QUIETER MIND

Although I haven't had much to write about of late, I continue to work on spiritual matters. I have to say that between the garden and helping my mum who has developed some health issues, I don't think that I have been as dedicated to my spiritual practice as I was during the first quarter of this year. In fact, my practices seem to be in a lull. To be fair, though, I do try to notice what my mind is doing and I continue to practice meditating while walking Sadie. As Adyashanti advises seekers to get on with their lives, I guess that this is what I am doing or am being called to do which is a more accurate way of expressing the cause of my actions.

Over the last few days, what I have discerned is that I do better at achieving a quiet mind when I turn my attention to activities that don't use the mind than when I try to simply not think. In other words, I might focus my attention on my senses and what they are perceiving in the surrounding environment and by doing this I am not engaging the mind. I am detecting that the mind on its own is a lot quieter these days. I continue to have the most success with a naturally quiet mind -- a mind that relaxes and doesn't think unless I ask it to -- later in the day. But I am beginning to sense that there are more and more -- and lengthy -- periods when there is no mental activity. I am also aware that often when the mind is busy, I am totally detached from it which is sort of neat in that on these occasions, it is like the mental humdrum is in the background rather than the foreground.

I have been slowly reading my way through Max Freedom Long's "Growing Into Light" and Jeff Foster's "An Extraordinary Absence," both of which I am thoroughly enjoying. I have also been listening to Tolle's "The Journey Into Yourself." I had listened to The Journey Into Yourself two or three times, but that was many months ago. I was initially intrigued by this audio cd, but this time around, I am impressed. Tolle does a very good job of taking the audience through some very useful exercises such as how to approach the business of looking at a tree or dealing with an emotional upset. This is the sort of information I need right now, not that I haven't already figured most of it out on my own, but to hear it from somebody who has woken up is validating.

Namaste

Infants, Meditation, and Contemplation

As I was walking Sadie past a home, I heard a young child experimenting with language. This child spoke a few recognizable words in the midst of gobbledygook. This got me to asking my Self: what might life be like for the child before it begins to acquire language? How would it amuse itself? It must spend most of its existence in awareness, interacting with its environment and satisfying its body's demands. Given this wordless state, I continued to ponder what a vocabulary-challenged infant's existence would be like.

I realized that as an adult, my forms of amusement are almost exclusively aimed at entertaining the mind: that there is some sort of thinking behaviour that is totally dependent upon words, taking place in association with everything I do. I would go so far as to say that if an activity is not going to somehow use words or incorporate the mind in an analytical way, I probably won't do it, or at least, I won't do it for long.

I concluded that, prior to the acquisition of language, infants must spend most of their time in a meditative or contemplative state.

Namaste

Why Label IT Crazy?

I have been busy the last four days, what with helping my Mum; taking her to ER on Friday the thirteenth to find out she needed more medication to regulate her heart rate (in Canada, if you need to see a doctor quickly, it is better to go to the ER than book an appointment which might mean waiting a week or two before you get to see your doctor); visiting with my daughter; and catching up on yardwork and general cooking that had been postponed due to all the other activity.

Last week, in approximately two sittings, I read Michael Mirdad's "You're Not Going Crazy ... You're Just Waking Up!" I am not certain what to think or say about this book, but maybe an almost incoherent brainstorming ramble would be the best way to talk about it, so here goes.

First of all, never during my process of realizing my true nature have I thought that I was going crazy. Even some of the most unusual experiences were received as "somehow normal" by the mind. The main awakening experience was matter-of-fact and during this second episode, I was constantly being advised by a small wee voice -- thoughts or ideas rather than words -- that what was happening was normal and I was being looked after and I had nothing to worry about. I don't think crazy is a good word at all for what I experienced. I find it interesting that, for the most part, I was unaware that anything was shifting.

The closest metaphor I can think of that relates to my life process of waking up is a rather distasteful one: that of cooking a crab. You know, it is in cool water and the water heats up and it doesn't notice until suddenly, POW! its existence is transformed.

As I read Mirdad's little book, I realized that I had been through most of the phases he talks about. Oh, yes, Mirdad breaks down the awakening process into five stages. He writes, "The Soul Transformation Process can be understood best when divided into its five primary stages: 1) Dismantling, 2) Emptiness, 3) Disorientation, 4) Re-building, and 5) A New Life. Mirdad. page 2. Having said that I have been through most of the phases he talks about, I must acknowledge that I continue to deal with Dismantling, Emptiness, Disorientation, and Re-building.

Yesterday while walking Sadie, I realized that I have been dealing with Dismantling for most of my adult life without realizing that that was what was happening. Mirdad claims that Dismantling begins when "there is something about your life that has been stuck or stagnant for too long and now needs to be changed." Much of my adult life regularly spiralled into a stuck place, I would attend to it, leaning heavily on philosophy, spiritual practices, and teachings to aid in the recovery, come unstuck, and life would be more enjoyable for a few months. Actually, I have to thank these stuck stagnant periods of my life because I finally "got" that no matter what I did to improve my life, it still wasn't working. I guess that this is when the straw that broke the camel's back occurred: I had finally become employed, was earning money for the first time since before the children were born, and realized that although I now had personal spending power, I wasn't any the happier for it. Then my marriage of thirty-one years suddenly came to an end. It was also during this time that I entered a major dark night of the soul which lasted, um, I would say, until the second year of college, or from January 2006 until September 2008. It was also at the beginning of this dark night that I experienced my second, but I view it as my first, flirt with self-realization.

I am not convinced that Mr. Mirdad is awake in the sense that Adyashanti is awake. I think that I am an inveterate skeptic, but we will see and I regard it as healthy and appropriate to the spiritual search. When I am spiritually awake and know that I am spiritually awake, I won't care whether Mr. Mirdad is or is not awake. For now, as I am desperately seeking mentors and guidence that is external to me or really, validates the internal guidence I am receiving which I am often also skeptical of, I want to feel that my teachers are genuine and not shams. I think that You're Not Going Crazy ... You're Just Waking Up, could be a very useful book to many students on the spiritual path. I am not certain that it has helped me, and I can't help wondering what Mr. Mirdad thinks it is like to be spiritually awake. Although I try to avoid thinking that I know what it is like to be spiritually awake, I have two experiences that insist on being the examples for what I am trying to achieve.

Adyashanti says that when it (spiritual awakening) happens, you won't miss it. With this pointer in mind, I can only say that what happened to me in those two experiences could not possibly be missed. They were far more than cooking a crab by the method described above. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that they resembled being dropped into water already on the point of boil. It was that dramatic. One couldn't miss it.

Namaste.

PRODUCTIVE CONUNDRUM

As I walked Sadie up the little hill outside my home, I contemplated something that Adyashanti talked about. Unfortunately, I cannot now remember what he said that I wanted to try and understand. I do remember that what I came up with is that if one believes a thought, one's body will react with an emotion. Maybe Adyashanti said something about it being okay to think, just don't believe what you are thinking. I was then trying to differentiate the difference between thoughts that are believed and those that are not.

Later this afternoon, after spending some of Mother's Day whiling away the time, I began to feel disgusted with my Self. I was feeling disgusted because I was not doing anything productive. For most people, productive is usually conjoined with  a wage. Although I earned my wages yesterday because my mother got the days of the week wrong and had stripped her bed and done her laundry, I also view productive as doing something useful which usually means something that human egos consider to be extremely important like dusting the house, scrubbing out the toilet, cooking, mowing the lawn, or painting the house. I was doing none of this and some of it like dusting and sweeping the bathroom floor, if I were behaving like a good human ego, wouldn't have gone amiss.

I eventually became so disgusted with my Self that I was able to stand up, put on my gumboots, grab the recharged battery from the recharger, and go into my garden where I spent twenty minutes -- the length of time the battery holds a charge -- waving the string trimmer over the possessive goutweed and around planters and stone edgings where the grass was becoming long and unruly. I then spread more newspaper on the goutweed which may be futile judging by the number of places that the goutweed has punctured thick wads of newspaper and broken through. After this, I weeded one corner of the island bed. Because of all the rain, the earth is still very wet and great clods of it stuck to the roots of the dandelions and buttercups, and it had to be chipped off with the sharp edge of a trowel. I cleared enough that I was able to plant four charmingly pretty pansies.

Sadie showed up and I knew that she wanted her supper so I cleaned my tools and scrubbed out the plastic pansy pots for recycling and arrived in the kitchen a few minutes before 1800h. I felt so good about my Self and this is causing me a bit of a conundrum. I cannot decide whether going outside and being productive satisfied the Ego/ Little Me, or was inspired by the Infinite Mystery. On the one hand, I may have been inspired; on the other hand, the Little Me may have been reacting to the disgust I felt, which might have arisen from thoughts that the Little Me was thinking, and was pressuring me to escape from the period of inactivity. I suppose that if I had simply risen from the couch to go into the garden rather than fleeing a feeling of disgust, I would have been acting on what Source wanted me to do. Adyashanti might suggest here that I could not have got up and gone into the garden unless Source did want that of me. And what actually generates thoughts?

One positive note: I was able to spend a good bit of the afternoon out in the garden, as well as taking Sadie for a long walk, and my eyes and face aren't itching or swollen with edema and I took only one Aerius this morning, so either the huge quantity of Multi-B vitamins including B-12 are beginning to pump up my red blood cells, or the tree pollen is dwindling. I keep forgetting that the reason why I have been indoors so much of late is to avoid the tree pollen and try and reduce the swelling in my face and around my left eye so that I can use it, especially if I have to drive over to my mother's place.

It is all a little confusing. I suppose I am applying too much mind or overthinking it. Why am I worrying my Self about this? It is silly, really.

Namaste

LITTLE ME

It has occurred to me that it is time to analyze the nature of my idle thinking. What I call idle thinking is that thinking that one seems to do mindlessly and incessantly to entertain one's Self. Really, it is an almost unconscious method one uses to avoid experiencing the nothing or that void that one senses when everything ceases to be; when all thinking and activity stops; when one is (probably) in a state of potential energy; when one is doing nothing and nothing is happening and one is so idle that one seems to suddenly be without identity or familiar feelings or active emotional energy systems. It is the state that one quickly masks with busyness or an addiction. This void or emptiness becomes apparent when familiar favourite feelings have ceased, and is quickly rejected in favour of these ceased familiar favourite feelings of, say, anxiety or fear or annoyance: whatever feeling has become the undercurrent of one's life; whatever feeling that is so present for so much of the time that should it disappear, one panics and quickly tries to get it back.

Lately, I have been observing and taking stock of this idle thinking -- self-talk or self-chatter -- and see that it is all aimed at justifying the existence of the little Me. How fascinating. I wonder what I will do with this information?

Namaste

NAMASTE

I have been busy for a few days and rarely peeked at this blog. Last Friday, my sister came over to stay with our mother and I joined them during the day until she left on Sunday. I took my mother out to vote on Monday, and to have her hair permed today. My mother's condo is close to the Cowichan River where my nemesis, the cottonwoods, are in full bloom. My sister had my mother's French door open about five inches for most of her stay which meant that I was inhaling cottonwood pollen for three days. On top of this, I bravely walked Sadie on her favourite doggy trails in the Cowichan Valley which are in the cottonwood infested Rotary Park. I had been recovering nicely from the last time I walked her under those trees three days in a row, but now there is a flare up. To tell the truth and despite consuming large numbers of Aerius tablets, my face feels like it is covered in bee stings and my body is lethargic and seems to want three to four hours more sleep than normal.

I am attempting to use a spiritual approach to my plight: accepting what is and not resisting it while trying to remain comfortable. I slather my face with Dream Cream from Salt Spring Island and the mintiness of it seems to help once we get over the initial smarting sensation that it seems to stimulate in my facial skin. Last week, I had my six-month teeth cleaning and because I was born with a bicuspid aorta, I have to take penicillin before hygienists enter my mouth. I know to follow the penicillin with probiotics and B vitamins, but have decided that I should increase the B vitamins. I have discovered a rather expensive multi-B vitamin made by a company called Advantix which I take, but because of its cost, I take less than the recommended dose. I just Googled B vitamins and allergies only to learn that B-12 is beneficial in helping fight allergies. As I have in the past been diagnosed with pernicious anaemia, I wonder if that is the present problem. I really am too vegetarian for my own good and know I need to either eat meat or take B-12, and I don't. One of the positive aspects of this Advantix multi-B vitamin is that the B-12, as well as the B-1, are of the correct chemical nature for one who was raised vegetarian. If after being vegetarian for a long time, one uses the wrong form of B-12, the body can't absorb it. Anyway, before reading the bits about B-12 and allergies, I had decided to boost my vitamin B intake. I also purchased some C vitamins as I was running out of those, and now that I have another bottle, I will increase the amount of that which is what I did the first time this allergy worsened.

In about sixty minutes, Adyashanti's cafe Dharma will begin and I am all set to listen, or watch if the video feed works. I haven't managed to tune in to one of these yet, and am looking forward to it. I used to listen to Hay House Radio a lot, especially after my ex- left me and moved to Australia. Hay House Radio was wonderful and just what I needed back then and for about a year or so. I have now moved on and am rarely tempted to tune in on the computer for a listen.

I am finding that my busy mind is of its own accord becoming less and less busy. There are many minutes when it is inactive and no thoughts appear to bother me and I exist in awareness alone. It is rather lovely, although the term dazed comes to mind. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the mind is particularly still in the evening which is why I sometimes think that evening might be a better time of day to meditate. It is also when I am most likely to drift off into a snooze which is counterproductive. I am also continuing to monitor what I do to prevent my Self from experiencing that void or empty state or whatever it is: you know; the one that one is constantly abandoning in favour of thinking exciting thoughts, watching TV, being busy, using Facebook or Twitter, or masking with an addiction.

Namaste