Wednesday 20 May 2009

Okay

You do not need to be healed.

You may heal.

And you do not need to be healed.

~

Sunday 17 May 2009

So what have we learned?

So...my experiment in tracking where my attention went for a 24 hour period ended about 11 hours ago [See entry below for details].

This isn't Seinfeld ("No sharing, no learning"), so what have I learned?

First the very unsurprising stuff:

* I spend a *lot* of my waking time thinking. It would be fair to say most of it.

* Thinking is addictive, and knowing this is not enough to stop myself getting sucked back into thought. Even though I knew I was doing this experiment I still easily got trapped in long cycles of thought without a break.

* Doing something that is both physically and emotionally engaging is a good way of getting out of thought - in my case dancing works really well.


Now the more interesting stuff:

(Much of this is not new, but it is getting much clearer to me, and this experiment has made it clearer still.)


* The experience of the world when viewed from thought is very thin. Painfully thin. As one of my teachers says "you have the keys to the palace and you are living the shack in the garden".

* Problems only exist in thought.

* The alternative is for me to experience the world directly, not mediated by thought. In this experience of the world there are no problems, only states of affairs.

* The best way for me to do this is to actively engage with it, this will always involve the heart getting touched by experience and will often involve the body moving in order for me to express my response.

* It is really important for me to take time ("Time out of mind"!) to take attention out into the world around - see, hear, touch, taste, smell what is going on around me even though the inertia of thought is pulling me in the opposite direction.


Conclusions

I am genuinely astounded by how narrow my ordinary experience of the world is (that is my experience from the world of thought) and how rich the experience of the world is when experienced directly and felt!

I resolve to spend just a little more of my time each day coming out of thought, into the world, allowing it to touch me and expressing my response.

I can't explain why but it feels like it matters.

As usual Mary Oliver puts it exquisitely:


"Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile, the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain,
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting.
Over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."

~

Sunday rain poem

Inside and warm
yet touched by the rain.

Excited, opened,
by its hard, soft, continuous, wet!

Love is falling from the sky.

~

Saturday 16 May 2009

Where does my attention go?

Wise people say that your experience is determined by where your attention goes.

If you place your attention on what is wrong that will be your experience. If you place your attention on what is touching or joyous, that will be your experience.

And much of the time we are not choosing. I am not choosing. I am simply lost in thought. Or to speak more accurately all that is in attention is thoughts chasing each other around with little or no external interest or reference.

So...at the suggestion of one of my teachers (in fact he suggested this to someone else, but it was clearly applicable to me too) I am going to do a 24 hour time and motion study entitled: Where does my attention go?

Of course the fact that I'm paying attention will change the experience (there's no way of getting away from that one) but I'm guessing that what I notice will still be of interest.

I've decided to post some of what I discover on this blog in the hope that you may find it interesting.

I started at 1pm UK Time on 16th May 2009.

Here is my first entry:

1:25pm

* Thinking is the predominant activity and default position. Even if I am meditating (as I was for the last 20 minutes) much of the time is spent thinking. It's spam and chips, spam and peas, spam and spam [This is a Monty Python reference for anyone mystified by this and is the origin of the phrase "spam" in the internet world].

* When I am meditating, much attention is drawn to DISCOMFORT as it the thing that is screaming loudest for attention, as it is also now drawn there.

* As I notice this I am able to put my attention on the dancing trees outside my window, swaying in the wind. I'm immediately touched and my heart is filled with love. My experience is transformed!

~


And my Second Entry...


2:15pm


Felt a pang of sadness combined with some existential angst! Realised that I'd been lost in thought, worrying. A couple of minutes earlier had been blissfully happy listening to music. There was no problem. Reminded again that problems only exist in thought.

2:20pm

Dancing to the music - getting involved, getting touched! Huge change in experience and so quickly!

2:30pm

Have been lost in thought for the past 5 mintues - so easy to go AWOL without noticing!

...


3:40pm

What is interesting is not how much time attention is in thought (we knew that already) but how thin the experience is compared to being out and available to be touched by the world! I truly spend most of my time in the shack in the garden, when I have access to a palace!

...

7pm-10:30pm


Dancing 5 Rhythms at Sue Rickards' Class in Tufnell Park. Attention mostly on the music, feelings, the body, the floor, the other dancers, energy. Thoughts occurring but relatively few. Amazing how different this is to the 9 hours preceding!


11pm

Out for bagels after dance. Much more in touch with the silence. Many fewer thoughts. Awareness spacious and gently roaming. Nothing needs to happen. No thoughts are needed to fill the void. Perfectly comfortable with the void.

~


Final entries



8:45am

Waking up in thought. Dreamstate thought merging into waking-state thought. No thought free state of grace as I open my eyes!


9:45am

Meditation. Beautifully relaxing, delightfully still, much emptiness and still lost in thought 1/3 to 1/2 of the time!

...

10:22am

Went to buy milk and cheese in the rain, mostly thinking and cut off from the weather. Now inside and touched, excited, opened, by the rain, hard, soft, continuous wet! Love falling from the sky!


10:47am

Getting excited by the poem and wanting to share it widely...Fall into internet, lost in thought. Feeling a little cut off. I notice that it has stopped raining. When did that happen? I missed it.

...


1pm

Finishing studying Anatomy and Physiology for the morning. Have remained "in thought" for most of the past hour, even when I've been taking breaks - have hardly come up for air! Now starting to see the sunshine, be touched by the dancing trees in the wind. Able to hear and see the cars on the road outside.

*Experiment ends* (at least formally).

~

Saturday 2 May 2009

A meeting

I am just back from the most amazing retreat in Portugal. I wanted to share some of my experience there with you. Rather than describe the practices or the surroundings it felt more meaningful to me to share a short encounter that occurred towards the end of my week on retreat. I hope it gives you a little flavour and sense of what it was all about for me...


~

So. This was it. After a week of contemplation and dropping deeply into ourselves on retreat in our secluded valley, this was our first trip back into the big wide world. A world full of many objects, lots of space, sounds and textures, tastes and smells. A world full of people, so very many people, who were conducting themselves by their lights and playing by their rules. But we didn’t need to meet all of them right now. We were starting gently. We had come to the pretty little Portuguese town of Tavira, close to the sea.

I wandered aimlessly and cheerfully around town for about 45 minutes, simply enjoying being wherever I happened to be. In some ways this was a new experience for me, just staying close to myself in the town and with the town. In other ways I realised this was a way of relating to the world that I had occasionally chanced upon before. It felt sweet and easy and simple. I felt sweet and easy and simple.

Eventually my wandering feet led me into a small private gallery space. The walls of the gallery were hung with large long brightly coloured paintings of unhappy looking people. In the centre of the gallery stood a central plinth on which stood small clay sculptures depicting the same unhappy people gathered in dissatisfied clusters.

I didn't much like it - the art. It was well made enough, it had some feeling in it, but it didn't really touch me, I didn't really connect with these people or care about their predicament. After a week of retreat, I was getting good at following my feelings and my feelings told me that I didn’t need to see any more of this. I had spent about 3 minutes glancing around and was about to leave, when it happened.

The woman who had been sat at the end of the gallery space fiddling with some paperwork approached me, smiling. I had half noticed her when I had come in but had avoided making eye contact in case she engaged me in a conversation that I didn’t want to have. I felt slightly sheepish when I noticed this. She was about 55 years old, slightly plump and wearing rather a lot of make up, I noticed a little judgmentally. She seemed earnest and proprietorial. She said something friendly to me in Portuguese. I apologised and told her that I didn't speak that language. She offered me English and Spanish and I chose English. She asked me what I thought of the work. A warning bell rang somewhere inside me. Something told me that there was an important question to ask here before answering her question, especially as I did not care for the art. I asked it.

"So...are you the artist?" I enquired casually. "Yes!" she beamed back at me. "How do you find the art?".

I was left in a quandary. I had spent a week learning the value of being in truth and speaking from truth and that the possibility of real meeting was founded only in complete truth. Yet I really didn't want to hurt her feelings. She was really proud of her art. I didn't like it. What to do?

My patient teacher, the secluded valley and the week of retreat had knocked down many of my usual defences to being myself. I decided to trust. To speak the experience and response of my heart and not the judgment of my mind. None of this was conscious - it's just how it happened. I jumped off the diving board and watched to see what happened - what I would say, how she would respond. Trusting in trust, trusting in Being to take us where it would. It didn’t feel momentous. It felt sweet.

I looked again at the set of clay figures closest to me and felt my way into my response to this set of confused wanderers in the mist. My mind still didn’t like this piece of art but my heart could easily appreciate its qualities, its essential nature. I shared this first response. "There is a lot of feeling and emotion in this work", I ventured, tentively. "Yes!" she replied, “I feel it very deeply”. "These people," I said, looking into her large brown eyes, "they seem very lost". My mind wondered if I had said the wrong thing, whether I’d offended her by speaking so bluntly. The response came immediately. "Yes!" she said with a sense of something close to pride. "Everyone here", she pointed to all the sculptures and paintings, "all of them are lost!". I breathed a sigh of relief – contrary to the stories playing out in my mind, the truth had been trustable. “At least this time” said my mind. Something settled. Something dropped a little.

She asked me what brought me to town. I wondered what to say. Would she be able to get a handle on the somewhat esoteric way that we had spent our past week in the valley? What the heck? I was on a roll. I decided to see where the truth would take us. I told her that I had spent a week on a meditation retreat (not quite accurate but as close as I could get in one sentence).

Her face lit up. She seemed genuinely excited. She motioned me to follow her to one end of the gallery where she pointed proudly to a smallish clay sculpture which seemed to show a man in 3 stages emerging from a swamp. She told me that it depicted the possibility of accessing altered states of consciousness. She said that she thought it was very exciting and important to be able to do so as different things can be seen in different states. She said animatedly that she presumed that this is what we were doing on our retreat, and waited expectantly for my response, looking closely into my face.

I was a little surprised and slightly disappointed. What she had shared with me didn’t seem to have anything to do with what we had been doing. She seemed to be coming from a very different place, a place of ideas not experience. And to make it worse, I wasn't touched in any way by the sculpture. But I felt that we were in genuine communication, that she really wanted to share with me and engage, so I decided to take another risk. To share my truth as it appeared in me in that moment.

I told her that I agreed that different things were visible in different states, but on our retreat we had been much more concerned with discovering what it was that did not change, what was in common between all of these states. It felt bold not to agree, but I felt excited to be seeking to share.

Her eyes lit up again. "There is something that doesn't change!" she said. I felt excited. My heart swelled at the prospect of connection! She continued "I believe that there is one tiny molecule within each human being that goes with them when they die. This is what does not change. Don't you agree?". Her eyes shone. My heart sank a little.

Again, I was in a little of a dilemma, as for me this was completely missing the essence of what I was seeking to share and I really did wish to share it with her. Her eyes were alive and I felt our connection. It opened my heart. I felt warmly towards her and our conversation. Once again, I trusted the ground of our communication and sharing to tell the truth. I gave it my best shot. "What you have just shared with me is lovely", I said, "but it is just an idea about reality, it is not reality itself; the same way that your sculpture of a man (I gestured) is just an image of the man, not the man himself. What I am really interested in is not ideas about reality, but the experience of reality. Seeing reality, living reality".

It was her turn to be puzzled and rather disappointed with my answer, but I could see that she was genuinely curious and very much still engaged. I felt touched. She looked into my eyes like a slightly crestfallen child and said "but this reality is not very special, it’s much more interesting and important to see other things. This is really not very important, those things are much more interesting". Ouch!

I felt a pang of sadness in my heart, a feeling of touchedness and suddenly a rising of passion within me. I could feel the softness and the hardness in her words. It felt at that moment that we had reached the heart of it, that this was really important. I felt her dismissal of reality as a tearing and almost a stamping upon it. It felt sad and painful, but also tender.

Words came out of my mouth, from I don’t know where; they certainly didn't come from my thinking mind. I looked directly into her big brown eyes and was touched by our connection. I heard myself speaking to her fervently saying "don't throw away this moment, this experience! This is your life. This our life. This connection between us is life happening right now! This is it! This is it! Don't dismiss it! Don't throw it away!".

I was a little taken aback by the passion with which I spoke, but it all felt very true. I was speaking to her but also speaking to me. My words were part plea, part prayer, part sharing from the depths of who I am and beyond who I am. It was gently surprising and touching to me.

Something softened in her eyes; they were moist and shining. Something dropped deeper energetically between us. The silence outside and inside was suddenly palpable. Some alchemy had taken place. We had served as transformative substance for each other. No-one had really done anything, yet it had happened nonetheless. It felt like we really had met.

I felt quietly joyful. I continued to look into her eyes as I held her hands in mine and kissed them. It was clear that there was nothing more to say. I beamed a wide smile to her, looking deep into her eyes as she smiled softly back. I bowed to her with my hands in namaste and left the gallery.

~