Emotional Hunger (Hello Serotonin)

Just as insulin is the ultimate cause of weight gain, so is serotonin the ultimate cause of wellness. 

I felt that and knew that in this morning's mediation.  I've felt it and known it before. So what it the best way to sustain this knowledge so that it infuses every day?

I have to experience it short times, many times.  I have to set a clear intention to breathe it into my transitions.  I have to plan for it.  I have to make it the thing that I produce. I have to track the impact of it on my life. I have to make art about it. 

I have to bring it into my big idea. 

I have to use my hunger as my friend. 

 

The Four Thoughts

Another Saturday of meditation and fasting.   I started the day with a reading of Tsoknyi Rinpoche's  writing on the four thoughts that turn the mind. Of course I have read about and contemplated these thoughts before, but..

"...repeating a teaching is not just for your conceptual mind. Once your conceptual mind understands, you think you understand. But that kind of understanding is not enough because repetition is for your mind's emotional understanding." 

The dharma needs to become a stronger, wider, less rickety wheel if it is to become an intuitive, protective and nurturing set of emotions that make sense of our constantly changing affect.  

I had a glimpse of this earlier in the week after discovering some Goenka guided meditations on my Insight Timer.  Goenka points out a number of times that equanimity arises from the understanding of impermanence.  It's not enough to know conceptually that we are impermanent.  When we make intuitive the understanding of impermanence, we  have the insight born of all the four thoughts: that life is a precious opportunity, that is is indeed impermanent, that suffering has causes, and that suffering is not worth the effort of all the habits we have to maintain to perpetuate it for ourselves and others. 

During my two hour meditation I took my time with each thought, taking the time to rest in the emotional consequences of each.   I felt gratitude, equanimity, bliss, and a deep sadness for everyone still as hooked on suffering as I am. 

This morning I brought those thoughts into my meditation and finished with a strong clear connection with absolute well being, vast infinite and always here. 

The weekly quote from Tergar was the insight that I started the year with.

I am committed.  My job now is to document these changes.

Joy on tap

A Saturday of meditation and fasting. 

After the first 2 hr sit I asked myself how I would feel if it was a successful day.  Joy.  I can say that now because I feel that this is a dependable emotion for me now.  That isn't to say that I didn't feel any painful emotion.  I certainly did.  

During my second 2 her sit, I felt such a strong wave of compassion, it was like I was feeling for all the suffering in the world that I could fit into my heart.  I was dense and immeasurable despair. Then suddenly, a wet trickle of warmth began to flow in my heart, as though a trickle water was emerging from a crack in the ice.

I still hear the familiar hate myself refrain.  But I practiced RAIN on it, bathed it in acceptance, and eventually it began to loosen, like a 3D hologram turning around beneath my gaze. I could see the hatred as simply solid energy, surrounded by other kinds of energy.  All was energy, all the calm ocean like pleasure, all the pain, both petrified and sharp.  All was awareness. I felt what Mingyur Rinpoche speaks of when he defines happiness as the experience of absolute wellbeing.  

We are of the universe and the universe is always well, even if every part of it is dying. 

During my last meditation, I just let go.  Let go of my pain, of my self, of the content of my past.  I let go as though I was dying, returning home.  It was a happiness that could sustain itself.  It was joy as achievable as a water pump.  No more waiting around for the ice to crack. 

Compassion

 

Compassion means letting go of your self-identity, letting go of proving that identity all the time. Compassion means you work in the way the wind works, the sun works, or the air works. Take, for example, how the air assumes the shape of the room. The air does not say, “I will give you this breathing space provided you breathe the way I want.” Everyone enjoys the benefit of being able to breathe in the air. It is the same way with the sun: the sun does not stop shining when there are clouds in the sky. – Khandro Rinpoche

Joy, Meaning, Connection

Slowly, but surely, I'm feeling a coherence in my life. 

The different practices connect, meditation, walking, eating well and mindfully, cleaning, writing, planning and mindful review.  Since I've stopped eating past 7 pm, I fall asleep and stay asleep more easily. Today I had a jhana meditation, in which I could feel the serotonin rising from my gut to nourish my heart and my brain. 

The habit I'm trying to build into my life right now is clarity. It is, according to a book I'm reading, the child of careful thought and mindful experimentation.  It starts with knowing yourself.  In his monthly teaching, Mingyur Rinpoche, talks of the three kind of ways we can sense the self,  unhealthy, healthy and luminous. Unhealthy sense sees the self as permanent, independent and singular.  The healthy sense of self self, sees it as impermanent, interdependent and multidimensional. And then there is the luminous. The self beyond the self that emerges from the unity of these two.  It is both impermanent and permanent, independent and interdependent, multidimensional and one. 

To achieve more clarity in my life, I have chosen three words to describe the self I want to sense and  as the future unfolds: joyful, meaningful and connected. 

May I sense more and more, everyday this luminous self. May it guide me.  May it guide me in how to guide others.

Top insights of 2020

1. "When you know you don't need to change, that's when you change"  Mingyur Rinpoche.

   This was from an interview on the podcast 10 per cent happier.  I realized after listening to this that I don't have to "stop" hating myself.  Being aware of that piece of coal in my heart is like knowing where the diamond is.  As with cravings, I just need to accept this aversion and let it transform itself. If that were my only meditation, I would have all that I need

2.  "To whatever degree we know deeply that we have what we need within ourselves, we will let go"  Narayan Helen Liebenson

   NHL meant this more about connecting with our sacred core, our place of enough. The more deeply and intuitively I am connected to my gut energy, however, the easier it is for me to let go of all the weakening habits I've accumulated.  

3.  Going home is the most treacherous and challenging part of the adventure.

   As I think about putting this book into book form, I remember that movie about the climbers coming back from ascending a glacier in Peru.  Going down is harder and more treacherous.  How we make it home and make it to a place of peace after a peak meditative experience is a much more challenging journey, than getting to the peak experience.  How do we live after we have awoken?

4. Who would I be if I didn't hate myself?

   A question posed while reading Byron Katie.  If I don't have a clear enough picture of that it's going to be hard for me to return home, because I don't even remember what home feels like.  

5. The 3 words of Dzogchen.  

   Recognize (the primordial state beyond concepts). Decide (to be  in this state). Know (that is is self-liberating.

6. The impact of informal practice on awakening

   I learned a lot from Culadasa's The Mind Illuminated, but the best take away was his assertion that awakening will always be stunted if our informal practice is weak.  The end of day review is something I want to bring into the new year 

7. Intermittent fasting is not a sustainable nutrition plan for me

   I've come back to fiber fueled eating, which meant going through a transition, and even some weight gain.  But I truly believe it's what's best for my body, and for the planet.  That said, I'm not eating unlimited fibre in front of the computer or TV.  I am building better intuition about what I really need to eat to feel happiest and liberate myself from cravings and self hatred.  

8. I can become a digital minimalist

   December I cut out streaming.  I'm trying to re-introduce it judiciously. Limiting the emotional thrillers to a couple of episodes a week.  Balancing different kinds of shows and trying to keep it to under an hour a day during the week.  

9. To make my cleaning algorithm intuitive, I need to truly focus on the cleaning habit I'm mastering

   Focus and attention is the foundation of learning. If I want these cleaning algorithms to take, I'm better off bringing my attention to a short practice many time a day for a while, like shining the sink, or 15 minutes, than doing binge cleaning while a watch an empty tv show.  This is how I learned to meditate.  It's how I'm going to learn to clean. 

10.  Attention is the foundational, core habit, of socio-emotional learning 

    I really got the importance of attention, which I may have been mixing up with concentration in the past.  This is partly from Culadasa, partly from my work with UNESCO.  But I'm beginning to understand how vital attention is learning.  Awakening, I am starting to believe, is the unity of attention and awarenes.  It's that simple.  And that difficult to master.  

December of Digital Declutter

  I end my year with a digital de-clutter. 

This is largely about un-hooking from streaming. I'm tired of all that video content pinballing around in my head. I'm tired of my head. What would it feel like to be happy? More and more I see it as the ability to just rest in wellbeing.  Stop the constant search for drama. 

Once I unhook, I will have to be with my aversion. That tight cable of tension that runs through my heart, my forehead, down to my belly. What would it be like to let go?

I sit here on day 1.  The only news of the day, the tightness that holds me to the past.