Fear of boredom, fear of fascination

I'm grateful to Shinzen Young for filling me in on the twenty-minute ceiling. This is the stage in meditation training where you feel yourself again and again popping out of concentration and back into ordinary distracted thinking.

Now that I know about it, I'm more alert to what it is that blocks me from going beyond twenty minutes.

I'm convinced everytime I head into the second twenty minutes that I'm going to be bored, struggling, struggling, struggling with this pop.

Of course it's the opposite. It's in the next twenty minutes that I usually start feeling the most fascinating feelings. That magnetic, bouncy, warm, always surprising powerful chi.

That's when I feel the next fear: that this is so cool, surely the rest of the world is going to become increasingly boring to me. How on earth will I be able to hang around all of the boring, unenlightened, egomaniac, people, once I've become so powerful?

Obviously I'm just as wrongheaded in that fear. It's no doubt the opposite. If I were to get to an expert level, maybe everyone's ignorance, and striving, and complicated living would become as lovable to me as Ben is when he's so sure he has it right.

And maybe I'll finally find joy in being there for people. For all people. Like I did that day when I was able to help my mother in the hospital.

Maybe I'll enjoy being around people because more and more I'll believe that they enjoy being around me.

This morning I got up very early and went beyond the 40 minutes, into a third twenty minute session. There I felt the solid magnetic energy that I am becoming more and more familiar with. In that place it is so easy for me to decide to give up worrying now and forever. Because connected to this power, how could my future manifest as anything but good.

I will continue to take things one day at a time. But I would love to have a life where that morning hour was an unshakeable part of my day. What a wonderful life that would be.

Just for today, I will imagine my life as though this is what is inevitably going to happen. As though my locus of control is now permanent and immoveable. What a wonderful life this is.

Taking it to the next level

For reasons that’ll probably be interesting to explore at some point, I’ve never really pushed my ZZ practice beyond the very basic postures. Not with any sustained commitment.

I’ve experimented with some of the tougher postures and had some pretty trippy energy experiences. But mostly I’ve stuck with the basic Wu Chi and holding the balloon.

This year, though, I’ve decided to go for it. I need the power to break through some of the blocks that are keeping me from something I feel I need to accomplish. Writing my book. To write a book you need marathon like stamina. So, also, I’m going to run a marathon.

It was really the decision to run the marathon that has led to the decision to push the envelope of my practice. The other day while I was training, I realized there was point where I felt I couldn’t go anymore. Before I made the decision to quit, I scanned my body for pain. There was nothing. The pain I suddenly realized was almost all psychic. Something in me was deeply resistant to becoming stronger, becoming powerful, and this something wasn’t physical.

There’s an inner block in me, a deeper anxiety that I haven’t really tried to dissolve yet.

So that’s the project.

Helping me along the way is a master I discovered through my friend Jeff Warren. Shinzen Young. He has a great series of guided meditations on youtube. One of them I like in particular: creating positive feeling. Here the meditation focus is on the positive feeling arising in the body from positive thoughts or images. In doing this meditation I realized how much focus I put on the negative feelings when I meditate. I have a tendency to sit with the negative feelings, rather than take the time to sit with the positive ones.

So working with the positive feelings of ZZ is this week’s focus. ‘

Later this same day:

After watching a Shinzen Young's post on the fourth axiom of his practice, "Recycle the Reaction", I've had an insight. I'm in an intermediate rut in my standing practice, and my life. I'm afraid of the fear of moving on to a more advanced level. I'm not going to go into reasons for why I'm afraid. Just in a more concrete way, in terms of my practice, I'm afraid to stand with my fear. To just stand with it in the same way I stood with any other of the uncomfortable feelings in the beginning stages of standing practice. As a result my power really hasn't stabilized in a way that helps me move on to the next level.

Earlier today I went for a run. I'd say I'm at an advanced beginner level now, and I don't plan to move on to intermediate this year. But it's still hard for me to maintain the advanced beginner level. So I experimented today with creating a positive feeling while I run. Creating a body memory of the "I can" feeling. I remembered all the times I had run the distance I had committed to running, and when I wanted to give up I remembered what it felt like to know that I could do it.

I'm going to do the same thing in my standing practice this week. I want to bear down a bit this week, and when I start getting the fear, I'm going to stand with it for a while, not create an extra layer of anxiety, and then invoke the 'I can' feeling.

Hopefully this will also transmute to my writing. I'm afraid to move on to the next level in that too, which is why I'm coming up with a bunch of beginner practices to avoid it. I think these beginner practices are fine. I think coding is a great way for me to develop algorithmic thinking, whether I become a developer or not. And I think it's interesting that Shinzen uses the algorithm as a method as often as he does.

Sunday morning post

I've decided to commit from now on to a Sunday morning post.

Much of my standing practice involves writing. I committed to standing in large part because I believe that it helps me with my creativity. But standing has also become my spiritual practice. I believe in a very concrete way that I am connected to a vitality that empowers me to make the best decisions for myself and my son.

The more I stand. The more diligently I practice, the better our lives become. I no longer look at this as an escape from responsibility. Early morning practice is the most responsible action I can take for both of us. It gives me vitality, strength, and above all it gives me an internal locus of control. The more I stand, the more firmly I believe that my actions, habits and beliefs determine my destiny, and the destiny of my child.

I have seen the results of cumulative action in my standing practice, in my writing practice. Recently I've taken up a computer programming practice, and a productivity practice. It has always been too easy for me to fall into disorganization and despair. To lose the thread that reminds me of how much control I have over my life. Keeping these journals helps me to track my success and my failures. It can be humbling, but it liberates me from all the things that once held me back: confusion, chaos, lethargy and stress. I'm am so much more free now from the blocks and ruts that were once an inevitable part of my life. My life has structure and discipline, and this Sunday morning post is my testimony to that.

energy focus

Usually when I get up in the morning I focus on the time that I'm going to stand. I have a peace alarm on my ipod with three gongs that remind me when, let's say 20 minutes has passed.

I rarely go the full hour anymore, which is too bad. I look back on that six months that I did an hour a day as a such a peaceful and creative time in my life. I'd love to be able to build that discipline back.

This morning I focussed just on the energy inside of me, instead of the time passing. It's been such a stressful time in my life. My energy is low and my stress is high. But somehow inside of me I know that I can transmute that stress into strength.

I slept badly last night, but even after just 30 minutes of standing I feel rejuvenated. And by focussing on energy instead of time, the time passes more quickly.

So that's the plan for the week. Energy focus.