From a fizzy, muddled, fleeting awareness to razor sharp direct connection to the body. Beginning all foggy from sleep and a perhaps too warm lap bath, then waking up as I move through the body, attempting to feel all but skipping here and there, always an inch away from where I’m feeling, like I can’t stay still for a moment and my aim is off. Sudden spurts of head shaking, and then sudden tightening of shoulders, head bowed forward. No arm shaking these days. Exquisite ripples of intense pleasure, I of course wanting more of that but I don’t linger in the nice places, I attempt to keep everything on a level. No area appears to be hidden by the end and I’m able to focus in on any area without effort. A feeling of a bubble, a force field surrounding me, protecting and nourishing.

Exquisite. The greatest pleasures are ironically when the one seeking and demanding pleasure gets out of the way. True pleasure cannot be controlled or manipulated, encouraged or saught… it comes out of nowhere, in waves of peace and joy and delight. Early on I held fear gently, noticing any doing of anything about it. Gently, gently, yet holding nonetheless. Later when I realised I was kind of daydreaming I understood that I’d already had a whole night of that and more wasn’t needed or helpful, even if it’s fuzzily pleasant. So I began the listening to sensation throughout the body, from the very crown of the head downwards, and back up, and back down, and then an all-encompassing slow journey back to the crown. Tingles. Blind spots I want to skip over and when I reverse slightly, memories of people of my childhood and youth, popping into my mind. At one point it seemed that the very thinking was from within my skin, as I moved over it, so thought flitted and changed. Fleeting, insubstantial. Substantial beyond comparison is the strength of the body and the growing ecstasy around my belly and base. Thought has nothing on this and I saw that my world was so tiny, the world of control, direction, thought and worry. Not condemnatory very small but factually very small. There’s something much much more, beyond, and it’s clear I don’t have very much of a clue what is really going on here. Yet it feels good, true, and something worth exploring, even if ‘I’ cannot. Get out of the way and let.

I’m able to feel the whole of my back. Previously there were swathes of it that seemed to be a blank, nothing there that could be felt. I’m not sure how this changed. Noticing today how I was able to be in the approximate area of a body part but while there I was flitting about, unable to keep steady, little jumps here and there in a ‘good enough’ approximation of awareness. ‘Good enough’ doesn’t cut the mustard, it’s not… good enough. After noticing this, I was able to steadily move over the body, down then up, and once back up, lingering on the areas which were shouting the loudest: top of right shoulder, lower lumbar, left calf.

A full on shaker-maker, head rapidly moving side to side when I touched upon some sensitive spot in the spine. Moving up through the back, the shoulder area tightening and tightening, all scrunched up. Keep moving up and the neck clicks into place and by the time I’m back to the top of the head I am sitting totally erect, effortlessly, the body in perfect alignment and balance, without a hint of will to do this. Earlier in the shaking and twisting, a nausea suddenly. Thoughts go to grabbing a box of tissues if needed. Body tingling all over, impossible to tell where my skin ends in space as awareness glides from part to part. A perfect tension introduced wherever I go, and release once passed. Again the strong feeling that, although terrible and agonising at times, this is good work, perhaps the only work.

am 1hr

Wanted to lie down, as usual, then I asked: what’s the difference? Is it really safer, more comfortable? I’ll sit down again soon, maybe after the weekend. ‘Soon’ could be today, why not? And so I sat down, simple, no argument or debate or pressure. And when I sat I saw that any technique would be a desirous movement towards something or away from something. So I just sat. Of course, then there is ample time for thinking about various things at work or in my life. I didn’t do the classic: ‘and now return to the breath.’ Who was ‘I’ to do that? Why would I do it? No, it’s more natural. Anyway, once returned to the breath, what then? The cycle continues. No, it’s more natural, the attention simply moves nearer, a layer of activity drops away. It seemed to be ‘nearer’ rather than ‘deeper’, a coming closer to home rather than an exploration of the depths. No exploration, no seeking, no trying to work it out or find something, rather a coming home. Come home. Come home. Return. And yet not even a movement in that direction, more like an unfolding, an undoing of doing. And one doesn’t do this unfolding or undoing, it occurs. This all felt very restful, and anything that wasn’t restful or natural was exposed as the effort and subtle struggle it was. Everything is as it is, I don’t have to work it out. Waves of bliss, waves of strife, waves of pain, all come and go and preference towards or against any is unnecessary.

Awoke around four, like at Dharma Dipa, and after realising I was wide awake and would be for some time, I began to sit at around four thirty. Excruciating. No defences left and noticing that residence makes it worse. Strong pain behind the forehead. Breathing, breathing, and then even this stopped for long moments. Another time I kept breathing out, out, out; was it even possible to breathe out this far? Abdomen sucked right in. The organism has the seat, there’s very little I can do about anything. And that’s something of a relief despite the agony. And if there isn’t resistance, is it really agony at all? Right in the heart of it, it seems to be something else entirely. If nothing else, this sitting every day is deeply satisfying, like scratching an itch I have felt for years but haven’t been able to reach. Vipassanna reaching deep, deep inside.

This is as total as it’s been, awareness throughout the whole body, an exquisite tension throughout, hot spots calling out louder: back of right thigh, shoulders, neck. My face in a kind of silent scream, pulses of energy moving throughout, using the spine as a main channel. Before this, a dropping away of various doings, sometimes reluctantly, but understanding that I hide in all partial actions, like ‘watching’ or ‘moving through the body’ or resisting. Not to force not do these things but in the doing of them the very doing is obvious and can drop. Also the avoider. Even avoiding the sensations I think I like. Too much ecstasy? Go somewhere else! Feel something different! Think something, get lost in a little daydream or thought. Too much pain? Likewise. Down to very subtle feelings: avoid, avoid. The avoiding and avoider can also be understood in this exposure and cessation or retirement has a chance, instead of the usual do do do. Not that cessation is a reaction to doing. Sitting way past the hour chime, impossible to end then, but there comes a time when the energy has settled and it’s back to a more regular sitting still, thinking a bit, and then it can end, itching for another dose of actuality later on but likely to be tomorrow.

I’m at the edge of something. This is as far as I’ve dared go before. Or been able to.  Or been allowed to. Limitations are dropping away and so is my ability to control. I see my puny little desires squirting in this direction or that, all the while something growing, building, gaining strength and power, something way beyond me. Yet in a way it is not beyond me, it is the ‘total me’ in sense, or the total organism of which ‘me’, the chooser, seems now to be a very tiny part. Overwhelming energy. A force field around my whole body, the physical enclosed and protected by it, yet not a closed system, but open to everything, the cosmos. The direct way in (and out?) seems to be through the top of the head, the very top part of the crown, from which the practice starts. Not that it’s anything much to do with the practice itself. Perhaps the practice prepares the organism for this something beyond. There’s a connection not imagined but more real than anything I’ve known.

How can that have been an hour? Seemed like about twenty minutes. Woke this morning with strong jealousy, a partner receiving a really cool letter from a really cool guy. This jealous and inferior feeling ate at me during the sitting, an overly sweet, nauseous sensation in the chest to the right of the heart. It eased after some time, seemingly melting away. Back to where it came from or away away, I don’t know. Then hatred towards a person who could make me feel like this. Not the letter-writer but the girl. And not really any one girl but a blend.

Goodness gracious me! This for sure with no hesitation is the thing to be doing. Sitting down, shutting, up and learning what doing is necessary and what can cease. And as it eases, naturally, of its own accord, what joy! Then waves of ecstasy, bliss and overwhelming wellbeing. Strong connection between the top of the head and the base of the spine. A magic conduit. Everything joins up, mind and body and all through the organism, connected as if the divisions never were real. It’s not easy. By any means it’s not easy. There is a kind of hard-fought ease and once it comes I wonder what the struggle and effort was about. Unnecessary. So many unnecessary activities out in the world and internally. Powerful surges up through the spine and head shaking faster than I thought possible, shoulders unwinding and energy moving up through the head and out to who knows where. And the hour is over, it’s duration some kind of crazy time, not a normal hour at all.

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.

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.