...attention

Noticing that here I am again in the middle of the night... been awake for a couple of hours and all of my attention is focused here on this screen.  Who could sleep with such competition?  So much stimulation?

Will spend some time in supine meditation pose and maybe drift off- my downstairs neighbor is up and roaming at 3:52- so maybe not.

Get some sleep!!

While lying awake in the early morning hours...

... sometimes meditation comes so easily while I am lying in the dark.  Sometimes not so much.  It is mildly depressing or possibly quite amusing to be awake through the night.  Gives me a clear picture of what the mind is up to while I am not in attention.  But how would I actually know that if I weren't paying attention?  Listening to Martha Wainwright, Ane Brun, Beth Orton, Eva Cassidy, Rosie Thomas- dulcet voices mixing with dusky seductive voices all coming to me in the dark over long spaces that aren't real.  Isn't the music heard here?   I write this soft energy all in me and around me, to describe the space of being- this.

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You can reach and struggle toward an orgasm- or- you can flow around and through and as the energy and the pleasure opens naturally without effort of any kind and keeps moving while at rest in stillness.  

Now listening... seeing... in attention.     

My beautiful daughter painter wife mother student of the Italian language mu tai boxer (possibly retired) gorgeous generous woman-  this radiant evolving complexity is showing five paintings on the campus tonight.  

Ready for Anything

... to be fully alive, I must indeed be ready for anything.  That includes all situations, all conversations, all meditations, and all other forms of practice in which I currently engage.  The flow of life brings what it brings, welcomed or not and my only task is to be as present as I can possibly be with the experience, as it arises.  I don't need to know what will be arising next week or next month or what I will do if...  All of the machinations of the mind can't begin to answer this question... what comes next?

Sitting here in this space of unknowing- sheer delight!

Working with the Body in Meditation Practice

Just ordered Reggie Ray's, "Your Breathing Body- volume 1" and am totally excited about delving in and practicing what he teaches.  I am currently doing a meditation called 

Sublime- the paintings of Agnes Martin

Just finished reading an essay by Yvonne Rand titled,  "Seeing".  In it she describes spending an hour with an Agnes Martin painting.  I surfed around looking at photos of Martin's paintings and longing to spend my own hour with her works, even one of them.  For now I must content myself with the energy generated by seeing photos into aliveness in the mind's eye and experiencing the sensations in the body.  The word that comes to mind is sublime.  I'll rest in that one. 

Some years ago I saw a Martin work in the San Francisco MOMA.  Spent a good part of the day there with my ex-husband John whose name I kept because it was more interesting and romantic than either my maiden name or my first husband's name.  Seeing art, watching movies and good television,  and listening to music was more fulfilling than being married to him, bless his heart.  

I realized I didn't have to be married to the man to enjoy a conversation with him which is where we started- having stimulating conversations in a retreat center kitchen while I prepared lunch for the staff of twelve and he ate his breakfast at the big wooden prep table.

Writing this while listening to Beth Orton- I love her voice and musical sensibilities.

Need to stop while I can still type a sentence.

"fixing as a way to keep myself from experiencing my own vulnerability"

Just read these words in a forum thread on Unfettered Mind.  I spent the past two weeks with family. The first week leading up to my mother's surgery with my three sisters and one brother and two spouses in attendance and the second with just my mother as I was the designated caregiver for her recovery.

Being a caregiver- attempting to prevent suffering, alleviate it if that isn't possible, and then to fix it after it has already arisen so that the person involved feels better and knows that I was the bringer of comfort- all of this is designed to keep me from having to feel helplessness, vulnerability, regret, inadequacy, and a host of other uncomfortable emotions. 

Awareness as refuge...

In my practice I am looking deeply into what constitutes refuge in my life.  Shining a light into this area is somewhat unnerving because I can see clearly that my conscious intention and my unconscious behaviors are not simpatico at present.  As much as I want to believe that daily meditation, writing, and embodiment practices are the truest statement of where I go for refuge, I can't deny that on an immediate experiential level, when I struggle, I eat and look for other distractions to escape the body discomfort, the feelings and emotions and perhaps most of all, the elaborate stories that I tell myself about what is going on.