silence between thoughts

I have done this before. And when I did I gradually got to the point where the silence imprinted itself on my brain well enough that it became a presence throughout the day that would interrupt my thoughts.

Today as I stand here, the silence greets me like an old lover. Something I've known for a long time. Something unconditional that I have turned my back on. I don't know why. Why would I want to live without this silence, so gentle, so nurturing, so strong.

It's strength will become my strength. And my strength, I hope, will be a source of strength for others.

The fragrance of scattered maple leaves

Hit by the first rays of Indian summer.

Just that. One of the most perfect smells in the world.

return to standing

Fifty minutes of standing. One of the things that's difficult is that I'm conscious of how much tension and stress I've allowed to build up in my body. I feel the first pings of chi in Tan tien, a kind of cool carbonated feeling for now. I hit stretches where my body feels suspended by magnetic energy and I know that this energy will grow and that my body will eventually surrender to it. I then I won't think of it as "the energy." I'll be the energy. I'll just be floating there in the energy.
But I'm not there yet because I got caught up in other things for a day, a month, a year.
I'm back now. This time I will religious record all the good.
But there is sacrifice in doing that. I can feel the writing going on in my brain. I can taste the anxiety of striving in my body. I really can literally taste it, a metalic buzzing feeling, kind of nauseating fear that wants the good feeling so desperately.
I need to be patient and stand and record and stand and record and just do that and see what happens.
But I feel more confident and strong than I have in a while. That's because I'm connected to the strength of the universe, I guess.

Writing to improve well being

Read something interesting this morning. Alice Brand did a psychological study in which there is evidence that writing accentuated positive emotions and blunted negative ones.

So if I'm writing every morning and recording my progress, my good feelings while I do this practice, am I solidifying them? And will this help others?

I feel in some ways that I'm collecting these feelings, kind of like an elixir.

What will that do to my brain?

Is standing a technology?

I read something yesterday that hit me hard. Writing is after all just another technology.

uh oh...my son is up. Will have to stop writing for a bit.

Socrates was worried about the effects on memory that writing would have. Plato disregarded those fears by writing down his teachers conversations. Writing was to the Greeks in some way, what video games are to our era.

And in the same way that video changes the brain, so does writing. It can slow down our thought. It can help us remember. But it can also lie in a way that oral culture couldn't, or couldn't accomplish as successfully.

So, just for the sake playing with this idea. Is standing a technology? I mean I am cultivating energy and electricity, the same way any conductor does. Maybe it's an ancient technology that we've lost. It is a technology that brings power to our body and to our brain. It is a technology of consciousness.

We look to technology to bring us wellbeing. This is another way of bringing us that wellbeing. The question is also, perhaps, is it a better technology for bringing us what we really want? If what we really want is peace, well being, freedom, creativity, health, then this may very well be a more successful technology, than anything we've ever invented.

the habit of solitude

Most of my practice today I spent trying to quell my obsession with change. I want to change. I am doing this to change, all I can think of is change. I am so focused on change and what I hope from that change that I lose touch with the moment. With the quiet, with the quality of quiet.

So I put down my arms and just tried instead to cultivate the habit of being in this moment. It occured to me near the end of my hour, as the light started to rise, that all the great writers that I know cultivate the habit of finding this hour at the edge of the day. Either morning, or late night. But you need this hour, to write, to contemplate to be. But it is your hour with the universe. It is your hour with timelessness.

I tried today to kill the writer in me, but she keeps coming back wondering how this timelessness can sink into your writing, so that you make some classic and useful for a long time. Something that could be read at any time.

primary

I read something yesterday about Freud's theory of primary and secondary process in creativity. Primary is the raw images, material. Secondary is the abstract thinking, editing. I think that what meditation is doing for me is training my primary process, not just in creativity, but in life. We all get so caught up in secondary living, thinking.

Early in the morning like this, I am far more aware of how my mind drifts off to plans and dreams and conversations. Of course this happens whenever i'm meditating. But when I meditate at other times of the day, I'm going against the grain. I should kind of be planning and talking, so it's harder to have any real authority over my mind.

In the stillness of the morning, quiet is right. I have the authority of dawn working for me.