sar for 15 mins. observing a few things: if i snatch my breath greedily; how much fear there is that this will be my last; taking more than i need....managed to observe without judgement when my mind wasn't chattering.
J was playing a country album we both like and i noticed on one of the tracks i eased into the lilting rhtyhm, but panicked and let my mind do somersaults trying to follow when it changed. I think I often am in the rhythm of others rather than my own.
off on tour on Monday (where I will see you Mary and Jean? come to the stage door to say hello if you can. You'll know me i'm the only gal in the celli!), so posting and sitting may be arratic. see you when i get back. much love to y'all.
I too am curious to know about labyrinth-walking, since I'm on a the committee for a student who's doing a thesis on Glastonbury Tor (sometimes thought to have been such a labyrinth, I gather) and I know absolutely nothing about it.
I haven't sat yet today, but regarding labyrinths...
Here's a TinyURL for last year's post on the cloth labyrinth that visited KSC this year & last:
http://tinyurl.com/88f7f
That post includes links to another post I'd written comparing labyrinths & mazes (yes, they're different, with different symbolic import), as well as various resources about labyrinths in general.
Whatever peace I had earlier in the 100 days meditation-wise I feel I have lost for the moment. Cravings, and the indulging of some of them, are thriving with me at the moment. I do still do my 5 minutes though - my continuing to sit feels almost the same to me as Dale's "mulishness" in not sitting!
I don't like this. In a lot of ways my life is very good, but I would love some of that inner peace back!
Ruth: yes, see you in London! hope the tour starts well. Really looking forward to next Saturday.
I've been "off the cushion" for a few days except for snatching those five-minute moments here and there through the day - which actually feels pretty good. Two night ago I was up in the night and, while not going through my sititng routine, I did meditate and it was very fruitful. I hope to get back to some longer sitting this weekend.
I've realized that I have been in a long dry period of feeling the absence of the divine/holy/God/whatever except as I see it in all living things - but so far as insight goes, or "connection", that has been gone, largely as a result of not being able to make sense of either the world's suffering or personal suffering in recent years. But I feel like that night I had a small glimmer of a break in that, and it's made me feel grateful, lighter, more hopeful. I don't know if I'm explaining this clearly at all, especially to the Buddhists among us, but it is a pattern many people notice during their spiritual lives, I think, which gives rise to those overworked, overused images of deserts and dark nights.
Ruth, good luck on your tour! how exciting that you will meet some of our group! Dale, so glad to hear you are back sitting!
beth, I can really relate to what you are saying. For no understandable reason I seem to have lost sight of my joy in the last week. feeling heavy, argumentative and dull. maybe it's the change over to winter? for sure we have to trust it is just part of the rhythm, but it is painful around those and that we love. Sometimes I can hardly bear to look at a tree without loving it, move my body without a sense of vitality, let alone be with my husband without being thankful and joyful to my core.... I am sorely hoping playing bach next week will bring me back to it.
dale, whatever it is you are going through, I can feel the sometimes apparent hopelessness in sitting. Of course, it has to be an illusion,no? Thanks for staying with us.
loraine thanks for link. I will check it out on my return.
It's no part of Buddhist doctrine that I've ever encountered, but I'm sharply aware of a moonlike waxing and waning of the accessibility of... whatever, the numinous or the divine or awakened nature or transcendence or whatever you call it. I've never tried to track the cycles, though I think that would be a fascinating though hopelessly inexact effort. At a very wild guess I'd say the whole cycle, from slough of despond to frequent intimations of joy and then back to the slough, takes something between a month and six months. I wonder if anyone's ever studied this? How irritating that scientists don't take this sort of thing up and that religious people don't do proper scientific studies! I meditate largely, I think, because I think it hastens the arrival of the joyful times and delays the plunge into the slough. I wonder if it really does?
7 Comments:
sar for 15 mins. observing a few things: if i snatch my breath greedily; how much fear there is that this will be my last; taking more than i need....managed to observe without judgement when my mind wasn't chattering.
J was playing a country album we both like and i noticed on one of the tracks i eased into the lilting rhtyhm, but panicked and let my mind do somersaults trying to follow when it changed. I think I often am in the rhythm of others rather than my own.
off on tour on Monday (where I will see you Mary and Jean? come to the stage door to say hello if you can. You'll know me i'm the only gal in the celli!), so posting and sitting may be arratic. see you when i get back. much love to y'all.
I too am curious to know about labyrinth-walking, since I'm on a the committee for a student who's doing a thesis on Glastonbury Tor (sometimes thought to have been such a labyrinth, I gather) and I know absolutely nothing about it.
Sat briefly last night and this morning.
I haven't sat yet today, but regarding labyrinths...
Here's a TinyURL for last year's post on the cloth labyrinth that visited KSC this year & last:
http://tinyurl.com/88f7f
That post includes links to another post I'd written comparing labyrinths & mazes (yes, they're different, with different symbolic import), as well as various resources about labyrinths in general.
Enjoy!
Whatever peace I had earlier in the 100 days meditation-wise I feel I have lost for the moment. Cravings, and the indulging of some of them, are thriving with me at the moment. I do still do my 5 minutes though - my continuing to sit feels almost the same to me as Dale's "mulishness" in not sitting!
I don't like this. In a lot of ways my life is very good, but I would love some of that inner peace back!
Ruth: yes, see you in London! hope the tour starts well. Really looking forward to next Saturday.
Welcome, Howard! Great to see you here.
I've been "off the cushion" for a few days except for snatching those five-minute moments here and there through the day - which actually feels pretty good. Two night ago I was up in the night and, while not going through my sititng routine, I did meditate and it was very fruitful. I hope to get back to some longer sitting this weekend.
I've realized that I have been in a long dry period of feeling the absence of the divine/holy/God/whatever except as I see it in all living things - but so far as insight goes, or "connection", that has been gone, largely as a result of not being able to make sense of either the world's suffering or personal suffering in recent years. But I feel like that night I had a small glimmer of a break in that, and it's made me feel grateful, lighter, more hopeful. I don't know if I'm explaining this clearly at all, especially to the Buddhists among us, but it is a pattern many people notice during their spiritual lives, I think, which gives rise to those overworked, overused images of deserts and dark nights.
Ruth, good luck on your tour! how exciting that you will meet some of our group! Dale, so glad to hear you are back sitting!
beth, I can really relate to what you are saying. For no understandable reason I seem to have lost sight of my joy in the last week. feeling heavy, argumentative and dull. maybe it's the change over to winter? for sure we have to trust it is just part of the rhythm, but it is painful around those and that we love. Sometimes I can hardly bear to look at a tree without loving it, move my body without a sense of vitality, let alone be with my husband without being thankful and joyful to my core.... I am sorely hoping playing bach next week will bring me back to it.
dale, whatever it is you are going through, I can feel the sometimes apparent hopelessness in sitting. Of course, it has to be an illusion,no? Thanks for staying with us.
loraine thanks for link. I will check it out on my return.
It's no part of Buddhist doctrine that I've ever encountered, but I'm sharply aware of a moonlike waxing and waning of the accessibility of... whatever, the numinous or the divine or awakened nature or transcendence or whatever you call it. I've never tried to track the cycles, though I think that would be a fascinating though hopelessly inexact effort. At a very wild guess I'd say the whole cycle, from slough of despond to frequent intimations of joy and then back to the slough, takes something between a month and six months. I wonder if anyone's ever studied this? How irritating that scientists don't take this sort of thing up and that religious people don't do proper scientific studies! I meditate largely, I think, because I think it hastens the arrival of the joyful times and delays the plunge into the slough. I wonder if it really does?
Thanks for the link, Lorianne!
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