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.

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.

Thought

This month in the Joy of Living program I'm working with thoughts. I'm glad I've taken the previous two months to work on sound and objects, because at their most basic level thoughts really are sound and objects internalized.
  Not that I seem to be able to remember this in meditation.  I'm constantly drawn into the content of my thoughts. And the content of my thoughts are usually problems.
  Thought is a technology.  We developed it to solve problems, to create shared memory.  Eventually we became ennamoured with the beauty of thought made manifest, and that became art. Thought is mostly about problem solving and if we let it run on its own without slowing it down, checking it, letting it rest, we are in constant problem solving mode. We'll find problems where they don't even really exists.
  Meditation slows this down so that we can shift our brain outside of problem solving mode for a while. So that we can just be.  So that we can fulfill our purpose.  We're not actually here to solve problems.  We're here to witness and feel and experience this beautiful world, and to love each other and make life an experience full of awe and wonder.
  So, for the next few weeks I want to be like the father of  information theory, and seminal cryptologist, Claude Shannon, and act as though the meaning of the content is irrelevant. I'm going to listen to the sound of my thoughts, I'm going to watch the images, and feel the sensations.  Just follow along.

I'm happy

As long as I can remember, and still after a fairly rigorous meditation practice, on and off, I've always had intrusive thoughts telling me I'm depressed. Today for the first time I can remember I had and intrusive thought telling me I'm happy.

A lot of that, I think, has to do with getting a good sleep. I have had nights where I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. But last couple of nights I've slept through the eight hours I gave myself, and it does feel really good.

Been reading Jeffrey Schwartz The Mind and the Brain. Had a theory yesterday that just as I used to have intrusive negative thoughts when I was suffering from OCD as my brain becomes healthier I will start having intrustive positive thoughts. Intrusive silence, intrusive peace, intrusive happiness. Then positive mental health will be my driving force.