November 1, 2009 – Money and Time

I’ve started reading Getting Things Done, by David Allen, and Your Money or Your Life, by a few people apparently…

Anyway, I am liking the resonance of Tolle’s Presence principal with the general impetus of becoming more conscious about how I spend my money and my time. In particular with Getting Things Done, David Allen really comes from a perspective of “presence.”

I’ve noted in the past that it’s fairly common for me to pass through the checkout of a grocery store and when I get to my car, realize I have no idea how much money I just spent. Sure, it’s rarely more than a single bag of groceries and usually not even that much, but still, it’s clear I’m missing consciousness fairly frequently in this regard. Funny…I likely spend far more time worrying about money that I spend actually engaged in activities of managing it consciously. (Budgeting and paying bills really doesn’t take that much time.)

While I’ve had a faithful planner and calendar (Franklin Covey system) with me at all times except the shower since I was in…college or maybe even high school, I haven’t taken it to the level of budgeting my time. It’s more of a giant in-box (to use Allen’s nomenclature), and I don’t really take the time to go through it unless I think of something specific that I need from it.

I just spent a few hours today with the 120-something-page packet I downloaded (free!) from FinancialIntegrity.org (the Money or Your Life peeps). It’s really useful and eye-opening, even if you think you’re pretty much on top of things. Now I just have to spend the next month writing down every single inflow and outflow…been meaning to do it for some time anyway. Maybe I’ll remember to be “conscious of my inner body” when I do it.

October 26, 2009–Family

Visiting my mom and one of my sisters this weekend, I took the opportunity to flex my Presence muscles. On the whole, I did better over the weekend than I have on this busy Monday.  It’s interesting to feel individuals (who happen to be family members) from a place of curiosity. I think that’s often what’s lacking in the family interaction formula.

However, my mom hurt her leg and it got worse today and she doesn’t have health insurance. The “getting worse” part really undermined my Presence… quotient this afternoon. The whole mortality thing can do that…she’s not a spring chicken! I can feel the distant but inevitable need to be there for my parents in their old age reordering my priorities.

I can also feel the clear and distinct need to go and do a meditation practice to get some help and perspective…and maybe look into the health care systems of other countries as possible future destinations!

October 11, 2009 II — “Who’s ganna ride your wild horses…?”

“Who’s ganna drown in your blue sea…?!?” – U2

It dawned on me this morning that learning to disidentify from my mind is a fair bit like riding a horse…perhaps a wily horse. It’s got a life of its own, and drags me along, and it’s almost like I am the reactive horse. But it turns out that I am me, and the horse is over there, and I have a choice.  If I can just be brave enough to stand up and look around and get perspective for even a moment, the scene changes.

It’s funny but there really does feel like there is an element of courage (a bit like in my last post / dream last night).  I like the horse analogy because it’s reduces the antagonism.  It’s easy to think of the mind as the adversary, but I think of horses more as a force of nature and potential friends…if dangerous at times.  (I have the scar to prove it!)

October 11, 2009 — Bugs

Knotty Squash

A plethora of bugs in my space lately.  Bugs and autumn squash.

Identical spiders in my bathroom the last two mornings. A gainormous black unidentifiable ant-like creature with rust colored wings digging in the dirt yesterday, and huge twin silverfish three days ago.

Then of course, the ever present ants in the kitchen who just won’t give up.

What do bugs have to do with awakening? Oh, I could wax poetic, but I just think they are interesting.

Squash, on the other hand, was featured in my dream last night…

An adult male seated on a porch of a very small house I’m in. It’s night time. I look and see an Asian female is seated on his lap, just in time to see him break her neck and then crack open her head to reveal the innards of a squash, complete with seeds.

I scurry for my phone to call 911 and to take cover, making sure the doors and windows are locked.  After fussing with the phone and negotiating the table I’m hiding under, I realize to my horror that he is in the house, still seated facing the street. Staring, it occurs to me, “So…this is what terror feels like. Interesting…”  And it dawns on me at some subtle level that I’m having a nightmare.

The remainder of the dream is sketchy, but holding the terror consciously precipitates an eventual shift, and the dream closes with a few people, including the perpetrator and I, standing about biding farewell to one another. It’s a fairly amicable parting, and I feel a bit toward him like I would toward anyone with whom I had been previously embroiled in drama, only to smooth it all out in the end.

I’ve been, if anything, more focused on “enlightenment” lately. My directive is, “Disidentify from my mind.”  There were a couple of instances in the past few days in which I sat back and observed a feeling that was prominent, much like the terror in my dream last night.  To be sure, the vast majority of my days are spent blah, blah, blahing inside of my head, but it’s gratifying to note this tidbit of “progress.”

I’ve also been more vigilant about that underlying feeling of general discontent, as noted in my last post. It’s really pervasive and incessant! Much like those ants…

September 28, 2009 – Crunching

I drink water (with sea salt in it), from the glass I decided I preferred when I moved into this place, and ever since attempt to keep to myself…not without guilt.

I get bored cataloging my dreams (that sounds inconceivable), and stray to Craig’s List to spend “just five minutes” looking for the male of my dreams…or some variation on a theme. Hoping to find someone who subscribes to Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now teachings—someone who has a lid on his drama, and won’t get bogged down in mine—I search for “tolle.”  Then I search for “spiritual.”  Then I search for “spirituality.”  Then, “meditation,” and finally “meditating.” Still not interested in the 54-year-olds looking for “sexy spiritual,” or the boys my age’ish who seem to prefer a vocabulary that makes my Pluto cough up blood (think “tickle bubbles rainbow cuddle pixie” meets “fission”).

I’m sitting in the living room, twilight, listening to the traffic beyond the lawn, the occasional screech of a Hispanic child in the neighboring condo patio…yard…thing on one side, and the endlessly chattering Korean (maybe?) men in the other neighbor yard. I wonder if it means I’m a racist if I find their blathering irritating.  Maybe not: if I could understand them, I’d be feeling something closer to hate.

In between paragraphs, I pause to ponder my state of consciousness, and inevitably space out, and circle back to the computer screen, looking for something that will quell that underlying feeling of “lack” Tolle so clearly points out. Computer game? The Daily Show website? Check email? Meditation school’s web forum?  Tolle has some very clever quote that’s something like, “the background static of perpetual discontent.”  Yes, that.

After several minutes of choosing to specifically focus on my environment, my breathing, and as the normal tension begins to relax, I remember Tolle’s enormously helpful homework question, “What does life want from me?”  The top of my head opens up, and I can feel that what Life wants from me right now is nothing more than Consciousness. And, because it’s Life making the request, all of the other agendas simply melt away, and another Tolle quote comes to mind, which is something like, “Unconsciousness and consciousness cannot occupy the same space for long. They are incompatible.”

And then I re-read my writing, and happily, am not moved to judge myself ill for my normal insane human sentiments. And as I sit here reflecting, I understand why people take drugs to feel this. And as I see the moon outside of my window, I find it funny that I can tell you truly “I feel the light of the moon in my heart,” and if I were high you would believe I was really having some kind of an experience, but since I’m sober, you might have a harder time believing I’m feeling much of anything. That’s ok. My mind agrees with you…I mean, my mind agrees with your mind.

September 27, 2009 – Vision

Tuesday, during an evening of meditation practices around the Equinox,  I had the opportunity to “put vision” on my want for awakening and enlightenment. This basically looks like sitting in pairs, in eye contact, and going through a meditation practice with a topic.

It was a really beautiful experience. My partner is a friend of mine, and I was glad to have the opportunity to sit with her, in this space, on this topic.

Basically, I can see how my focus on “fixing” the things “wrong” with me is ever so easily fodder for delusion. On the one hand, “deconstruction” is very helpful and maybe even essential to spiritual development. I have experienced the opening that follows recognition of an old pattern as “not me” or for whatever it is, and then Light flows in.  On the other, I could chase all of these things that are “wrong” for eternity. It’s very easy to go from someone with a genuine desire to transform, to someone with a laundry list of  ”things I have to fix before I can…”

The space of real seeing into what I’m looking forward to becoming was like…almost like a tunnel and a clearing of perfect space at the end. The single most important realization of the session was the experience–not just conviction–that enlightenment is THE simplest thing. Of course this has been said over and over, but experiencing the simplicity brought a monumentally different level of understanding.

So this morning, I sat down to Chapter 1 on Oprah.com/anewearth to refresh my Eckhart Tolle batteries. While there are many pieces I’m walking away with this time, a particularly big one is seeing how I can do my enlightenment homework every day, for at least most of it. Eckhart pointed out that the majority of the day is taken up performing mundane tasks that we perform all of the time. Showering, cooking, walking to and fro. Really not much of it is taken up with more complex tasks. Sure, at work I have complex thinking tasks to perform, but they happen in bits and pieces, with lots of checking email and getting up to go to the sink or bathroom in between.  Every mundane task is an opportunity to practice Presence.  I will start with that and see where it goes first. Then I’ll put emphasis on speaking to others with Presence (well, I put emphasis on this here and there anyway), and then…?

September 13, 2009 – Am I awake yet?

Ok. On the one hand, my meditations and related practices have been exceptionally powerful lately. It occurred to me the other day that I meditate not to “get something out of it” per se, but rather, for the experience itself. This is especially true as of late.  Of course, meditation is also an essential part of my day: without it, awakening seems to be the last thing on my agenda. My brain gets “eaten” by the world to a far greater extent.

However, I don’t know that I’ve been making “awakening” progress so much. I haven’t gone backwards (I don’t believe), but while my meditation experiences are picking up steam/power, it does not necessarily translate to more Presence magically on its own. Presence as a state of being throughout my day seems to be basically as elusive as it was two months ago. Presence during meditation is required (a requirement that I meet with varying proficiency), but once off the proverbial cushion, my true attention is still like Swiss cheese…if that.

I need a good dose of Tolle, like rewatching the Oprah episodes.

September 7, 2009 — All Up Ons

(I’m still a sucker for the classics…you know, like, Strong Bad’s email #77. http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail77.html)

I’ve discovered a couple of things.

1. I have some sort of belief that Enlightenment is not something that is cultivated, but rather, you have it or your don’t. This is despite Eckhart Tolle’s explanation that for most people it takes time, my meditation teacher’s quip “This is a school for people who failed spontaneous enlightenment,” and Ammachi’s beautiful words in a book that compiles stories from her, “Awaken, Children!” in which she so beautifully describes spiritual awakening as a process, much like a flower blooming, and you can’t force it…

2. There’s something that is not exactly what I think of as a “choice” at work when I push awakening. There’s unconsciousness the majority of the time, but the always-in-the-background conscious part of me that pushes through to make a greater level of presence manifest in the foreground here and there. And, the more I make room for that arrival, the more I set aside time to listen to a talk or read a few passages or do a meditation, the more often that part comes through.

Fortunately, my discursive mind–aside from its insanity–is capable of taking on challenges and breaking them down into bite-sized pieces and executing. So, as I work to move Enlightenment from the “you have it or your don’t” box into the “project I can tackle” box, hopefully the more frequent these windows will be. And if not, I’ll have to come up with another plan!

“Practice, practice, practice…”

August 30, 2009 – Mind Identified

“So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidenfity from your mind.”  Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, pg. 21

I’ve identified this is a really week area of mine. I HAVE noted that first thing in the morning, I feel like I’m arriving back at a mind that is just so busy…and it takes me a while to plug back into the incessant stream. Soon, however–usually about mid-way through my shower–I’m back, clicked in.

I’ve attempted to–in that bleary state prior to actually waking up–LOOK at my mind, but I’m so half there, the attempt is half-hearted. It does strike me, however, as if it could be a potential opportunity to get perspective.

During the course of my day, however, while there are some streams of thought that feel “separate” from the core “me,” I’m still largely ‘identified with my mind.’

If, through meditation or a meditation-like process, I can get the mind to slow it down a bit or even a lot, then I start to feel a greater sense of “myself,” separate from thought. But without that stillness, I’m pretty much “hooked.”

So, I guess that means I’m going to be working on ever more frequent “stillness.” Yay! I LOVE stillness…

August 23, 2009 – The Little Train

This spiritual development stuff is hard work. What I mean is, deconstructing my mind-lead way of leading my life is…truly daunting at times.

I find that I can–if I’m really feeling like I’m up against a wall–turn on an Eckhart Tolle CD (or open a book) and the pressure valve is released, or rather, the pressure just ceases to be.

But, when it comes to re-calibrating myself without props…it’s a bit hit or miss.

However, there is a consistent underlying “something” that I rarely loose. I’m finding that, while in the past I would tend to react to my reactions–realize suddenly that I’m in an anxious state and then freak out about the fact that “something is wrong!!”–I can now note that anxiety and then step back before the cascade happens. There are times when this is a very tedious standoff–like the feeling of being on a precipice–but for the most part lately my life has been relatively un-dramatic, so the instances are occasional.

Nevertheless, if I have low blood sugar (if I don’t eat, look out), or am triggered one too many times by dishes left in the sink by my roommate (or things on the table or shoes in the middle of the floor or the piles of crap around the house, or, or, or) then I falter. Yup.

I was also really triggered–for what reason I’m not sure–by District 9, the movie. A hike helped bring me back into my body, and the landscape eased my spirit.