing the dishes. One of the last conversations I had with my grandfather before he died. It was on the phone. He sounded happy and I told how happy he sounded. "That's what everyone keeps telling me" he said. "But I'm not happy. It's these morphine pills. I've been eating them like beans. They make me sound happy. But I'm not. I'm dying."

Because our only experience with altered consciousness is usually drugs, we worry when we experience it drug free. Like somehow we'll lose touch with our anxiety and be unable to see or express reality.

I don't think I'm really in danger of this happening. Last night I was watching T.V. and I started to feel anxious about the things in my life I should feel anxious about: My lack of stable employment, my debt, etc. I started thinking, what should I do to get rid of this anxiety. And then I realized, no I don't have to do that. I'm strong enough to face this anxiety. I'm strong enough to feel it and not feel the urge to run away.

This is the advantage of authentic well being. Not an escape from anxiety, but the calm strength to face it squarely.

I believe that if I surrender to this growing energy, that is what I will have.