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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.