2011.10.24 _ 53

Meditated mid-morning.

Standing meditation. Experimented with lightness and heaviness. Normally, I let my head go light (as in floating up, physically) on the in-breath, and I let my feet go heavy on the out-breath. I tried what happened if I let my feet go light and my head go heavy. Unsurprisingly this made me feel small and constricted. Then I tried standing on one leg, which requires focus on the foot. I tried making my standing foot heavy, which worked OK. Then I tried making my floating foot light, which, surprisingly, worked even better. I alternated my focus between a light floating foot and a heavy standing foot for a few breaths, and then I did the same on the other foot. Then I went back to the normal standing meditation, which had changed in quality. I now let the lightness in my whole body (including the feet) float up on the in-breath, and let the heaviness in my whole body (including the head) sink on the out-breath. A subtle change.

::: Reading what is real
::: A world of dancing colors
::: Beyond the senses

Sitting in recliner during our two-hour Original Face session this afternoon.

So easy to slip from the practice of awake acceptance into a state of passive, angry, self-absorbed, ruminating despondency.
I need to give up trying to manipulate my world.
Trust the path. edited 19:44, 24 Oct 2011

Yesterday Eliza wrote about "the gap between what I think I want and what I see myself do, with regard to meditation" and Wester wrote about gratefulness practice "Very good during the meditation, very difficult to sustain during the postmeditation." I'm sure all of us recognize ourselves in this struggle; I certainly do, every day. Facing this gap, I have worked with new ways of "accepting" the gap, accepting the fact that it is so hard to integrate practice and daily life. The key for me has been to drop "accepting" as if it were part of a dualistic pair "accepting versus rejecting". Doing that reifies "accepting", makes it more concrete, which in turn makes the gap more real and concrete. In contrast, there is another, lighter form of accepting, one that views the gap as an illusion, refuses to buy into the gap. By smiling at the gap, this alternative way of accepting does not accept anything in any solid way, just accepts that any moment we are free to jump over the gap and drop everything: accepting, self, gap, problem, struggle -- as labels, not necessarily as concrete obstacles. I hope this makes some sense . . . . edited 23:12, 24 Oct 2011

"Leave the gaps where you find them" of Tagore, may fit well with Pema's notion of gap as illusion. Lovely. I continue, and this is related, to 'work with' or consider *blindspots*. This year, my New Year's 'intention to look at', was 'Right Energy'... wanted to hold this question to see 1. where my seemingly personal energy already seems to 'go', 2. how I notice and relate to the energy of others and environments, 3. how I might line up better with openness (which seems a funny phrase but I'll leave it). Part of what has come up, is acute awareness and some fear of, blindspots and heedlessness... one gets a peek at how impossible it may be to 'be good' or 'do better' or 'be careful enough, safe enough', etc., which may be shocking. I've sort of experienced this on a few levels this year.

The spaciousness and 'rooms' musing fits here, and of wandering supposedly internal corridors with and of people, each with unique levels of opennesses and circulations. It is all quite wonderous. Perhaps some of us have blind rooms were rarely venture into, or ways that we let others in 'but not there'. An intention can be an invitation... some little opening that 'unknowingly' may be more. Coming to mind is Rumi's Guest House poem again, and Milarepa's guests too. :) edited 23:43, 24 Oct 2011

this little page that is different every day
occupied by lifelines imprinting
in black and white codes

touch

Settling into the long, slow, patient moving. breathing, standing meditating, Tai Chi getting smooooother nicer, richer by the day

Tonight's dream themes
water rising
bridges sinking
gifts of turquoise from the ancestor poets