Day One Hundred and Six

Feeling the stone and feeling whatever is going on in the body. I feel the body more fully as 'just' the body... pressing is pressing, tired is tired. I see a stream of thought come with each feeling; tired is not good, tired is dangerous, tired is irritating because it will keep me from something, or Sangha is irritating because it keeps me from fulfilling tired and so on. But also I see thought in much the same was as body; my thoughts are waves of feeling that I attach to and push away. Either way I jump on board and follow them but I don't have to. I can let them come and go with kindness and curiosity. They are fast but they fade out in a fine way, much like the tension does when waiting for discussion to end so I can return home and blog. When it has ended I ask "why was I so jumpy?"

Day One Hundred and Five

I am tired tonight. I know little of the processes of sleep, biological or otherwise, but at first I have resistance, thinking how much I benefit from meditation vs being distracted. Later, I feel that it is more of a transition from one state to another state. I wonder if it is in any way less or more real than so many states of mind in which I am not looking, distracted. I wonder if I can look on my way to sleep.

I stop restling with it and I wake up again; I can concentrate more fully. I touch with much comfort. I think of the well wishing that is being done for me by even strangers. I wish others well; that they be free of worry. I rest with my own wellness, worry, and quiet.

Day One Hundred and Four

Trying to touch the stone as it is. I notice myself conceptualizing of the stone, of touching. I feel out of time, out of reality, dreaming. I let go of that and go back to feeling. I notice myself with doubt and boredom and worry. I notice the tendency to either jump to something else or conceptualize. I try to touch without speaking about touching, yet being with the feeling, as the feeling in the body; looking at the arising of craving; the desire to be elsewhere; letting it go with concentration back upon the stone. So simple, but so rare for me to do; to be with something without being elsewhere.

Day One Hundred and Three

I am a counselor and I teach my clients about working with emotions. I ask them where they are and they say they are right in it and they want to get out of it if it is negative or stay in it if it is positive. When they want out they want to get way out, separate. I suggest that 'working' with an emotion is to see it, be aware of it, but not to be just in it. That is the place where we can stop fighting, feel what it truly is (anger and discomfort are often overlaying sadness for example) and make decisions. It is awareness of the feeling and being in the feeling.

I touch the stone. I am aware of the feeling that comes from contact. I am using my awareness to feel deeply whatever it is pointed to. This is concentration; awareness and feeling. Am I apart? Am I directly there? Concentration is difficult because I feel that I am becoming unraveled. Definition of who I am as that which flits from here to there is in some danger.

Day One Hundred and Two

Touching the stone. Sometimes, clearing out the cobwebs and focusing is easy, like tonight. Then I am touching but asking questions about the practice in my mind. Not sure how much of it is helpful. I put the touching into pleasant, unpleasant and neutral, being reminded that craving comes in quickly; in most cases, an intellectual craving to define and categorize, which I'm not sure is all bad. The feelings in the stone are subtle or vague and not always sharp and clear. Often it is quite neutral, but when I pay closer attention it is pleasant or unpleasant. That being said, neutrality may just have a vague cast because I am not used to staying with it. I contemplate the characteristics such as smooth or rough, warm or cool, hard and soft, etc and I notice that they are built up by history and don't give me a sense of the stone as it really is. I relax and see if the stone and I can come to terms about its attraction or not. I venture off into thinking about my purpose; to stay with contact and feeling and notice craving. The stone is more neutral.

A moonbeam comes into the window and moves down my shirt toward my hand. I fantasize that it will strike the stone and the stone will then float etc etc. But the moonbeam goes just to the left onto my hand and down. I move my hand over and the moonbeam strikes the stone beautifully. Is it any different than some positive forces I ascribe to being beyond my power?

What if I imagined winning the lottery. I imagine crazy people must feel quite fine because sometimes they imagine such things, or they imagine horrible things and feel intensely bad. Perhaps all I am doing is imagining things. I imagine imagining that I have won the lottery. It is hard to do but it is a great feeling. Not less real than some other feelings, but not that real either.... mostly because it passes. There is a long view to reality.

Day One Hundred and One

It takes a while to still, and the usual things call me away from being still; obligation, sound, thought patterns of not having, past and future concerns. But I become still by degrees, gently leading myself back to concentration, and feeling then a peace right with all of the things that call me away.

I feel the stone in an unpleasant way but actually it is just a restlessness. That subsides and then I actually feel the stone in an unpleasant way; it is 'too hard'. Then I also feel it in a neutral way and in a pleasant way. It seems to me that 'unpleasant' is just defined by wanting something to end. 'Pleasant' is simply the feeling of wanting something to keep going. Neutral seems to be just 'not knowing' a thing or being distracted while 'sort of knowing' a thing. In other words, it's not something that isn't there because that isn't anything (unless is in a subtle realm of some sense not looked at but felt). So if it is there (or at least 'there' in the meeting of sense organ and object), it is either pleasant or unpleasant unless not quite touched, investigated.

Of course, each of these definitions are the most tangible way I call myself me. Which came first, the feeling or the sense of me? I notice a huge stream of historic files that are various definitions of me, such as 'oh yes, beautiful blue butterfly wings...... I like them because I used to collect them and they made me feel dreamy when I first saw them etc.'

This inner dialogue is the made-up me, the clinging and craving that follows sense contact.

Day One Hundred

I hold the stone lightly and run through many thoughts without wanting to. I look at them briefly and go back to touching. I feel the tension in the thoughts where I want to solve, find, follow, and battle. I ask myself if liberation is different from where I am, if it is in another place and another time. I understand that thought to just be my desire to split things into myself and something to follow. I mistrust my ability to be with myself. I feel loving attention in each thought for a while, right in the middle of a doubt and fear. Here is where liberation begins. At times I do not follow, I let the thoughts run away. Other times I sink into their empty core.