Sitting

Meditation Journal 29/30 Sep 2013

Posted on by Duncan Toms

29

It can be so damn awkward having a body. Aches, pains, tightness, nausea. To sense each and every without judgement seems to be the key. They are just as they are but the brain modifies. To practice when not looking after oneself must be so much of a nightmare – once the intelligence of the body takes over its going to get things right out of you there and then. Headaches are going to rage and… Well luckily all that is in my past and my system is pretty clean. I learnt that in my 20s, to make it easier. I can make it easier still, I know. Make the moves today, now, that make the next moves easier.

30

I wondered when the grief would come, locked down tight as it is. And when it did it was not over someone dead but over people still living, grateful, so grateful for their role in my life and sad that they mightn’t be around so much longer. Before: massive ache in the eye sockets almost up under the eyebrows. Nausea. Neck and shoulder tension. Lips. Jaws. And a following of the breath so closely as never before. I think it’s the very is-ness of the breath that allows for the is-ness of grief.

Meditation Journal 25 Sep 2013

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Awkward to begin with after uncomfortable dreams and a sickness in the body. By allowing the feelings near they released with a big squirm and tight ripple. Some time later, access to the idea that something is wrong and that I must keep moving in my mind. Proximity to this idea brought the realisation that this movement is entirely unnecessary and can cease of its own accord. Some time later, the curious shift whereby I am very very tiny and the body and even the head is so very vast. So much space and yet sort of a wall just in front. It’s happened a few times in my life, sometimes when listening to music. Some time later, no more awkwardness, sickness, concern, just the morning bird call and then the church bells ringing out at six.

Meditation Journal 23 Sep 2013

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One month until another ten day retreat, which will be the second. My aim is to sit twice a day. I’ve been meditating each day for one hour in the morning, usually lying down, which is a much more casual affair than sitting.

am 1hr

Head shaking strongly, releasing the neck. Crazy expressions of the mouth and a yawn that felt like my jaw was going to snap. Body knows better than fear. Eyes scrunched up, reaching into the tight small muscles. And me diving into all of this gently, gently, whilst the most intense sensations occur. And that delicious feeling when it happens: there is no where else I could be, nothing else I could be doing. This is the most valid thing. This is now. And then when the sensations are over I’m naturally, effortlessly meeting each thought anew, each feeling met gently and kindly. My eyes are moist and there’s a subtle smile on my lips. Hey man, now you’re really living.

pm Yoga Class

Still the sitting is helping the stretching. Some tight holding releasing week by week. Yoga class is a great gauge of this.

 

28 August 2013

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Meditation:

Get out of the way. You can’t do anything as you are the very one holding the status quo. Even when watching there can be an ever subtler pushing in a direction, towards pain, away from pain, a wanting that is hidden in the looking. Get out of the way and the scenario changes. How to get out of the way? It’s a step in a completely different direction to the directions you are used to going in. It might not even be a direction or a step at all; more like a negation into oneself. ‘Yourself’ turns inside out, back in on itself. A complete flip in another dimension altogether. Then the natural awareness is motive- and direction-free. Careless yet full of attentiveness. The ‘me’, the ‘you’ is so very overrated. The ‘me’ we think is helping is not helping very much at all. Going beyond is not to where we think it is. The beyond is so very close by, but you can’t see it or go there in your current form. Wrong vessel, wrong map. Abandon ship.

20 and 21 August 2013

Posted on by Duncan Toms

In meditation

20th

Body wracked with tension as if held in the very cells and bones. Nausea. Dizziness. Meeting each sensation as an equal, and despite the intensity, seeing if it is possible not to hate or fight it, even the worse things. Seemingly entering into the heart of things, via the body. The mind reacting to the body, choosing action based on feeling. Is it possible to uncover and meet everything head on and so learn?

21st

The way to peace is through the trouble. When there’s no avoiding it any longer, it becomes you, and then the trouble changes into something else entirely, is understood without an understander and is over. And one finds oneself in a new state, on ground beyond where one stood minutes before. Yet minutes have lost their meaning and so has standing. All is new and peaceful and waves of joy wash residues away. And then from a direction unseen and unknown, another energy comes, further transforming and establishing an order unplanned. None of this involves will or effort. Resting in peace is not for the dead. 

 

 

Meditation Journal Late June 2013

Posted on by Duncan Toms

June 19

The beeps of the watch alarm seemed to be slowed down, half their usual rate, as I woke. A wash in the bath then straight to the cushion. Catch-up time: unfinished tasks at work, untidy ends to thoughts, ideas and conversations. Then at the end of each cycle of thought, the rush of energy of a more empty state, like the warm draft rushing ahead in the tube. Then in the more subtle elements of thought, how is thought modifying each feeling, each sensation? How is it being added to or manipulated? Later still, the body having the freedom to act, from quieter states of mind, a release through the arm, it taking on a life of it’s own in shaking, stretching, tensing beyond tension, then quiet again, animation over. Then a rocking through the head and neck. Hands extending past a normal extension. Jaws locked out in new forms, and a deep deep ache where a wisdom tooth is still, after all these years, causing the gum to adjust a bit painfully. An hour passes in minutes, and it’s quite a long way back to a normal state, after the watch beeping a reminder. The breath fast, steady, powerful, hands now in front of the heart and slowly, slowly the breath returning. Stillness of mind resumes before getting up.

June 20

Really didn’t want to do it. Let’s wait until after the weekend, why not, please? Start a new week afresh then, why not? I’m not feeling my best, so best to leave it for now. It’s already a bit late, better not start now. Etc. I’d rather go back to bed with the laptop and while away some time. Please, let’s not go there today. But I went there. I sat down. Within minutes, feelings of peace, that somehow it’s all right. Not to say all is all right within, and yet it is in a sense. In the sense that it is what it is. A cliche, but it means something in the inner world. Acceptance? What is, is. What’s to be done? Nothing really. Watch, listen, see, allow, wait – and yet none of these really: awareness is beyond them all. the mind catches up with the unfinished thoughts of yesterday. Can yesterday finish, be over? Starting new days with left overs. And then peace comes in through a door I can’t see, and washes over the scene. And later, intensity to the point where there is nothing I can do about it. Behind the eyes. Vision behind closed lids a squeezed kaleidoscope, white light all there is in the intensity beyond pain.

June 23

A light slowly filling the headspace. At the intersection of thought, dreams and this light, an operation takes place. I felt a cleaning device of some sort reaching up almost behind the brain, getting into areas untouched in decades. The light can pervade all areas. I’ve felt similar feelings like being operated upon many times over the years. Sometimes there’s an inner-audible click as something shifts, other times a dissolving, either at a large scale that leaves no thought behind, or at a micro scale where there’s a dissolution of a tiny hook or hang up. Cycles of thinking, dreaming, light, ending, then a new space is created.

June 24

I am an escape artist. Perhaps the very ‘me’ is a mechanism of escape. When it comes right down to it, after feeling the way in, towards that which I seek to avoid, there seems to be no difference between me and the thing to avoid. In that non-difference there is great freedom, although for the time being at least it is very uncomfortable physically. But even in the discomfort there is a freshness and vitality and the feeling that there is absolutely nothing else than this, that this is all there is right now and all the wantings and hopings and directions and aims are meaningless. The clue is there, calling, calling. Listen. It’s been calling you for years, decades: over here, over here – yet we think we know better, a better direction, based on ignoring, ignorance of the calling out. The calling out is suffering, pain, that we are taught to avoid at all costs, or maybe just dabble in its shallows like the creatives have. Go deep. Go gently, go very lightly but go there. Where else?

June 25

Excruciating in the face, deep into the cheeks, eye sockets, gums. Also in the neck and arms, a deep ache such that I just don’t know what will happen as it builds as I go closer, closer, until I don’t know if I am it or it is me, or if any such division is valid. And yet as attention moves throughout, this new learning has to be relearnt, as strong sensation pulses from a forgotten part of my body. Breathing hard, out of control.

June 26

All questions of the mind, big or small, pale into insignificance in the face of the fact of suffering, and vanish entirely in the light.

Journal 3 June 2013

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The day is winding down, the sun setting soon. It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.

Dreamt I took out anger by knocking down the outer bricks of a strong wall, blow after blow after blow with the sides of my fists. It didn’t hurt. Not sure anything was different afterwards but it felt good, satisfying. In dreamland.

Got up at 0530 and sat. The mind unsettled, darting here and there. Fizzy. Like it’s over stimulated from yesterday’s event. Very soon, right wrist shaking, then intense shaking of head and the torso twisting left and right, faster faster to some kind of climax, then slowed right down. By the end of 45 mins, the mind was much quieter. Some fatigue by the end of it and I laid down a while, feeling the tired areas where the refreshment of sleep hadn’t touched.

Listened to a bit of music while getting ready for work, including the postman in the sand song, here turned into a surf video:

At work, the reorganisation of the vault continued, with the help of an ex student who was volunteering in the foundation this morning.

Lunch in the sun with a staff member who is leaving this summer, another yogi.

Then a walk. Bluebells fading out, their leaves flopped to the earth, superseded by the ancient and mighty ferns. Then when the view opened out, the yellow on yellow of rape in full flower, behind liquorice beech trees.

Why is ‘liquorice’ liquor and ice?

Surprise visit from C who popped in after dropping a birthday gift off for a friend. Some hugs and smiles before post lunch post walk napping.

Talking of smiles, a friend finished her video project. People of 37 countries, young and old, smiling. That’s it. As she puts it:

Everyone can be a small stepping stone towards a place of compassion and kindness

I’m at 4:21, in a bobble hat, palms together. Many friends are in it, including Doug looking outstandingly hippyish at 1:21. With a goat on his lap why not. I smiled throughout. It’s contagious.

Carrying On A Smile from Carrying On A Smile on Vimeo.

My laptop screen says ‘Godammit’ under the big ‘SMILE’ but don’t tell anyone.

In the evening: Iyangar Yoga class with Sandy Bell in Compton. It’s a really good class with about 10 of us, who have been stretching together for some years for the most part. Lots of arm, shoulder, wrist releases today, along with the usual forward bend emphasis, which is my tightest direction but I appreciate it. I touch places deep inside during Iyengar yoga. I call it yoga with no cheating. With alignment everything stretches in the way it should, safely yet extensively, and maybe you don’t get so far in the pose but it’s done right.

The drive on the way back from yoga is always special, totally there with the car, the road, the music. Today with the sun through the trees as I climbed from the Itchen up onto the open downs, taking the racing line through the bends.

There it is, the sun now set and I’m soon into bed.

Meditation Journal 6 May 2013

Posted on by Duncan Toms

A total action, a total seeing, an action whole, that has no residue. An action that has after effects of only the possibility of more right action. At some point, due to habit loops, I suppose, the non-total actions resume and thought takes over the game of time, with its memories and projections, fantasies and concerns. And yet in the quiet of sitting, the whole actions can return at any point, from a direction not expected, familiar yet new new new. In these moments there’s an absence of feeling that I should be doing something else, that something else is more important. In these moments there is no where else to be, nothing else to be doing, nothing more valuable or more beneficial than here and now, when I am not, but only awareness is. This is not a state or something to get to, and it’s closer by than I ever imagined.  

Meditation Journal 5 May 2013

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May 5

That thing being avoided, it’s not what I think it is. From a distance it warns me of all kinds of things as to its nature. It’s fronting. Go near with a tender heart and caring attitude and it will start to change. It might get worse in it’s extreme behaviour and intensity, but stay with it, in affectionate yet skeptical awareness, and that intensity can’t last long. The games and the fornting are soon revealed for what they are: layers of protection. Thought wrapped around emotion, round and round. Curiosity allows the connection to continue, the soft listening. The breath may go wild, panting, shallow, fast and ragged. Stay there, without force or expectation. The body may react in shaking, exquisite tensions, all sorts of things, but that’s part of the game: it’s all good. Ultimately, I discover I am it, or I am doing it. For me at least, this inquiry needs quietude, some time doing nothing, sitting still, time to breathe, to listen, to connect, to allow things to change as my reactions change, to see the subtler doings, where my approach is refined and the right awareness is forged in the fire of attention.

Meditation Journal 2 May 2013

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Vipassana Meditation May 2

Waking up early now, naturally at 5-something or 6-something, with the birds and the sun. To the stool or cushion I go. Trepedacious but welcoming the chance to… what… make friends with myself. It sounds corny as hell, but how can one be comfortable with life, and allow change, if one is antagonistic within?

Usually the first twenty minutes are breathing and allowing thought to catch up with things it wants to think about. There’s not much I can do about that. I’m not big on the whole ‘bring the awareness back to the breath’ stuff. Thoughts processing, clearing up a few things, running back and forward. Then the emotional side shows up, and this needs a slightly different kind of attention, the mind naturally quieting. A kind attention. An embrace. And then later, the deep sensations of the body begin to express. Today deep into the eye areas, and the gums and teeth. A different attention again, one of the body, with a steady, unjudging gaze of the mind, overseeing operations but without taking control.

This is becoming good fun, and very very good for me. So much so that I even want to continue come evening time for another hour.

Meditation Journal 23 April 2013

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Breathing, breathing, thinking, thinking, thinking, thi… thought sees its own doing and is suddenly unwound and a purer presence is apparent, action in the moment unfolding rather than continuing on familiar lines. Sensation, sensation, sensation, sens… where has it gone, that pain which was so dominant moments ago? Waves of bliss, ecstasy, wellbeing, from the base of the spine to the top of the head, a sense of tingling lightness across the sides of the head, an expansion, openness. Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety, anx… it shifts and mutates as it is listened to, touched, let go of, without a purposeful letting go.

Deep rest early in the morning, beyond that which eight hours of sleep can touch.

Meditation Journal 21 April 2013

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Vipassana Meditation April 21

Allowing. Accepting. Feeling. Connection. Is-ness. No other place to be. Contact. A blurring of the supposed lines between me and my body, my body and I. The origins being discovered of deep aches, held tensions, hangups. Is it all in the mind? Or at least in the mind’s reactions? Quietly sitting for one hour, having naturally woken with the sun.

Meditation Journal 20 April 2013

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Vipassana Meditation April 20

Much milder than two days before. And in the midst of the head rapidly shaking side to side, a sudden bliss, a feeling that all is okay, at least right here. Bliss comes from nowhere known. It doesn’t seem to be caused. Evidence would suggest elsewhere that in fact all is not okay. Yet maybe it is. After all, how could things be any other way than they are?

In this local body, there’s the crunchy tensions in the neck, tightness in the tight foot arches, the tender right wrist and sharp right arm up near the shoulder. There’s slight fear in the mind, lifting as the sitting went on and vanishing in the moments of warm wellbeing during and after the head shaking. The hour passed very quickly.

Meditation Journal 18 April 2013

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Vipassana Meditation April 18

It’s getting crazier. After the thoughts have settled and the agitation that I carried forward has ceased, the organism takes over. I maintain a sense of equanimity throughout, quietly watching as the strange ritual commences. A ritual familiar yet variable, never formulaic.  Right hand shaking so very fast. I take a peak and it’s really going for it, wobbling, shaking, rotating, flopping – by my side or overhead, over to the left. A deep knot at the right side of my neck, tingling sharply, then suddenly my head is shaking left and right, again very rapidly, up into the lower skull, then inside the skull around the back and right of the brain, shaking, shaking. There’s tension in there? Nothing I can do. I find myself sometimes thinking of unresolved technical problems somehow, while this intensity is going on. When I’m back in attention, the tension sensation intensifies, as do the movements. Then my whole torso is rolling around, rotating from the waist, like an ancient dance, from sitting. Then I’m arched forward on my hands and the head and neck stretched forward. Soon the right arm shakes again and gives way, so the torso takes my weight and brings me back upright and my arm is free to rave. Afterwards, this all feels exhausting and yet enlivening, like some old, old, very old tiredness has lifted, things I’ve been carrying have been liberated. It’s not so conscious, I guess because this is happening in the unconscious arena where the choice to hold, or not to, is taking place.

Meditation Journal 17 April 2013

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Vipassana Meditation April 17

1 hour

Deep in the early hours of the morning, white fire in the right calf. Same in right wrist. Head shaking side to side in sweeping movements and in tiny micro vibrations like a power plate. Eyes scrunched. Right foot arch cramping. Belly drawn in and up, pulling the colon in tight, massaging inside. Moans. Dribbles. Coughs. Hand taught. Lips contorted. Neck sharp, up under the skull. Even a brain pain. All this not at the same time, thank goodness, but often one or two concurrent. Not much of the subtle awareness and deep release today. Then back to bed for a good sleep.

Meditation Journal 16 April 2013

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Vipassana Meditation April 16

1 Hour

My body feels relaxed, muscles soft, shoulders and face less concerned. The ongoing ‘work’ is still very physical: deep into the neck and shoulders, and at the inner eyes and into the forehead. Right arm, wrist and feet, but these to a lesser extent than previously. Resistance to sitting: I don’t want to feel anything, just get on with the day. But I know how that goes. And I know that it’s not strong resistance, rather more like a child’s excuses not to do something perceived as slightly less fun than… watching TV or something. A few minutes after sitting down it’s gone, but there’s the ‘all over the place’ attention, scattered, dashing here and there in thought and memories. Suddenly it’s unwound and there I am, awake, daydreams over. A strong nausea soon passes and I can begin passing attention from head to feet and back again. All this is about half an hour. Then the aches, pains, tensions, tingles are immediately apparent; I don’t have to look for them. And when that’s all there is, a high-pitched pain in the neck, for example, that’s all there is. There’s no room or need for thinking at all. And it moves, the pain, so I follow it carefully, slowly, up into the skull, down into the shoulders. Then from the wrist, up the arm, back to the same spot until, suddenly, there’s no sensation – gone – and then there’s another in a different place. Repeat as necessary.

Meditation Journal 15 April 2013

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Vipassana Meditation April 15

Then towards the end of the hour I find that my eyes are open and it’s over for now. Previously, moments of there being nothing but the sensation. It starts out as what I call ‘pain’ but by staying with it, or noticing any moving away, it’s no longer pain but something else, something I don’t know about – I could call it intensity but that’s still fixing it as a thing. And it’s moving, changing, evolving, doing it’s thing of it’s own accord. And the essence of this practice is that it can’t do it on it’s own – express naturally – it needs ‘me’ as a watcher, witness, observer, or beyond these ‘doing’ states, it needs awareness. It needs awareness because without it it’s locked down, alone, isolated. Tenderly I approach and in my approach it’s clear where I am not moving with care, where I’m moving with ambition or a goal, or using force, and the seeing of the non-tenderness is its undoing. Even tenderness itself may be contrived and if so that too ceases. It’s a natural dropping of the unnatural, and only then something new can take place. In the context of the pain, this ‘new’ is release, change, ending.

Meditation Journal 14 April 2013

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Vipassana Meditation April 14

That’s where it’s at. Shutting up. Sitting still. Listening, watching, attending. What could be simpler? That’s probably why it’s not so common: it seems the answer, the thing to do is elsewhere, in the doing, in the experiences to be had, in the life to live and sheer gettingness of worldly life. Not to ignore worldly life, but worldy life without inner work is hollow and all to fragile in its successes and fun.

I’ve been practising lying down, about every other day. But it’s not the same. Sleep is too close by. The body is too relaxed, has to do too little. The slight work in sitting up changes a lot. The energy too is more awake, more daytimey. It’s not like sleep where there’s nothing to do, it’s not like daily activity, it’s between the two, but it’s a step away from bed relaxation. And while there, sat still this morning there was the certainty that there is nothing else to be doing at that moment. Nothing I am missing out on, nothing I should be doing, no experience grander or learning deeper. This is it. Of course I then start scheduling it in: more of this please. Or even just working out when I have time. Again, it’s simpler: if there is nothing else more valid, just do it. Once or twice a day, for an hour each time. No scheduling or persuasion needed.

Meditation Journal 4 April 2013

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Vipassana Meditation April 4

am 1hr

In the stillness, the root of a stance, the origin of a snarl, the basis of a tension or an ache, the origin has a chance to change, rather than the usual chain reaction of dislike, aversion. In the stillness, ecstasy bubbling away, different day by day. One day intense sexual bliss, another day as though sex doesn’t exist, celibate  Changing changing. Deep aches at the back of the neck under the skull. Tight mouth causing the disapproving expression I see in so many others and feel emerging in my own face muscles. Right foot tight from the ankle, across the top of the foot, and sharp in the arch. And then in the stillness my attention fluttering here and there, that which isn’t still is highlighted, pinpointed, and here is my very attention, my very attitude and it’s… squirming. Writhing like an injured worm or eel. Been hurt, spiked, and now squirming in some kind of agony. Watch, feel, it’s okay. I don’t want to put it down – put it down like a sick animal, no, nor put it down and forget about it, as I know how that goes: an unsettled day, flitting from thing to thing, ability to listen or focus shot to pieces. So I watch gently, allowing things to change naturally as is their want.

Meditation Journal 28 March 2013

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Vipassana Meditation March 28

This takes such care, delicacy, to trace the movement of the self, or of neuroticism, as it flits from subject to subject, looking for security. Care to see it as it is, not to steer it but follow it, hold it, in a loving, curious way. I call it an ‘it’ but it’s not clear it’s an thing or an entity, and if we’re not careful we get into thinking that ‘I’ am different from ‘it’. Somehow in the care and attention the two are not two, but a clearer watching of the quality of desperation, the craving, the demanding, the seeking. At moments an unwinding of this two, leaving thoughtless non-moments of joy, bliss, stillness, unity.