An awake heart is like a sky that pours light.
Hafiz (via lazyyogi)
Winter feast for the soul
There’s a great community built around this idea of the Winter’s feast for the Soul. It’s a 40 day long spiritual practice period in the beginning of the year, which can be spent in any daily spiritual practice though it’s mostly geared towards meditation.
While I’m not formally joining this year (mainly because I have a teacher and am on a fairly specific meditation path) – During this time I am staying mindful of the idea of a winter’s sojourn towards inner work and journeying, and am with the group in spirit.
Winter is really the season for me where the outer world goes quiet and my inner world starts to sing a bit louder. In the quiet it’s easier to hear.
In that spirit, I started out this year with a 5 day sitting retreat. For 5 days I sat for 2 hours, ate breakfast, sat for 4 hours, ate lunch, listened to dharma talks, took walks, and sat for 2 more hours in the evening all in silence.
I had some deep and profound experiences on this retreat. I started to see with clarity the purpose of the labeling, even though I personally have never been interested in it. I can sit and note and notice, but I find labeling too disruptive for my concentration.
The instructions for one of the days was fairly extensive 4 part Mahasi style noting, which then branched out into dual 4 part noting – which was just too much for me. I instead focused on only noting “gone”.
Things became one pointed on the first night, and while in that state I noticed a flicker in my awareness. To be more to the point, it wasn’t a flicker in my awareness but a flicker OF my awareness. There was an energy build to investigate the flicker, to investigate the nature of awareness itself but I was too afraid.
I spent the next day trying to release my fear around cessation. So much fear, which I can talk about in another post. I had some deep insights around my fear of further growth, and fear of how the world might change (even for the better).
I felt like there was a lot of effort put into cessation on that day, which is clearly not the right way to go about it – but there was something so URGENT about having this experience on retreat in a safe bubble that I couldn’t let effort go. I had a very near miss where instead of cessation I ended up in the 8th jhana according to my teacher. After that all sense experience was muted for the rest of the day like everything in awareness was happening to someone else next door instead of to me.
I started to feel the vibrations all around me, vibrations of sense doors, but I was also drilling into the mind states of compassion and metta and seeing the vibrations in those. I spend a while contemplating if these are vibrations or flickers – or does it matter? A vibration is ultimately just as unstable as a flicker, but in my opinion a flicker by it’s nature blips in and out of existence – which is more like no self rather than impermanence.
Either way, I am back now and deep into equanimity. After a few minutes of concentration practice each morning I find myself landing in what I’m guessing is the 4th jhana – spacious equanimity. My body and sense of my body starts getting mushy and floating away.
I’m balancing the floating away with the going to work, and home, and planning my life – while feeling much clearer around my decisions. The equanimity seems to be suffusing everything with a clarity I’m not accustomed to. I want to hold on to it and never let it go, and my new task is to find equanimity with the loss of equanimity.
There’s more, but that’s all for now.
Thank you for your practice
S
The pool
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?
Energy Centers and Dreams
Last week in insight practice we used the practice of suppressing self generated afflictive emotion – this week we are exploring the energy centers and the somaticized emotion that they contain.
When I first was “initiated” or whatever you want to call it – and felt the urge to meditate all the time and go on retreat and have wild experiences and all that – I felt a fairly consistent pressure (or contractiveness) on the top of my head.
Sometimes if felt like someone was physically pushing down on my head with a thumb or a fist. I also felt this strong pressure in my forehead – there was at least one sit where I actually visualized the sensation as an ice pick, and it threw my whole head backward it was so intense.
Lately those energy centers have subsided a bit – and the lower ones are unfolding. The metta practice has brought more awareness to my heart and solar plexus – but the most interesting one that’s waking up right now is in my throat.
Lately when I’ve gotten quiet, it’s my throat that’s been the most noticeable, even when the practice doesn’t involve the energy centers. Sometimes just during the day I’ll feel it – much like I used to feel the pressure in my head.
In sitting practice we’re working with identifying feeling states that reside in these centers, and I’ve been working with my throat. I feel there’s emotion trapped in there around feeling unheard and unseen. The emotions feels similar to the dream where you scream but no one hears you. I’m not entirely sure what emotion that is – but it should have a name.
As if to validate this thought I had yesterday, last night I had a dream in which S and I were at a theme park, in line to ride one of those standing roller coasters. We all load into the cars and I realize that my safety harness doesn’t come down. Or rather, it comes down but it doesn’t lock snugly into place, it just kind of bounces up. I try and get the attention of one of the attendants but no one hears me or is nearby enough to hear me. I wave my arms and no one seems to notice. The gal comes by to individually check the cars and when she gets to mine she cursorly inspects the person next to me and sees that theirs is fine and kind of skims over mine. I start yelling at her and she hears me
I get out of the car and start yelling at everyone on the platform and they hear me. They yell back, defensive. We fight, I call them all incompetent and storm out.
But I still want to ride the ride so I sneak back in later – which is when I woke up.
(there as another part of this dream in which I had a baby – I felt great love for the baby, but conflict with my partner – a sort of smugness that rubbed me the wrong way. I wanted to go out to an event – a movie or art show or something – and realized that I didn’t want to leave my baby alone. So I was in a position to either leave and feel bad or stay and feel bad for missing the event. It was a terrible feeling, but I was very aware of a “right vs wrong” choice. My partner was a bit smug with an “i told you so” look when he saw I wanted to go out but couldn’t – as if he knew all along this would be my struggle with parenthood. Even in my dreams that smugness drives me crazy.)
Self generated emotion
So, I’m back from my whirlwind driving/family/food weekend – I managed to continue with my meditation practice while I was out of town for Thanksgiving. I brought my cushion and just sat in the guest bedroom. Fortunately I am always the first one awake at any gathering – so I always have some time to myself in the morning to kill off.
I can’t tell if things are clicking fully back into place again or not – but they are feeling a bit more on track by a matter of degrees. We’ve moved into compassion practice in morning meditation – and I’ve found that it’s one of the most amazing tools I’ve been introduced to so far.
The big component for this is the investigation of self generated emotion brought on by thinking, in particular those looping “sticky” thoughts that really trip us up.
So, the process is to wait and see if a thought comes up, and to identify if it’s a one off thought “I need to remember to pay rent” versus a repeating thought “I can’t believe I screwed that up, I’m such an idiot”
If it’s a repeating thought you sit with it until you can get feel for the emotion behind the content of the thought. Once you have a grasp on the emotion behind the thought you allow the content to fall away and just focus on the emotion. Bring that emotion down into the body and really feel where it’s located and get a sense for it. If it’s a self-generated emotion at this point the emotional aspect will dissolve a bit into something else – into another deeper emotion or mind-state. This is the actual emotion that exists that exists in the body that triggered the thought.
If the self generated emotion is really sticky and won’t go away, the instruction is to blast it with some nice strong metta for a while to dissolve it. If the underlying emotion or feeling state is too strong to face, the instruction is likewise.
The gist of this is that we often have big feelings that we carry around with us that we aren’t necessarily always able to process or deal with. We just dont have the tools. So we get stuck in thought patterns that generate another emotion that we can relate to – even if negatively. For many people it’s easier to deal with anger than a fear of abandonment for example – so they self generate anger instead.
The anger/fear example is a classic – but there are lots of others, and often these sticky thoughts are just tools for dealing with environmental triggers of deeper stuff that hasn’t been worked through. It’s great to have a tool to really work with this type of destructive thinking.
I had an experience with an ex on Monday that spun me out into this type of thinking all night and through the morning on Tuesday – and in meditation I blasted that thinking and it’s associated generated emotions away with Metta. Throughout the day as the thinking would creep back in I would continually blast that self generated feeling state of not being good enough back with metta over and over….. and it totally worked. By the end of the day I felt so good, and so clear about the situation in a way I never would have been if I had allowed those thoughts to run rampant through my day.
What a lifesaver, this technique is!
White noise
Lately I’ve been feeling a little off-kilter energetically. It’s interesting that the longer I meditate the more familiar I become with my personal energetic flow and when something is a bit off. Only now, when things are a bit off they feel so magnified and hard to ignore – like I’m crawling out of my skin.
I’m starting to realize why strict yogis of all traditions minimize or eliminate stimulants such as caffeine – after years of feeling fairly immune to the effects of caffeine in the past few week I’m noticing more and more the energetic shift in my body that it causes.
When there’s any disruption in the force at all I have a hard time staying focused in meditation or maintaining that feeling of connection that’s so apparant otherwise. Lately it’s shown up in other more overt ways as well – snoring, nonsensical and anxiety laced dreams, and occasional bouts of nausea while meditating
Right now work has been fairly intense – I’m finally doing my dream job and loving every minute of the actual work, but it’s longer hours and a bit more pressure than I’m used to. I also have travel coming up today for thanksgiving where I’ll be visiting my partner’s family. While I don’t feel overtly nervous or stressed about the trip I think it’s rippling out into my consciousness anyways, and revealing some insight about how I am feeling unsettled over it. When you add the ongoing political turmoil and drama that’s been unfolding over the past few weeks I can see why things feel out of sorts.
I feel all of this disturbance as a white noise in my field of awareness. The buddha said that our mind is like a pool, and any disturbances to the pool will make meditation difficult. I think this is what he means – I feel like the wind if blowing strongly across my pool, just enough to disrupt the stillness without being over the top.
Concentration
I didn’t do a very good job of updating this weekend – which is basically compatible with every other attempt I’ve ever had at journaling or logging my experiences.
Sits lately have been pretty good, whatever that means – they waver between nice deep concentration and thinking. I’m noticing my patters a bit more clearly – that it takes about 5 minutes to really settle in and get concentrated. I’m better at strictly following the breath, I see the familiar sequence of phenomena play out each time I sit – so I think it’s good that it’s all getting more familiar.
On Sunday I sat for concentration and felt very much in my body and able to get into it. Conciousness opened up to bright white field of vision with strong equanimity for a few moments before I popped out of it. I always feel pulled to healing while in these states and while I’m there I’m convinced that healing is my life’s purpose. I’ve even heard voices telling me so. Then I return to the normal world and think maybe not in the traditional way – but maybe in other ways. Namely in counseling and advising – mental healing rather than physical – I’ve always had a knack for that.
Off the cushion my dreams have been getting more active in the past month or so. I wish I could say they all had profound messages for me, but they seem to be fairly mundane dreams about work and such (outside of the aforementioned dream in which I became a tree). Sometimes I wake up feeling like I have just dreamt of something very important and symbolic but then it slips away almost immediately. So I think something is whirling around in there, I’m just not sure what!
Concentration/Noting feeling states
Had some difficulty getting concentrated, I kept feeling my ego dragging itself to the party and pushing me out of concentration
In noting feeling states I practiced this time stepping back and noting things come up from a space of distance – practicing not getting carried away by feelings. I noticed I had some difficult feelings come up that seem to be below the surface – sadness, jealousy, anger etc. Often about a particular situation in my life.
Today for a brief moment I had an insight on how those feelings arose and passed away like everything else if looked at from a distance. If I don’t get enmeshed and surfing those feelings it’s easy to see them only stay in awareness for a moment.
Outside of that, the sit seemed fairly soft today, but the Q&A was good and we discussed feeling emotions as vibrations on the surface of the body. I sat for a while longer and noticed all the areas of my body that would subtely vibrate and tried to pick out their corresponding emotions.
Mostly I just got frustrated that my meditation wasn’t that great, and realized how much my ego is caught up in expectation and judgement in regards to my practice.
Tree dreams
I had a dream last night where I became each of the elements. I was a snake and connected with fire, a bird and connected with air, a dolphin and connected with water, and then in the end I was a pig and connected with earth.
When I came back into my regular form I buried my fists deep into the earth, they sprouted roots, and I grew into a tree.
When I was on my meditation retreat I had an energetic rising experience (I’m assuming similar to a Kundalini type experience though I know little about kundalini) – where the energy rose from the base of my spine.
The energy rise was translated in a vision of a tree growing through me, out my mouth, my forehead, the top of my head to the sky and pushing the energy along through all the channels of my body.
Afterwards, I felt like I could energetically talk to the trees on the property – which I know sounds crazy. But it was such a profound connection that I had never had before or since, just one of those strange and interesting experiences that only exists in the retreat space.
Looking forward to going back on retreat in January!
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.
the Good Heretic 