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.
awareness
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 5 November 2013
am 1hr
At 5am, with the mind distracted by the thousand things of yesterday, the job related issues, the yoga class, the media I’d chosen to consume, the conversations. It’s a lot to process, at least relatively, compared to the monk’s life of the preceding ten days.
I understand better what the intense swearing is that I experienced during the course. It’s the critical mind. With so much right action taking place, doing the best I can for the most part, there is nothing or very little for it to latch onto and it is, or was, resorting to rather ridiculous outbursts in the most obscene language, at any opinion I might think, with always that hint, or much more than a hint, of criticism.
The energy that used to make me shake sparked up again and now it is possible to halt the physical reaction without force, or just a little control or a pause, and let it occur in a new way rather than the body’s habitual seemingly-free reaction. Habitual because it had become a pattern of response and then would take over the sitting, albeit with the accompanying probably healthy releasing. So I stay still and so I do not know what will happen. Rushes of bliss from the base. Light through the head so that nothing is seen on the mind screen and nothing can be thought for those moments. Pleasure so pleasurable it’s as squirming as pain. And yet I don’t squirm, or just a little, and again the energy can move in a new way, forging new pathways in the body and connections in the brain. I am learning a new level in the importance of staying still. At this stage a lot of people would probably get into ‘freedom of expression through movement’ or something, as it seems a natural response. Maybe it has its place but I’m here to sit through. To sit through it all, no matter what.
pm 20mins
…which of course is easier said than done. Didn’t want to know this evening… headache and tired, but I did sit for 20 minutes and briefly scanned down and up. Felt much better very quickly, with delightful tingles across my scalp, still there as I write. The desire not to sit won out, and despite setting the timer for 30 minutes, I quit 10 minutes early. That’s okay – I sat.
Meditation Journal 4 November 2013
am 1hr
Foggy at first, mind swimming from thought to thought, deep in muddy waters. Slowly, slowly I was able to bring awareness to the top of the head and begin properly, probably 10 minutes into the session. The hand waving and head shaking seems to have left, perhaps for good, and didn’t occur at all during the 10-day Goenka Vipassana retreat that finished yesterday. Scanning slowly, it took the best part of the remaining session to scan all the way down to the feet. The feet are the only part that move now, tightening and releasing as awareness travels through them. Back up through the right leg and the fire had started in the back of the thigh, a sciatica-like pain. Curiously, this pain is mixed with intense pleasure coming from the base of the pelvis, the two sensations meeting each other and blending. Encouraged by Tim Park’s experience of sitting through pain from one minute into his first sits, I stayed for the whole hour, more than I did for most ‘optional’ sittings at Dhamma Dipa. The sexual energy, appetite now fulfilled on returning home, was less wrapped in thought fantasy, and was cleaner and more natural, less manipulated.
I am happy to have found this authentic practice. As last time in the time after the retreat, I am eager to sit for tow hours a day, no matter what. We’ll see…
pm
Sort of intended to sit after yoga class but it’s too late in the evening once I’m home and ready.
Meditation Journal 29/30 Sep 2013
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
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
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.
Meditation Journal Late June 2013
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.
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.
Quit smoking by smoking
I haven’t smoked since the 90s and this is something along the lines of how I stopped smoking:
Forget about stopping smoking. Rather, you are going to make it a meditation. When you are taking the packet of cigarettes out of your pocket, move slowly. Enjoy it, there is no hurry. Be conscious, alert, aware; take it out slowly, with full awareness. “Then take the cigarette out of the packet with full awareness, slowly, not in the old hurried way, unconscious way, mechanical way. Then start tapping the cigarette on your packet, but very alertly. Listen to the sound, just as Zen people do when the kettle starts singing and the tea starts boiling… and the aroma. Then smell the cigarette and the beauty of it… Then put it in your mouth, with full awareness, light it with full awareness. Enjoy every act, every small act, and divide it into as many small acts as possible, so you can become more and more aware. Then have the first puff… Fill your lungs deeply. Then release the smoke, relax, another puff, and go very slowly. If you can do it, you will be surprised; soon you will see the whole stupidity of it. Not because others have said that it is stupid, not because others have said that it is bad. You will see it. And the seeing will not just be intellectual. It will be from your total being.
~ Osho
(This dude did a lot of crazy things and crazy people often surrounded him, but he also sometimes made a lot of sense.)
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.
Falling Awake 