I'm playing a game. Well, trying to take it lightly like a game. Every time I notice that my mind has shut down and turned away, I bring it back to just how afraid I am of change, of allowing myself to want anything; return my thoughts to my very worst fear and shame and feel that I'm still here and it's ok, I feel sad and scared and defeatist and want to retreat, but I'm still here and it's ok. Every time I notice that I haven't done anything today towards moving house, focus on the feelings that are provoking this inaction. This is my practice, for now, coming back to it and back to it and back to it, during sitting meditation and all the time, whenever I notice. It's nothing. Just thoughts. Nothing. Nothing. Why is it so powerful? It's both wondrous to be able to see this, and hard to keep doing it.
In my meditation class on Monday - very timely - the exercise set for the week was to pay attention to feelings. Not labelled and packaged feelings: anger, fear, defensiveness, but the feeling in the body, in the throat, in the fingertips, before we attach the label and start to spin the story.
Ouch, ouch, ouch. This feels like starting to walk through a barbed wire fence, instead of standing immobilised before it. But it isn't really going to tear my flesh, like barbed wire, it just feels as though it will.
This, for me, is what cultivating mindfulness is for. Not just learning to be still, but learning to keep moving. Learning to have the choice, I guess; for each moment to be a new choice, not determined by the previous moment.
Blogger's been so buggy it's hard to get a comment in!
Those doing the self-portrait marathon - are you finding the focus on representing the self actually causing what constructs the self to disappear, your image like paper being soaked of its colour and lines in the lapping ocean?
Or are you finding your self coming into clearer focus?
I'm finding doing these self portraits harrowing to say the least. Does my hand want to draw what my eye sees? And what's that about anyway?
Jean, we posted at nearly the same time. Reading your struggle with moving/staying, coming into focus/going out of focus, and the feelings in the body a portrait... the barbed wire image, oh. No, we won't get torn. Perhaps bringing our consciousness to where we've been wounded will aid the healing process.
dammit dammit i'd written a lengthy reply to you both, Jean and Brenda, and Blogger ate it. Try again:
Jean: Thank you for this. I recognise the feelings you described so well and while I don't have them in the area of my own move, they are frequent visitors in other areas of my life - intimate relationships, self worth, creativity.
Your description of the meditation exercise and your reaction is very helpful.
Brenda: Creativity goes deep. I am full of admiration for anyone who is even attempting this self portrait exercise. Feeling of not being good enough are stopping me doing so even though I wouldn't mind having a go.
Yes, healing lies in the area where the wound is found. Attention and courage and mindfulness are needed, I am convinced of that.
Jean: meant to add. Yes a lot of what I am learning right now is that each moment does not have to be dependent upon the previous one. That each moment presents us with a new "clean" choice.
Jean, your description of this struggle is very moving and I just want to congratulate you - think about a year ago and whether you would have been able to face these fears and feelings, and now here you are, doing it. I'm full of admiration. We all have these areas of blockage and shut-down I think. You give me courage to explore more of my own.
Mary -- please do give it a go, just for yourself, just to see what happens. Art should never be about the end result as much as it is about process. You don't need to share the result or judge it - just let your hand move with a pencil in it. Nobody is there but you and the creative muse. Of course it's scary but first things always are. The fact that you want to do it is reason enough, so I hope you'll listen to that inner voice and give it a try.
Beth: thank you for your gentle and gracious encouragement. I'm feeling stupidly emotional about this whole self-portrait thing. I thought you had to post the self portrait on your own website though? Or am I misunderstanding?
Jean, I love this idea of trying to treat self-awareness as a *game*: that lightens things up a bit, I think. I try to encourage my coaching clients to do something similar, asking them to *simply observe* patterns of cause & effect in their life *without* making judgments.
(For example, I ask my coaching clients to pay attention to the sort of thoughts that run through their head when they're feeling productive, and the sorts of thoughts that run through their head when they're procrastinating. *Simply observing* these kinds of thoughts can be very helpful...but if you judge your thoughts, it can be very intimidating to look at them.)
I don't think there's any magic to meditation, but there's something miraculously liberating about NOTICING the mind-habits (aka karma) that we unwittingly labor under. Noticing a mind-habit is the first step to taming & changing it.
Mary, a lot of folks are posting self-portraits to their own blogs, BUT...if you don't have a blog or don't want to post your portrait on your own site, you can email a scan of your portrait to Wally, who's hosting the marathon. (He gives his email address at the bottom of this post:
As for me, I've been too chicken to try *drawing* a self-portrait, especially since I won't have access to a scanner until I'm back in NH at the end of next week. BUT, today I took some reflective photos, so maybe I'll join the marathon at a comfortable walk before pushing myself to run. :-)
...Or you can always do a self-portrait just for yourself, for the experience of doing it... and never show it to anybody at all if you don't want. It is an interesting exercise, just the doing of it. Not unlike the "game" Jean is playing, which is one I've done over different issues of fear — sit and look, look again — a kind of building of courage and desensitizing at the same time.
jean, the game is lovely, and you sound so much lighter with it all. I think making a game of it is a real trick. J and I trying to notice this week how many times we start a response to one-another with the word 'NO'. It's a game and yet it is very profound in terms of what we can observe.
i am encouraged by you to play more. We are so serious and so contrary and yet we could both be so playful.thank you for the reminder.
what's ll this talk about self portraits, a bit out of the loop these days.
been sitting briefly, but feeling the difference. still feeling into the whole concept of what is 'me' 'him' 'us'; what i change when i 'change'. J tends to think that i am asking him to change his essence not just his behaviour. This is what we are talking about, and meditation is so helpful right now, even if it is only 10 minutes.
by the way nice to hear you dale the other day. I miss you here. do check in and say hi even if you have nothing to say.
Ach, Blogger ate my comment this morning too. Too dazed and confused to reassemble it.
I need to repair my commitment again. All I need to do really I think is remind myself -- the commitment is only three minutes. Sure, do a half hour of ngondro and a half hour of shamatha. But the *commitment* is three minutes.
Jean, that sounds wonderful. Ruth, so does that.
Love to you all. I'm feeling very shy at present, but I'm with you all, even if I'm not saying much.
Blogger is a comment eater, no doubt about it. Since you never know when Blogger's gonna be hungry for comments, and eat them, well, we take chances, don't we. I am most thrown into my own wake when I've put what I thought was my heart and soul in and Blogger blithely eats my words. Gulp. Gone.
Only, heh, there's the back arrow. If the comment's gone, go back. A trick in the nature of time; it's eaten, but it's usually there!
Then carefully highlight the whole comment and do Command C, or Control C, and that will save your comment in short term memory.
Then hit Command V, or Control V, when you manage to open a comment box again and your heart-wrung comment magically reappears.
A cloak of invisibility to outsmart the comment-eater.
If it doesn't post, either save it elsewhere for when the Blogger comment-eater is finally full and you can safely post your heartfelt words, or keep trying.
It's especially the word verification trap, that's where the comment-eating trolls hang out. I'm telling ya!
Get over that bridge, it might take a few tries, but eventually the magic word will fit the magic lock like a spectacular key and your comment will rise with the sun.
(Oh, the sprites are having fun with me tonight! My word verification is atezzgrd. Should I call this post a Grendelian ATE-ZZGRD?)
13 Comments:
I'm playing a game. Well, trying to take it lightly like a game. Every time I notice that my mind has shut down and turned away, I bring it back to just how afraid I am of change, of allowing myself to want anything; return my thoughts to my very worst fear and shame and feel that I'm still here and it's ok, I feel sad and scared and defeatist and want to retreat, but I'm still here and it's ok. Every time I notice that I haven't done anything today towards moving house, focus on the feelings that are provoking this inaction. This is my practice, for now, coming back to it and back to it and back to it, during sitting meditation and all the time, whenever I notice. It's nothing. Just thoughts. Nothing. Nothing. Why is it so powerful? It's both wondrous to be able to see this, and hard to keep doing it.
In my meditation class on Monday - very timely - the exercise set for the week was to pay attention to feelings. Not labelled and packaged feelings: anger, fear, defensiveness, but the feeling in the body, in the throat, in the fingertips, before we attach the label and start to spin the story.
Ouch, ouch, ouch. This feels like starting to walk through a barbed wire fence, instead of standing immobilised before it. But it isn't really going to tear my flesh, like barbed wire, it just feels as though it will.
This, for me, is what cultivating mindfulness is for. Not just learning to be still, but learning to keep moving. Learning to have the choice, I guess; for each moment to be a new choice, not determined by the previous moment.
Blogger's been so buggy it's hard to get a comment in!
Those doing the self-portrait marathon - are you finding the focus on representing the self actually causing what constructs the self to disappear, your image like paper being soaked of its colour and lines in the lapping ocean?
Or are you finding your self coming into clearer focus?
I'm finding doing these self portraits harrowing to say the least. Does my hand want to draw what my eye sees? And what's that about anyway?
Jean, we posted at nearly the same time. Reading your struggle with moving/staying, coming into focus/going out of focus, and the feelings in the body a portrait... the barbed wire image, oh. No, we won't get torn. Perhaps bringing our consciousness to where we've been wounded will aid the healing process.
dammit dammit i'd written a lengthy reply to you both, Jean and Brenda, and Blogger ate it. Try again:
Jean: Thank you for this. I recognise the feelings you described so well and while I don't have them in the area of my own move, they are frequent visitors in other areas of my life - intimate relationships, self worth, creativity.
Your description of the meditation exercise and your reaction is very helpful.
Brenda: Creativity goes deep. I am full of admiration for anyone who is even attempting this self portrait exercise. Feeling of not being good enough are stopping me doing so even though I wouldn't mind having a go.
Yes, healing lies in the area where the wound is found. Attention and courage and mindfulness are needed, I am convinced of that.
Thank you both. xoxo
Jean: meant to add. Yes a lot of what I am learning right now is that each moment does not have to be dependent upon the previous one. That each moment presents us with a new "clean" choice.
Jean, your description of this struggle is very moving and I just want to congratulate you - think about a year ago and whether you would have been able to face these fears and feelings, and now here you are, doing it. I'm full of admiration. We all have these areas of blockage and shut-down I think. You give me courage to explore more of my own.
Mary -- please do give it a go, just for yourself, just to see what happens. Art should never be about the end result as much as it is about process. You don't need to share the result or judge it - just let your hand move with a pencil in it. Nobody is there but you and the creative muse. Of course it's scary but first things always are. The fact that you want to do it is reason enough, so I hope you'll listen to that inner voice and give it a try.
Beth: thank you for your gentle and gracious encouragement. I'm feeling stupidly emotional about this whole self-portrait thing. I thought you had to post the self portrait on your own website though? Or am I misunderstanding?
Jean, I love this idea of trying to treat self-awareness as a *game*: that lightens things up a bit, I think. I try to encourage my coaching clients to do something similar, asking them to *simply observe* patterns of cause & effect in their life *without* making judgments.
(For example, I ask my coaching clients to pay attention to the sort of thoughts that run through their head when they're feeling productive, and the sorts of thoughts that run through their head when they're procrastinating. *Simply observing* these kinds of thoughts can be very helpful...but if you judge your thoughts, it can be very intimidating to look at them.)
I don't think there's any magic to meditation, but there's something miraculously liberating about NOTICING the mind-habits (aka karma) that we unwittingly labor under. Noticing a mind-habit is the first step to taming & changing it.
Mary, a lot of folks are posting self-portraits to their own blogs, BUT...if you don't have a blog or don't want to post your portrait on your own site, you can email a scan of your portrait to Wally, who's hosting the marathon. (He gives his email address at the bottom of this post:
http://tinyurl.com/pgtp2
As for me, I've been too chicken to try *drawing* a self-portrait, especially since I won't have access to a scanner until I'm back in NH at the end of next week. BUT, today I took some reflective photos, so maybe I'll join the marathon at a comfortable walk before pushing myself to run. :-)
...Or you can always do a self-portrait just for yourself, for the experience of doing it... and never show it to anybody at all if you don't want. It is an interesting exercise, just the doing of it. Not unlike the "game" Jean is playing, which is one I've done over different issues of fear — sit and look, look again — a kind of building of courage and desensitizing at the same time.
Love to all.
jean, the game is lovely, and you sound so much lighter with it all. I think making a game of it is a real trick. J and I trying to notice this week how many times we start a response to one-another with the word 'NO'. It's a game and yet it is very profound in terms of what we can observe.
i am encouraged by you to play more. We are so serious and so contrary and yet we could both be so playful.thank you for the reminder.
what's ll this talk about self portraits, a bit out of the loop these days.
been sitting briefly, but feeling the difference. still feeling into the whole concept of what is 'me' 'him' 'us'; what i change when i 'change'. J tends to think that i am asking him to change his essence not just his behaviour. This is what we are talking about, and meditation is so helpful right now, even if it is only 10 minutes.
by the way nice to hear you dale the other day. I miss you here. do check in and say hi even if you have nothing to say.
Ach, Blogger ate my comment this morning too. Too dazed and confused to reassemble it.
I need to repair my commitment again. All I need to do really I think is remind myself -- the commitment is only three minutes. Sure, do a half hour of ngondro and a half hour of shamatha. But the *commitment* is three minutes.
Jean, that sounds wonderful. Ruth, so does that.
Love to you all. I'm feeling very shy at present, but I'm with you all, even if I'm not saying much.
xoxo
Blogger is a comment eater, no doubt about it. Since you never know when Blogger's gonna be hungry for comments, and eat them, well, we take chances, don't we. I am most thrown into my own wake when I've put what I thought was my heart and soul in and Blogger blithely eats my words. Gulp. Gone.
Only, heh, there's the back arrow. If the comment's gone, go back. A trick in the nature of time; it's eaten, but it's usually there!
Then carefully highlight the whole comment and do Command C, or Control C, and that will save your comment in short term memory.
Then hit Command V, or Control V, when you manage to open a comment box again and your heart-wrung comment magically reappears.
A cloak of invisibility to outsmart the comment-eater.
If it doesn't post, either save it elsewhere for when the Blogger comment-eater is finally full and you can safely post your heartfelt words, or keep trying.
It's especially the word verification trap, that's where the comment-eating trolls hang out. I'm telling ya!
Get over that bridge, it might take a few tries, but eventually the magic word will fit the magic lock like a spectacular key and your comment will rise with the sun.
(Oh, the sprites are having fun with me tonight! My word verification is atezzgrd. Should I call this post a Grendelian ATE-ZZGRD?)
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