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Trying to get underneath my possible motivations for meditating.
Is it to be a good – as in more ethical – person? Not sure, but doesn’t feel very strong if i’m honest.
It’s probably got something self-serving at the bottom of it. Meaning: i want something for myself which will make this “myself” feel better; better about itself/me, and better about being in the world, being alive still.
I suppose there’s an element of curiosity there too; I’m curious to know, to find out, more about myself. I want to delve into my depths. I want to explore the psyche that appears to be me in a psychological way, an experiential way.
There is also a transformation agenda going on.
I’m bored with the patterns of behaviour i’ve been run around all my life; ignorantly repeating the same small “stuff”, mindlessly repeating myself around the same loops of small thought. I want to break out of the narrow traps that got set to catch me and condition me as a kid.
Yes, i don’t want to be caught. I don’t want to feel trapped small and helpless inside – like it always used to feel when i was a kid.
Cultivating Awareness (with a capital A) is my way of feeling less powerless, less helpless, less trapped.
Awareness makes me feel big. More Awareness makes me feel bigger. But not in a big-headed or self-important way.
Self-enlargement and self (re) invention – yes; they feel like possible motives behind what’s keeping me on this meditation malarkey.
I’d often thought that desire and craving were the same thing. But they aren’t.
Desire is the energy that motivates and moves your life to be in the world – as a Life.
Craving is desire thats being clung onto too tight; too much identity is being caught up in the wanting, too much attachment invested in the attaining – as if anything you momentarily want or crave for, ultimately means anything, or is going to mean anything in the long run.
I’m becoming more and more adept at catching my desires early. So as to not get caught up in all that waste of energy that turns simple desiring into gross craving.
I’m feeling less “had” by my want to have than i used to be.
Not just about seemingly desirable material possessions.
But about all those apparently desirable experiences i”m meant to be having also.
Could just about sum up what – from a Buddhist perspective – all the suffering we do as human beings is about.
If you’re experiencing some kind of dissatisfaction in the moment craving is probably present.
Or you’re clinging on
To delusions that everything good or desirable in life should remain the same
My house is permanent; my job is for life; my relationship is never going to end; my life – is forever.
We may - theoretically – know that life isn’t forever; but we live as if life would go on, and on, being how it always is – and somehow, that death out there – the death waiting for me, won’t actually be reached….yet… or not yet…. not yet a while….not for years and years and years…..not till i’m 90…..
I get to see – with a clarity that sometimes startles me – how clinging and craving hurts me
Whenever suffering is present in me, some sort of craving or clinging is always there too – like a cancer.
I tried reverting to breathing focus this morning. It lasted about 5 minutes.
Then my mind wanted to be off; be diverted, be into whatever distraction came its way.
I was aware of the need in me, in my mind, to be hunting out “other” stimulation:
the noise of a car revving up outside;
thoughts of the day ahead, and how it might be being;
thoughts about people, speculating about how they might be being;
and now a memory has come in, totally unrelated to anything; and now thoughts swim that way, down that memory lane, wanting to embellish it and fill it in like you would a colouring book.
a sensation of feeling (too) cold
a feeling of tiredness still
more thoughts come rattling in carrying carriages of words – as if to be alive – this very living – made up into sentences is actually what, really how, life is
And on and on this goes….. from one thought to the next…. from feeling….to sensation… back to thought…another feeling…. another thought…. another memory…
chasing and jumping across my awareness
is one stimulus after another
never ending….a chaotic flux of…of whatever my mind wants to be producing and receiving….
I’ll try again tomorrow
To get more focus onto breathing into my awareness.
Well – we’ll see…..Lol
The focus of my meditating has moved around quite abit over the last couple of years.
Initially the focus was on the breath, building up a level of sustained concentration by watching the breath; that then became less “watching” the breath as if it were some kind of outside phenomena i was spectating – and more about being in the breath, or being within “my” breathing.
That changed again: “my” breath dropped in favour of simply, merely, “being breathing”; the emphasis there placed on breathing being synonymous with awareness: breathing as an expression of my awareness.
I suppose if you want to sound clever about it, you could say: my awareness was being breathed.
My awareness was in receipt of breathing whether it liked it or not, or was present or it. The breathing carried on regardless.
But when awareness was within this breathing, coterminous with each breath, congruent with each breath – i could feel completely concentrated, like my concentration was being perfectly completed.
That level of concentration was exceptional; i couldn’t seem to produce it at will, whenever i wanted. I felt like i was achieving something special, or extraordinary if i managed to meditate like that. Occasionally i could. And those sits would flash by….20 minutes becoming like one, brief, continuous moment.
I’m using the past tense here cus i don’t do breathing/concentration meditation as much as i did. I either forget to. Or don’t want to. Or feel that breathing is too “basic” to be bothering with.
But maybe i should start getting back to it, getting back to basics again.
