Compassion Practice – Getting out of the way

Yesterday we did our first day of compassion practice.  It’s so cool to dive into these new practices like an investigator and pick apart experienes.

I found all the different subtle flavors in the compassion practice and how compassion energy and metta energy differed.  For one, compassion is warmer, and a little bit more tingly in the throat.  I also feel like because compassion is about holding another’s suffering it’s a bit more earthy and grounded where the metta was more lofty.

One of the things that became super apparent in this sit was that same white noise block to concentration that I’ve described before.  It’s not a specific train of thinking or processing necessarily, it just feels like a bit of a disconnection from practice – like practice is over there and I’m over here and there’s  scrim in between us.  I remember in class on Monday one of our mentors mentioned that his current struggle is trying to bring too much of himself into meditation and how that can act like a block.  This came to me while I was sitting, and in the moments that the compassion/concentration weren’t stable and one track of my mind was wandering off, I just tried intentionally getting out of the way.

When I was on retreat one of the things that led to my crossing the A&P and dissolution experiences was the intention for 5 days to just get out of the way.  I placed an intention to just let experience happen directly without my inner narrator giving me a play by play.  So I practiced this in walking meditation and sitting meditation and was able to achieve some very concentrated states of practice just by doing my best to allow things in without sending them through the thought filter.

This is something in the months since retreat that I’ve somehow lost a bit.  Mostly because this is not a practical way to be out in the constructed world and at a job etc.  So part of me forgot.  But I remembered yesterday, and I found that in just stepping to the side and getting out of my own way I was able to go deeper in my meditation and maintain more stable concentration.