One has to get physical. It’s easier to sit and wander around one’s head, thinking, worrying, remembering, imaging and planning, but it’s when you get out of your head and enter into the body thing that shit gets real. Very solid feeling today, very grounded, achy, less flightingly sexy and more earthy. It seemed so deep, the muscle aches, the holding on, like right down to the inner muscles I have little idea of anatomically. There’s excruciation and inside that pain there is a validity, a depth of gratefulness that this fact of my body has been touched, listened to, held in awareness. Hello body! I’m sorry to have ignored you for so long, or only partially used you and probably more than partially abused you. I’m here and we’re in this together. Thank you. I’m stronger physically now and it seems that this allows a deeper, less fearful adventure in attention.
attention
Meditation Journal 18 March 2014
Back to sitting to meditate, rather than the lying down I’ve been doing for months. I’m feeling physically strong after regular work outs, some yoga each morning and last week’s surf trip. Strong energy too, sexual and otherwise. I maintain that it’s not sexual energy or any other kind of categorisation, but just energy itself. Life perhaps. Life force, they call it. It moves in different, secret, strange and regular ways. Body movements: head shaking, mouth loose, feet flexing, particularly the arches, the right arm a bit, shoulders, and penis in various states of erection or not. Such bliss! An overwhelming feeling, not knowing if I’ll come, faint, scream, laugh, and then it’s none of these things but a total washing, nothing else but this feeling, no ‘me and it’ for those seconds, moments, time lost. One awareness slide down through the body, back up, and down again in one hour.
Meditation Journal 12 & 13 November 2013
12
Deep dreams again, awareness seemingly going deep within these nights. And after a wash, the mind surprisingly clear. None of the initial struggles to settle and I could begin right away. From the start, sexual energy moving and before long it’s no longer sexual. Probably never really was, that’s just what I equate it to because that’s what I know and that’s the area it stems from. This is far beyond just sex: tingles and rushes moving higher up the body, feelings I’ve never felt, parts of the body that seemed to be sleeping waking up under this travelling, enlivening, enriching energy. Not to get swept up in the pleasure of it all, but continuing moving attention across the body. The less I interfere, the more this new energy can do its thing. Thought going off into fantasies and dreams and thought loops and the mundane, ‘Oh, I need to do that today’, and yet they are not judged as mundane and during this sitting, the notion of judging seemed quite alien. Pleasure was pleasure, pain was pain, and both seemed not so very different from each other. The more I could stay with pain, the more it merged into pleasure, and feeling the pleasure strongly moving, meeting more painful areas of the body and emotions. One trip down the body, back up in a smoother flow, lingering a minute or two or thirty seconds on ‘grosser’ areas, then back up to the head with a rush of energy filling the head, clearing the mind of everything in those moments until back up to the tingling top of the head. Then resting in a fizzy warmth covering the whole body, that was, in fact, the whole body itself. The body is way beyond what we were taught or what we thought.
13
Whole not holes. Can awareness be all inclusive rather than partial? A distinct feeling that thought patterns are holes or tunnels and also analysis of same is no different. Control too is another tunnel-digging device, direction, direction. To stay right here, without control and without more digging or at least no reinforcing those old tunnels. There is nothing to dig for, no treasure beneath, no deeper self to uncover. If there’s a deeper self its not where you think it is, nor is it accessible via the partial.
Meditation Journal 10 & 11 November 2013
10
Angry on waking, and caught up in it on first sitting down. I remembered that it cannot be solved at the same level, mixed up in it, and I realised that any attempt to even approach things with a solution in mind is not the way to go. I was then able to observe it more neutrally and before long begin the vipassana practice of moving attention from head to feet and from feet to head with the understanding of annica. The not-new revelation that thought swims quickly away from any sensation, even from simple awareness of any given body part. This swimming away can be seen too, and as time goes on, the unecessaryness of it becomes obvious, without ‘doing’ anything about it. So the movements away lessen of their own accord and attention can remain on sensation without these modifications of the mind and avoidance techniques. These reactions of thought scatter and disperse the natural quiet of the mind. Mere sensation is enough for the mind to go into a tailspin and a mild flurry of ‘not this, not this’, running around like a headless chicken. Not to condemn this headless chicken but to see clearly that this behaviour is divisive, scattering and uses so much energy. So, it’s not about controlling thought but of seeing it; not seeing from a place of judgement but seeing of itself.
11
Fearful dreams, nothing new, but what was new was that I was not running but steadily watching what was unfolding in the dreams, almost as if meditation was occurring within the dream itself, or at least an observation. I was no longer at the mercy of fear as has been common in my dreams for years.
This still observation carried forward into the morning sit, the organising brain going over some unresolved work issues that need to be addressed. Again fear wrapped up with these but a sense of laying the issues out so that they are easily visible, the consequences of hiding things away very apparent and therefore such action would be worthless.
Then the theme of ‘where am I going with this meditation thing?’ clear that any notion of where it ends or where it leads is false, and in fact a positively bonkers fantasy. The projected fantasy of some state or way of life in the future, and also a debilitating fear of where I might be going. Both equally false.
Awareness steady as I moved over the body, less of the flitting about from place to place that has been happening. Strong energies unfolding from the base of the torso, rippling through the rest of the body, so overwhelming that in moments I just don’t know what is happening or where I am. Brand new in flowering energetic movements. Sit through it, sit through it, easy now. And the sciatic pains in the right leg and buttock. Sit through it, sit through it, easy now. And back up through the torso, a hoop of awareness almost complete, gliding upwards until what would be tight shoulders, upper back and neck but could not be felt, like they were nothing. Surprises all the way that things are not what I think there are, sensations are new now, not of the past. Alive.
Meditation Journal 8 & 9 November 2013
8
Quite content to just sit and do nothing and could have whiled away an hour like that. After a while I remembered the notion of right effort and began the noticing of sensation. This was a rather dreamy process, only making it as far as the pelvis in the hour, and even then maybe not having done the front body. It’s difficult when coming from listening to a lot of Krishnamurti, who strips these maters free of any effort and technique, to apply something to ‘do’. But my issue may not really be this but a contented laziness. Like thinking doesn’t bother me anymore, it’s fine, natural, and I’m not really looking for any experience so why bother with the technique? I guess the answer can be found in knowing what I’m like and these tendencies will not change in the slightest by doing nothing at all. The crisis existing in how things are must be the impetus to do this, otherwise contentment, comfort and indifference will win out. But not to force anything. It’s a fine balance and this has to be my exploration at the moment. It is unlikely, however, that I will be sitting in the evenings, preferring to do some yoga at this time instead.
9
A mid morning sit, having slept for an exceptional 10 hours until 0830 and then having breakfast and then answering emails. Wading through hot fudge, sticky and not unpleasant, I wondered who I am to attempt to control thought. It’s a futile preoccupation. And to prefer some thoughts over others is favouritism and unnecessary effort. It is in fact boring. So I gave up in directing, and gave up being frustrated if I could sense an area for only a second before going into another daydream. Slowly this not unpleasant fudge-wading ceased and I was able to move with relative ease through the body, and dreams slowly abated. As little effort as possible, seems to be the way to proceed in this.
Meditation Journal 7 November 2013
am 1hr
The mind scattered by a dizzy sensation in the head, making awareness need to double-check each small movement across the surface of the body. This effect lessened as the hour went on. Noticed a related fear and nervousness nearby. The blank areas are interesting, parts of the body where I can’t feel anything very much. When scanning over the skin, they sometimes feel like a bump, a small hill the attention passes over, a few cm or inches away from the body, then back down the other side to make contact again. What secrets lie under the hills no doubt time will tell. The slight crick in my mid back from last evening’s yoga, apparent when moving could not be felt during the sitting, or now lying down writing this. It’s curious how pains come and go, appear and disappear. Perhaps according to the type of response we give to it. This is truly an investigation into the psycho-somatic bridge.
pm 20 mins anapana
Meditation Journal 6 May 2013
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Meditation Journal 26 March 2013
Vipassana Meditation March 26
Oh the freedom! Nothing to do! Just rest and watch. And even the watching isn’t something to do. It can be, of course; it depends how you are watching, the quality of it. This might be the meaning of letting go. Not of something else – how can you do that? – it tends to equal some sort of suppression – but letting go of any ‘doing’ in the watching. Then there’s a different kind of action, direct, now, no delay, no ‘I will do’ but seeing and action together in the now, in the simplicity of sitting there. In this quiet observation, the body and mind express, have freedom to unfold and tell their story. In safety and under a listening ear. ‘Under a watchful eye’ sounds a little rude, like the eye has an attitude. No, ‘a listening ear’ is better. Poor shoulders! Taking the brunt of it, this life. Doing the best they can, storing up fears and tensions. What else could they do? And now I’m introducing the possibility of them not having to do that. Is this what karma is? The previous incomplete or ‘wrong’ actions are stored up in the organism, and they have an effect in unease and tightness, to say the least. We can’t get away with anything; there’s no cheating or escaping. Any action has a consequence, and it’s all stored up, remembered somewhere within, in the brain or body, or energetically if you prefer, and there it is, karma, waiting for you. There’s no avoiding it for ever, nor for a day really. And in the simplicity of sitting still, there is a possibility of learning not to add to it, and in the not-knowing attitude of listening to sensation, there’s a different kind of action, one that doesn’t add but allows change. A change in action, a change in mind and body right there.
Falling Awake 