Addicted to thought

I crave thinking. 

This week in meditation I felt that craving deeply, and when I did, a whole new path opened up. I guess I could call it a jhana.  But I felt the release that came from letting go of thinking and allowing all that is not thinking take over. 

Of course I've done this before, but I'm not sure I've ever really focussed as much as I did this week on the impulse to think.  

It was magical. 

I wonder how I can apply that to my writing.  This morning I saw my stack of old writing practice journals.  It's been so long since I tried to bypass thinking in my writing. I've been struggling with the BDW.  Maybe this would work. 

Hello, Hungry Ghost

This week I re-started my mindful eating habit core modules at Eat Right Now. 

I discovered this program about two years ago shortly after I launched an experiment.  On my screensaver I put a rather disturbing buddhist painting of The Hungry Ghost, the being with a large stomach and tiny mouth who represents that part of us that can never be satisfied.  I was struggling with my own HG, having hit the highest weight that I've ever recorded, putting me solidly into the medical definition of obesity.  This app/community of practice is the work of Dr. Judson Brewer, psychiatrist/buddhist, and for me it was exactly what I needed.  It was program and supporting community that helped me transfer my mindfulness skills in meditation to my eating habits and get my cravings under control. It also pointed me toward a low insulin food plan that helped me to lose about 30 lbs in the next six months.  

I kept this off for a good while, but at the beginning of the year I started to struggle again.  Tried to shift to a vegetarian diet with complex carbs that started to bring my insulin levels back up. Tried to balance that with fasting.  By March I was on a rat wheel of uber eats, and my weight was steadily climbing back up to obesity.  Ben was hitting a high weight as well. 

So I'm back in the program.  This morning's module is about The Hungry Ghost.  My tendency is to want to satisfy my HG with substitution strategies, getting busy, doing other stuff.  But these are just band aids on the wound. The prescription today is to just be with the pain.  Eat some small healthy meals throughout the day.  Know that the suffering will eventually ease

through the power of awareness. 

Sit. Stay. Heal. 

 

Living with less prediction

If I want to be free from suffering, the most impactful thing I can do is to rest that part of my brain that is incessantly trying to predict what every shift in affect means.  Do this and let the equanimity build.

If I want to be happy I need to notice when an unpleasant affect is receiving a habitual prediction of gloom and doom. E.g.  when I'm running, I can notice how my mind has shifted to work problems.  Take a beat, notice that there are no actual work problem happening, this is my brain noticing the rise in intensity in my body from effort, and coming up with the habitual reason for this: work problems.  I did this yesterday and was easily able to shift from anxiety to excitement about the incrementum from returning to my running habit and the increase in healthy energy that this was going to bring me. 

Another good example is when I wake up in the morning, cortisol running through my body. Same, my brain starts hunting through the usual negative scenarios, all the things I'm angry or anxious about.  But I don't have to continue with those particular simulations. I can immediately ask, "what can I be excited about today?" I can start my day with an entirely different mindset. 

And then I can start the day with an hour of meditation that sets the default mode at being, instead of predicting. 

Nothing agains prediction.  It's very useful.  But it's also like trying to live on ground that is always shifting. The body, the brain and the mind needs stillness. 

If it's going to maintain balance, it needs to know what balance feels like  

new new words

incubated:  the feeling of being in  my tidied bedroom, where new growth has a chance to grow beyond a traumatic sprout. 

Yesterday I wrote about my project of coming up with new words for new feelings. Like incrementum, for the feeling after taking a baby step towards the recovery of healthy energy. 

When I started this journal thirteen years ago, and then abandoned it a few months later, and then started writing in it again, I wrote about the phenomenon of traumatic sprouts. The re-growth in a tree after there's been trauma, and the challenge of maintaining that re-growth. 

Right now my clean bedroom feels like a fragile environment.  I've rarely been able to sustain this environment for an extended period, and I wonder what impact that has on my ability to thrive and sustain success. 

I hope by identifying the feeling of being incubated, and maintaining that emotion, that the energy that I grow here will become more stable. 

New words, new feelings

I'm working on building the specific words for feelings that  I need to recreate to sustain the growth that I've made and want to build.

Repiphany: an insight that I've had before, but forgot

e.g. If I sit with that feeling of stuck-ness long enough it starts to give, and I start to feel a small motivation to change.  I've recognized this before, but it's not quite intuitive

Incrementum, the feeling after I've taken a small action towards positive change, and

Recrementum, the feeling I have after I've completed a micro habit that served me well in the past

eg. Just looking at that empty swept corner of the room gave me hope. 

Remomentum: the energy that starts to build from several instances of recrementum

eg. If I could commit to the 2 minute hotspot for a few days, I'm sure I'd build some remomentum. 

My theory of equanimity

If joy is the prediction that positive transformation is happening and will continue, then what is equanimity?

It's the prediction that peace is abundant and available, now and in the future. Even forever. 

The universe is at peace. Space seems still and endless, and it looks like that's not going to be changing anytime soon. As I build a stronger and more resilient sense of this truth, the  intense, unpleasant affect that threatens to derail me has  less of a hold, and wisdom is in the driver's seat. 

My theory of joy

 If emotions are guesses and predictions, then joy is the prediction that there will be good things, better things, transformation.

It's not everything is going to be okay, but it is everything will be good enough, better, worth being grateful for. 

It's all that we see in our lives and in the world that convinces us that we can always find a path to peace, equanimity, love. 

If I apply it within the four qualities, it goes like this.  The wish that everyone be happy and free, awakens the hope, possibility and prediction that this will be so.  What makes this feeling habitual is the equanimity that supports it, nurtures it and increases the circumstances and possibilities for joy.