Wish you were here on the journey to nowhere (now-here)

[silene]

"Wish you were here, on the journey to nowhere (now-here)"

Starting a journal today to share and reflect on my ongoing spiritual journey / practice / philosophy. I'm due for a review of my meditation practice. 

'Wish you were here' by Pink Floyd was the first album I ever bought, still spellbinding today as ever

In November I am doing a Body Scan meditation, in order to beef up my concentration and get more body aware. It goes like this (sorry if this looks like excessive detail but I just want to get the exact practice down on paper for the record). Maybe one day I'll put this in a picture.

Top of head,  crown.
Face (any tension here?).
Right side of head, ear. 
Back of head.
Left side of head, ear.
Inside the head, brain. 
Lower head, jaw, chin.
Throat, adam's apple (any emotion here?).
Right side of neck.
Back of neck.
Left side of neck. 
Left shoulder.
Left upper arm.
Left collar bone.
Left elbow.
Left lower arm.
Left wrist.
Left hand. 
Right hand.
Right wrist.
Right lower arm.
Right elbow.
Right upper arm.
Right shoulder.
Right collar bone.
Top of chest.
Upper chest, heart.
Mid chest, solar plexus (why is it called that, 'network of the sun'?). 
Stomach.
Navel.
Lower abdomen.
Genitals.
Left hip.
Upper left leg.
Above left knee.
Left knee.
Upper left shin.
Lower left shin.
Left ankle.
Left foot.
Right foot.
Right ankle.
Lower right shin.
Upper right shin.
Right knee.
Above right knee.
Upper right leg.
Right hip.
Base of back, tailbone. 
Lower back.
Mid back.
Upper back.
Shoulders (any tension there?).
Back of neck.
Back of head.
Top of head, crown.

There are one or two duplicates in this route, I don't find that a problem. I usually sit cross-legged Burmese style, right hand over left, like the Theravada Buddhists, though I'm not a Buddhist. But it's one of my influences. 

The other important issue is the quality of awareness. I prefer to call it awareness rather than attention, because it's a simple passive awareness, more like dropping awareness of everything else, and what remains is the particular part of the body. Like it's self-aware, I don't need to direct awareness towards my knee, for example, in a controlling way. The whole nervous system is awareness already without paying attention. 

Anyone else here use wikihow.com? There's some useful spiritual and meditation resources there in the 'how to' format. It's beginner's level mostly, but more independent style as it's not part of an organised religion or in-group.

More to come soon. 

Edited November 18, 2019 by silene

[silene]

WEIGHT AND DIET 

I've been successful losing a bit of weight this year, 1.5 stone so far and I'm well inside the healthy BMI range now (previously at the top). Mainly just reducing portion sizes by 1/4 to 1/3, which makes me feel a bit guilty actually about the amount of food I must have wasted over the years. I think mindfulness has a role here too, to notice my desires and 'default mode' around food and eating. I also have a new year's resolution (carried forward from last year lol!) to reduce salt and caffeine, and increase plain water consumption.

METAPHYSICS

Currently my tentative metaphysical position is Neutral Monism, and the Two Truths Doctrine (both of these are on Wikipedia). This is intellectual of course, and the hardest part of my spiritual practice at the moment is dropping all the narratives and simply looking. 

OTHER STUFF & GENERAL NOTES

Being = Suchness
Being is becoming, becoming is being.
Letting go = let it be. Simply observe without trying to change anything. Let the here and now be your mantra, stopping feeding energy into abstract thoughts and intentions. Passive awareness rather than active awareness. 

PLAN

Keep on with body scan for the rest of November, then go back to letting-go / being / suchness meditation (I haven't settled on a name for it yet ). Start some hatha yoga. Keep up the dieting. 

[Raptorsin7]

Sounds like a plan. Good luck (:

[silene]

@Raptorsin7  thanks, I love making plans and to-do lists, the hard bit is the discipline to see it through  

[Raptorsin7]

@silene Haha i know, discipline is tough. Just keep trying your best, don't beat yourself up, and let it be. Highly recommend checking out @Nahm's thread about using a dream board. It could be very beneficial to you!

[silene]

December is nearly here, time for a review. 

MEDITATION
Daily body scan not working so well for a whole month. It does help my concentration and body awareness, but doesn't give me deep insight and awakening like the letting go (being) practice. So plan for December is to practice 3 weeks letting go (being) and 1 week concentration (body scan or navel contemplation) per month to find a better balance between insight and concentration. 
The other issue is I'm currently only sitting for about 20 mins in the evening. This isn't enough, I could do with ideally 30 mins morning + evening. I need to challenge myself more on this. 

MINDFULNESS
This is what I used to call 'daily life practice'. Things like awareness of the present moment, doing one thing at a time, pay attention to my mind before reacting on autopilot. And this is where self-enquiry practice works better for me, rather than in formal sitting sessions, because I have more sense of self to work on. I can move into brief moments of nondual awareness in daily life, which was a bit disconcerting at first - how could I cope with practical tasks like walking down the pavement if there is no self/other - but the body-mind still copes without the ego to control it! And I only get short glimpses then back comes the relative, dual state. It's as if my mind can flip between relative and absolute states by itself as appropriate. Stop trying to control it and chase the nondual Mr Silene! 

WEIGHT
Stable but I haven't lost any more (too many binges) so I need to push myself to achieve that last 1/2 stone loss! 

Edited November 29, 2019 by silene
Spelling and grammar.

[silene]

12-dec-19
MEDITATION
This week I'm doing a concentration, navel contemplation, as a break from 'just being' meditation. I was getting an issue with the being though. What to do about thoughts, music etc in my mind? The question arose 'Everything is being so I shouldn't be excluding anything. That's a division, dualism, splitting the mind into what is allowed and not allowed in meditation. This type of meditation is not about concentrating on an object, but opening up, surrendering to the whole of being. So, if my mind starts an intentional activity like thought, do I let it go (letting go meditation), or let it be (like Leo's do nothing meditation). Something to return to next week.

WEIGHT LOSS
I'm still stuck on a plateau and haven't lost any more weight, not helped by it being the Yuletide season (I baked a fruit cake today!). Also personal circumstances limit my exercise at the moment I'm off work. So I'm working with the psychology of eating less. How an empty stomach and hunger causes an automatic thought and feeling pattern "must eat, fill myself up to get rid of this hunger" . Then I mindfully observe and let the hunger be, after a while it passes. Drinking water mindfully helps too.

OTHER THOUGHTS
Some in the forum say that full awakening is a long and arduous process, I should meditate at least an hour per day, do other practices, go on long intensive retreats etc. But I'm a family man, a husband, dad, employee. I can't be a rock to my family while I go on retreats or other solo practices. My strong intuition is that I am where I should be right now, this is my life purpose, vocation, calling.  Love/Being wants me to be what the Buddhists call a 'householder' or family man rather than a monk, even a modern secular monk. 
How to be a good parent, to embody morality, spirituality, self-esteem etc without imposing my made-up religion on them. Maybe parenting would be worth a thread on the forum.  

[Raptorsin7]

@silene Have you read Nahm's thread on using a dream board. I think many of us underestimate how much progress we can make in our lives without actually reaching enlightenment. There's no need to go be a monk living in a monastery. You can make the path compatible with your life and grow the practice when you feel it's right and effortless. 

[silene]

@Raptorsin7 good call, yes I've started reading it, a great resource. You're right about making the path compatible with our life; the other choice would be to make our life compatible with the path!  Perhaps I'm underestimating the value of mindfulness in my worldly life, and expecting too much from monkish meditation. 

[Raptorsin7]

if what you are doing is not making you feel great and amazing then you're doing something wrong. Change it up. Then watch your life change around you.

[silene]

Great and amazing - yes sometimes. Other times life is just a pain when I'm resisting what needs to be done. But I'm in a place where I can feel the deeper sense of ease, effortlessness, a gentle bliss beneath my surface layer of turbulence (amazing and horrible). You're right there's wisdom in changing what needs to be changed. Also wisdom in not changing anything, infinite acceptance. Relative truth is just as important as absolute truth. 

Edited December 13, 2019 by silene
duplication

[silene]

Copied from Meditation forum thread "If everything is an illusion why drink water ? " for research into Dieting subject of my journal. Some useful ideas to follow up. 

_____________
undeather

  Quote

There is a grain of truth here though, isn't there some good research about the health and life-extension effects of a low calorie diet? I recall reading about some research on animals to do with this. 

Yes, definitely! 
If you eat about 20% less calories than you "need", your body will activate certain genetic/epigenetic pathways that will ultimately make you live longer. At least thats the hypothesis most studies nowadays work with. 
Its not a fun life though. Most people will feel incredibly cold and tired because of it, so not really worth it in my opinion. Also, most of the data is comming from studies with rodents. There are some epidemiologic human studies out there that show a similar result, but the interpretation is quite difficult because of all the cofactors that come into play. We will have to wait and see! 
What we already know for sure is that a high plant based, high fiber, high good carb diet is a wonderful key for longevity. 

_____________

silene

@undeather fantastic thanks  This is a bit off-topic, I know there's a different area for health issues, so I'll not labour the point. But I've been dieting fairly successfully recently, and wondering what to do when I reach my ideal weight. Increase my calories a bit to stay there? Or keep on low calories for good health, maybe activate these genetic pathways and see how it goes? I'll follow up in my journalling. 

Attachment requires things, but only processes exist.

___________________

undeather

Experiment with it! This is obviously a highly individual thing and sometimes really, really counter intuitive. For example, some internvention might make you feel subjectively worse in general, but could also play a big positive role in your longevity. 

If you really want to get nerdy on that, research the Horvath-clock. Its basically a measurement of methylation processes in your DNA and propably the best predictor of your real bilogical age at the moment. We know that this clock can be influenced by certain epigenetic triggers, so if you want to have any real metric on how your diet/lifestyle is influencing your actual health, this is the way to go! 
______________________

[silene]

Copied from Meditation forum thread "Am I meditating correctly?" for some further journalling work around how I practice in these categories._

___________________

We could do with an updated list of categories of spiritual practice, like Patanjali's types of yoga. How about this for a start: 

Physical activity (eg hatha) incl bodywork, breath work, diet, exercise, sleep, cleanliness, declutteriing. 

 Intellectual knowledge, broadening our understanding, education. 

Meditation and mindfulness (dhyana?)

Service to others (eg karma).

Devotion and love (eg bhakti, worship, prayer)

Energy work (eg kundalini, tantra, chi kung, reiki)

Nature connection. Gardening, wilderness, environmentalism, animals, rambling. Prudent living, make your own things, DIY. 

Obviously we don't need to practice all of them, or be into yoga, it's just an indication of some categories which are available. And I love a good list  Although this is harder than I expected, as there's overlaps eg service and love are connected. 

[silene]

Third memo for journalling work.  From thread "Is meditation useless?"     

  9 hours ago, LfcCharlie4 said:

"my personal favortie is Pure Awareness meditation or Resting in the absolute"

Me: Can you recommend any good writings or videos on this please, or 'abidance as primordial awareness'? Sounds like what I am working towards, although at this stage the names get a bit fuzzy. Is it like Leo's Do Nothing technique? I'm trying to move on from Choiceless Awareness, which has been a step-change eye opener for me. But when I look into the more unstructured techniques (non-techniques might be a better term) it's a bit difficult to be specific and distinct about the various types. 

Posted 7 hours ago · Report post 

_______________________

@silene Defo, 

Check out any of these 

Adyashanti 
Rupert Spira 
Ramaji 

They all have ebooks on amazon you can get for <$10. 
------------------------------------------------

[silene]

Quote from Mindfulness for Dummies 2nd edition by Shamash Alidina. P. 315. Book I'm currently reading, this paragraph relates to the direction of travel of my meditation style. 

"Mindfulness is about letting go of doing. It is about simply being as you are. Being yourself, whatever you think of yourself. Being yourself isn't a technique. You can't do non-doing. Non-doing means letting go of all techniques with their desired outcomes and just being."

Edited December 21, 2019 by silene
Formatting.

[silene]

Mon 30-dec19 New Year's Resolutions. 

1. Physical. 
   1.1. Diet. 
     Reduce: hydrogenated, trans, saturated fat, refined carbs , sugar, salt,  artificial sweetners, processed food in general. Acrylamide. Caffeine.
     Increase: fruit, veg, unrefined & unprocessed natural food, water, herb tea. 
     Reach BMI =21.5 and waist/height ratio = 0.48. 
   1.2. Exercise. Mainly walking & gardening. Also Hatha yoga for physical suppleness, preventing backache.

   1.3. Regular sleep routines.  Decluttering, sell or give away old unused stuff. 

2. Intellectual knowledge, broadening understanding, education.
   2.1 Spiritual videos for theoretical knowledge, 
   2.2 Follow up new leads on spiritual teachers (see later post).
   2.3 Pick up on learning Python programming, build some simple apps eg a calculator, a meditation timer. 

3. Meditation and mindfulness/awareness. 
   3.1 Meditation. Improve my daily routine to ideally 30 mins morning and evening, but aware this is a tough challenge, especially in the mornings! 
   3.2 Mindfulness/awareness. Practice what I am learning from books etc. If more support needed, look for other material. 

4. Service to others (eg karma).
   4.1 Voluntary work.
   4.2 Blood donors. 

5 Devotion and love (eg bhakti, worship, prayer) - not applicable for me.

6. Energy work (eg kundalini, tantra, chi kung, reiki) - not applicable for me.

7. Nature connection. Gardening, wilderness, environmentalism, rambling. Prudent living, crafting, DIY. All of these, as time allows.

 

Edited December 31, 2019 by silene
Spelling.

[silene]

My current meditation could be called Being with 'let it be' as the technique and  'awareness of being' as the result. I remembered that in the Abrahamic religions the word Amen means 'So be it'. That's very similar to let it be, so I could say I'm doing Amen meditation How about, after saying saying a few minutes of prayers, the Christians, Jews and Muslims spend 30 mins doing silent 'Amen.'

It's usually quite effortless doing Being meditation, but sometimes it's hard to know if I'm drifting off in thoughts, etc, or if that is just part of the process to let it be. When I realise I am thinking, do I do anything about it, or just let it flow? Whether to get involved in a decision-making processes to control my mind? If I were to do that, it assumes I have free will to make a decision and action it. There is an 'executive function' in the mind, which makes decisions and I suppose, corresponds to the will (free or not). But it certainly feels like I can make an effort to move my thought in a particular direction, or stop it (let it go). The current challenge with my meditation is what to do with my intentional activities, rather than the automatic processes. 

Edited December 30, 2019 by silene

[silene]

Still practising 1 week contemplation and 3 weeks (being) meditation per month, it's starting to settle down into a more routine practice now: is that a good thing or a rut?  Still only about 30 mins sitting per day though. I'm spontaneously moving between what I have just named self-centred and centreless awareness. I know my spiritual practice is still very lightweight compared to what's recommended. But then as the saying goes 'comparisons are odious'. On the other hand I have a hunch that I should put more into it than dissipating myself with entertainment. 

I have just seen Diana Winston's session on 'The spectrum of awareness practices' on Worldwide Insight, fantastic,  a good context for me, similar to my direction of travel (but solo), and I've sent off for her new book 'The little book of being'. Comes at a good time.  Will read it after I've finished my current book of Beliefs, a fairly academic tome including religious & non-religious beliefs. I've also got on my bookshelf 'Being vs becoming (experiencing awareness beyond the relative mind)' by Paresh Jivanji. Which one to read first? I'm such a slow reader it makes a difference! Perhaps keep up the momentum with Diana Winston's approach?

Centreless feels a better name with me than emptiness, because there's still lots happening but with no self, or centre,  or subject, from which I objectify it. Also the 'stuff happening', is happening without any boundaries, apart from what my cognition is projecting onto it. Meaning that I create 'things' by defining the border between one thing and the next. My mind is what carves up the universe into separate things. Even saying that, my mind vs the universe, is fragmentation, I have the abstract thought of the universe in my mind until I stop thinking about it: when the universe and my mind both vanish into This.

On another topic, I'm doing an online Python programming course which is reducing my time for reading and posting in the forum. It was on my New Year's resolutions list so I've not forgotten them yet

Edited February 8, 2020 by silene
Grammar.