Vipassana Meditation Day 14

am 1hr

Finding that it’s important to be as total as possible in this practice, to include all of me in awareness and when being aware. Otherwise it seems to become yet another neurotic activity and instead of attention, it’s easy to suppress, warp, distort. And this meditation is all about things as they are. So it’s the attention itself that is as important as what is being attended to. And when it comes down to it, there isn’t much difference between the two. Yet the partial attention is actually ‘things as they are’, so you can’t fight for totality as that’s another game.

Such an ache within the face today. I say within because it’s underneath the features of the face; the deep muscles of the forehead, eye sockets, cheeks, and again into the lips, tight in strange expressions that feel like they’ll be stuck forever, and then the thousand needles come, or hot ashes or sparks within the lips, until at such intensity it begins to soften. The right arm continues to go crazy. All the computer work, I suppose, and years of holding and protecting and doing.

pm 1hr

Thought to meditate in the bath. Not the best idea. Especially with a damp face. How about that for a test of annicca as water dried in my nostrils, ears!? Supreme itches! No scratching! And then the warmth lulled me into a snoozy snooze. And later, having not moved for 45 mins, the back of my head hard on the ceramic. And then getting too cool. So no, don’t meditate in the bath. Although it was fun discovering that arms resting by my legs was actually an effort; they really wanted to float.

Vipassana Meditation Day 13

am 1 hr

I had not enough energy to move through the body. Some awareness of breath. Some sense of including the whole organism. The old knot right of spine, centre of back appeared and disappeared within minutes, a much lighter prod than previously. A chopstick rather than a dagger. Instead of deep scanning, it was more about the mind and thoughts, and how a thought and the reaction to that thought are all in the same movement. I can’t profess to say they are the same, but they are of the same thing, the same movement. The thinking, ‘I hope this is over soon,’ contained within it the response of. ‘No, it is never really over, this is what life is like.’ Somehow within the end of the first thought, the seed of the response is embedded which geminates into the response. Where the two meet cannot be easily defined, nor is it clear that there are two. Or three or four or however many responses are in the chain. It is becoming clearer how reaction to sensation, to pain, to thought, to whatever, defines what that thing is, and either keeps it the same for next time, or, if there is a different reaction or no reaction, it has the freedom to change. This must be something like liberation. And it goes a long way to explaining the notion that the brain creates our world. It could well be built upon some very basic responses of towards/away, craving/aversion.

pm 1hr

Weekend compromise: lying down. I did this quite a few times on the retreat and sometimes dipped in and out of sleep, as I did this evening. Left arm shook. Back arched and neck propped forward. Movement very slow across body and where I’d gotten to was forgotten several times. Both feet: extreme scrunching, into the arches.