Self Compassion

One of the blocks to my mission to cultivate wellbeing, is that I doubt myself.  I am still, too often, plagued by the certainty that I can't take care of myself and my son. That one day reality will catch up with me and I will have to face the truth, that I'm a fraud and a fool.  All will be revealed.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Tergar mini-retreat and we explored the practice of self-compassion. I've been listening to a guided meditation that prompts me to aspire to safety, peace, kindness towards myself and acceptance of myself.

But one thing that I read in Joy of Living struck me as very true.  Compassion is a powerful practice.  And as a powerful practice, it can spark a powerful reaction.  Rinpoche recommends that when practicing compassion, it's always best to start small, a minute of two of compassion, alternated with a minute of open, effortless awareness.  This helps smooth the path, and dampen any tendency to reactivity.

This morning in my practice I reached a different perspective on my mission.  Yes "I" want to cultivate well-being.  But really the mission is also to let go and allow well-being to cultivate me.  Not comfort, but the energy that arises from a life well lived. The more of this energy in my life, the less "I" there is to doubt.  Self compassion is often compassion for the delusion that there is this isolated, vulnerable "I".

That's why it's very important that self-compassion isn't self pity. And important that self-compassion is layered with open awareness, so that we get that little break from self-cultivation.  So that the energy that we do believe in washes aways the doubt that keeps us in the self-looping cage.

The Problem

So reforming my evening ritual is proving to be much more challenging than I expected.

I'm still watching 9 o'clock television.  I'm half committed to having kitchen cleaned at 7 p.m., to meditating in the evening.  Last night, I was up until 2 p.m. with some new show I'd discovered.

This morning I'm able to do a compassion meditation. But it's rocky.

What is the one thing that I could do every evening that would prime me towards a more peaceful, restful evening and sleep?

Or the one thing I could do every morning. In one of my favourite self-help books, it is recommended that we review our personal mission statement every morning before we make our daily plan, so that this mission becomes active in us.

Earlier this year I wrote a mission statement that included generating well being through early bedtime and book writing.  This week I'm going to review that statement as part of my daily plan.

Let's see if that's enough to help me avoid the temptations of prime time TV.

The Plan

The first step towards real abundance in my life is transforming a lifetime of poor sleeping habits and poor evening rituals.

Falling asleep and keeping to an early bedtime has always been a struggle for me, going back to a painful childhood.  Evenings were when the fights broke out, the tears began, the deep, deep sadnesses and truths of my parents unhappy marriage emerged. I am, frankly, afraid of bedtime. It's nothing but painful memories and the consequences of those painful memories.

But my life, and Ben's life, and the rest of my life, depends on changing this. I really believe that transforming my sleeping habits is the single most important thing I can do to achieve lasting and stable happiness.

I need to be gentle with myself, though, because this is going to be hard.  Or maybe I don't want to discourage myself with the word  hard.  This is going to be challenging.

My plan for the next six months is to revisit my JOL 1 course.  Do very simple, basic, meditations every evening to calm my mind.  Make that commitment every evening for 20 minutes. Then maybe the decision to forego television will be easier.

Recognizing the deep calm that is available to me every evening may help me to let go of the stressful patterns that have driven me for too much of my life.

Mission

My mission is to cultivate emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical and financial wellbeing every day--for myself, for the people around me and for the world I live in.  

I do this knowing that I, like all humans, are fundamentally altruistic, not greedy. 

I do this with routines, lists, goals, commitments.  But I do these knowing  that these are all secondary to the joyful act of pure being.

I do this, this year, by committing to three foundational habits.

• early bedtime,
• meditation
• book writing. 

I do this every morning and every evening by facing painful realities, painful memories and painful fantasies with equanimity. 

I follow the formula:  pain * awareness =  purification.  

I do this with the knowledge that the taste of purification once developed will not be lost, that it will lead to abundance, and that this will be a stable, good place from which I can create an abudant life for myself and my family. 

I do this, knowing that gains made will never be lost. 

Full Catastrophe Living

If I am to live a life of abundance, I'm going to have to get a grip on my tendency to get overexcited when things start to go well.  This is a recurring pattern in my life.  I can see it in this journal. What I want to see now is the recurring path out.

Overexcitement feels like energy trapped in my head,  So when I'm dealing with it this week, I'm watching it like any energy that will sink down to my core if I simply sit and watch it. The goal of that practice is to bring it down to a more joyful constructive excitement, an enthusiasm that becomes motivation.

Pema Chodron calls overexcitement the "near enemy" of joy.  In the past I've tended to focus on the enemy part of that label. But just for today I'm going to focus on the nearness.  Overexcitement  is a emotion that is close to joy and to try too hard to manage it, does mean risking its close and wonderful peer.  Better to think of it as a frenemy.

White Noise

Struggling today with some overexcitement. I'm happy my agent likes the chapter I sent her, but I know I've still got some work to do now in another chapter.  I'm trying to stay on track with some bread and butter work that I'd like to do well so that I have a stable source of income that lets me take some time with the book, although I'd love in the end to have the kind of writing career where I can be supported by book writing.  Who wouldn't!

Regardless, I have a lot work and a lot of things happening right now.  And the word of the year is abundance. I want to write a successful proposal and have enough money to finish this book.  But I want to do a good job for McGill because whether this book is successful is not entirely in my control, and I have a responsibility to myself and to Ben to provide us with stable income. Communications work at an important university is stable.

So the challenge today is how to get my mind in the best place. First strategy is to use overexcitment as support for practice.  This is an effect of change, of success of good things, but I need to learn how to let it sink down and integrate into my gut. So in meditation today, which is more towards the short times, many times schedule, I'm doing a lot of recognizing how this overexcitement is stuck in my head and how to just let it sink.

I noticed in letting it sink, that one thing that brings it down, and starts me on the path of balance is listening. I don't listen well. I don't listen to my kindwise advocate (a presence I've hacked from Jeffrey Schwartz). I don't listen to the people around me.  I don't listen to my self.  I don't listen enough. But listening brings the energy where its spinning around in my eye area, to my inner ear and then sets it on the path down to my heart and my gut.

Another thing I'm trying today is white noise.  Abundance is the good side of chaos, and maybe a bit of sound chaos will help settle my brain. Today maybe I'm lurching through life.  But it's all in the service of this big full catastrophe of a world.

Abundance

I read a thought-provoking post  yesterday that suggested creating a one word theme for the upcoming year. This is my first post for 2015, so I've decided to start the year right with a word: abundance.

This same writer a few weeks back had remarked on a Christmas New Yorker cover that featured two apartments, the upstairs hipster and minimalist. The downstairs hipster and flea market cozy.  Which apartment you preferred, she claimed told you much about who you were and what you needed to accept about yourself.

I'm the downstairs dweller.  While I love a clean, spacious home, I feel most at ease surrounded by stuff. It doesn't have to be expensive, or even emotionally valuable stuff.  I'm more comfortable sitting in garbage than spic and span Feng Shui perfect spot.  I want my life to be simple, but my nature is cozy and cluttered.

Knowing this I've decided to make this year about how to manage this temperament without getting weighed down with all the baggage I tend to accumulate, physically and emotionally.

For instance, committing to basic cleaning rituals, even if my house is surface messy, makes me feel grounded.  Fifteen minutes a day, and one hour a week, and morning and evening routines of about five minutes each, really is enough for me.  If I fall behind on that my life iterates from abundance to chaos pretty fast.

In general I'm better off adding more than trying to deprive myself.  More successful at maintaining an exercise regime, and adding healthier foods, than trying to cut down on how much I eat.  More is actually less for me, as long as that more is healthy and quality.

In terms of my practice. The last few weeks I've been cultivating a feeling of timeless awareness.  My aim in the next few months is to really stabilize, in my gut, this strong sense of there being a boundless, open field of love.  I've been thinking a bit, because of my book, about the Higgs boson particle.  About the possibility that there is this field all around us with no pull, no push.  Just blank immeasurable space.  The stuff of pure awareness, everywhere, all around us.  What if this was saturated in love, and there always, even when we aren't aware of this awareness?

Wouldn't that be grand!