Our current practice is a practice to “equanimize the pool of poison and pain”, which is the somaticized emotion we keep in our bodies. Emotions tend to get stuck in our bodies when we can’t process them, which leads to a bit of a buildup and backlog of pain referred to as the pool. Occasionally that pool will release an emotion of pain, and it will bubble up to the surface of our awareness. Once this happens we tend to relate it back to one of our self generate stories as a way to deal with it. Over time, the self generated stories become our way to deal with the release of emotion from the pool. So over the years, instead of dealing with the pain of the pool directly we are dealing with the self created emotions we’ve used to react to the pain.
So, in this practice we’ve been dealing with the pool itself.
I’ve noticed that I mentally bounce away from experience of the pool, which isn’t surprising.
I’ll fall into concentration, and instead of shifting my attention to the activity of the energy centers, I’d rather just stay floating away in concentration states – though they have been waning a bit the past few weeks. (mostly because my life has become a bit more dense and distracting with all the activities of the upcoming holidays)
This morning though I really put in additional effort (which I hear is both recommended and discouraged depending on who you talk to). But that effort really did push me through to maintaining a vigilant focus and concentration on the center in my chest, which was the one that activated for me today.
In the past I’ve felt this things on the surface of my body, but this morning I felt the energy deep in my chest, and it was fairly large.
I visualized it almost like a volcano, and as the energy built I had a sense that it was going to explode and release a lot of emotion – but it never did. It was an energetic equivalant to that feeling of a joint being on the verge of cracking but never quite getting there.
The emotion was intense though, and while it didn’t release the giant well of emotion I sensed was there, it did let some stuff leak out around the edges – and I felt the sadness and fear that was buried in there – but in a smaller amount that the whole shebang all at once.
Again, I’m reminded of the “subterranean murmurings” my mentor mentioned – that sense that there is so much there, but that you can’t really handle the truth of it all so your body and brain are protecting you from it. You can brush up against it and get a sense of it’s vastness and content as if through a mist – but you can’t quite meet it directly.
It’s almost as if we’re all a little haunted, isn’t it?
the Good Heretic 