Meditating on ones emotional life
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
For some time I have been experimenting with a technique described by Eckhart Tolle, which he calls “feeling presence in the inner body”. This is about feeling inside the body, starting with the hands, and seeing if you can feel a sense of aliveness in them.
Despite some early successes, I kept getting distracted by powerful tingling feelings especially in the feet. For a long time I was lost in exploring the tingling, and went through many energetic encounters and defeats. Then yesterday I had a new idea, to focus on emotional feeling instead. I directed my attention at my emotional state during my meditation and explored happiness, kindness, bliss, a little despair, a little egoic reaction, and had the best sleep I had in months.
It’s a question of how you search for “feeling”, if you search for a physical sensation attention is divisive. It splits and splits. If you search for emotional content, you unify and strengthen. Or so it felt to me. Worth experimenting with.
Comments
I had some really good meditations this morning. I got up really early, about 2 am, and just relaxed watching the breath.
I think what was different this time was I was able to just stay with the physical body and the sensation of the breath in my nostrils, I didn’t get distracted too much and found a good rythm, not too deep, not too fast.
One Zen students appreciation of a Tibetan's sutra on meditation...
We should experience everything totally, never withdrawing into ourselves as a Marmot hides in its hole. Such a practice releases tremendous energy which is usually constricted by the process of maintaining fixed reference points.
Referentially is the process by which we retreat from the direct experience of everyday life.
It’s interesting… I found the instruction to ‘look inside’ to ultimately produce painful results, so just sitting and looking inside hasn’t been good for me. It’s like attention isn’t wholesome for the energy inside. But to just ‘watch the breath’ has been a lot better, mostly producing calm, although I can only do it for short periods.
Often in the Buddhist intention style meditations it is pointed out that calm is a transitory phenomenon brought about through shamatha and that lasting peace and liberation is brought about via insight. So I wonder if the looking inside isn't producing painful results as much as it is revealing what is already there? Of course, you could just be doing something wrong in your attempts.
Looking outside to avoid what's inside, or looking inside to avoid what's outside, are both causes of our continued suffering. Additionally, inside and outside are really just the limitations of what we have decided is our boundary between self and other.
Mind and body (for me) work better as the states that result in suffering's cause when in disharmony and result in suffering's reduction when met with collegiality.
As a practice....
To the degree that we can meditatively allow, all phenomena their own unmolested interaction with all of our sense gates, turns out to be the same degree that life's unavoidable pains can be detached from sufferings causes.
@how
This reminds me of a Red Tara dedication I recite every now and again, but which floats in and out the mind most days, even if not verbally recited ....
"May I clearly perceive all experiences to be insubstantial as the dream fabric of the night and instantly awaken to perceive the pure wisdom displayed in the arising of every phenomenon"
Well it's actually the last part of the dedication...
...and now back to the emotions...
Which are of course part of the inner and outer mind AND based very much in the body (or easier to find their illusionary nature there...
The word 'Mind' in Buddhism tends to be better thought of as experience. I calm the body, mind and emotions with one of the three mysteries of Shingon. Sacred Speech or Mantra.
It is diagnostic (producing insight into our breathing). Therapeutic in consciously slowing out breath AND a very flexible practice...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingon_Buddhism