With apologies to u/utthana, whose title I've stolen. I thought about replying to your post but that felt like hijacking, and a bit redundant three months down the track. In retrospect this may be more hijacky.
The world is quicksand but, contrary to all that I was led to believe about quicksand by cartoons, I think that struggling might actually be the way out.
I have also spent the last few months distracted and swamped by life and the world, to the exclusion of contemplation. For a long time my daily practice was at nil. Awareness was always there in the background in the form of dissatisfaction, but it just didn't seem like I had the mental space or energy to do anything with it other than acknowledge it. Even my dreams have become a dull penance.
If I had to describe existence recently I'd call it sawdust.
I've done a bit of re-prioritisation in the last week to be able to immerse myself, for a while at least, in practice, and attempt to figure out what the hey has been going on this year. I need to get some safeguards in place so I don't end up so mentally swamped again. It's a catch-22. Living in reasonable comfort in this world requires attention to a lot of stuff I'd like to ignore (money, money... money). It'd be nice to just make it go away but apparently I'm not skilled enough to do that yet.
So that's the challenge. Find a way to exist that isn't untenable but which also allows space - the bulk of the space - for mental progress. Perhaps in some manner I'm cultivating strife because I have some ass-backwards commitment to the idea that this is the only thing that will drive me. Intellectually, I know that pain isn't the best motivator but it seems to be a condition of my progress that it only happens when I'm so severely dissatisfied with the status quo that I force through changes in reality, temper-tantrum style. But too much strife just = stagnation and despair. Hopefully this truth will sink into and take root in my mind sometime soon.
So some techniques I'm currently employing:
Less wishy-washiness: If you want to do magic, do magic. Don't beat around the bush, generate some intentions, set parameters, make things happen, judge your results! I think that fear of failure can be so constraining that this one area of your life where you should be wildly imaginative, flamboyant and fearless can become a sinkhole of restrictions, excuses and apologies. The challenge here is walking the tightrope of not sinking into despair or giving up when you fail. There's a valuable, fleeting moment between action and failure when your mind tells you just why you failed. The problem is that there's a huge amount of data to unpack in that millisecond/frisson of disquiet.
Floating brain: I'm almost embarrassed to include this one, but I've found that it's effective at tackling the sensation that you're located in a brain, experiencing the world from behind a set of eyeballs, especially when you don't have much mental energy for genuine deconstruction of the world. Take your brain, make it transparent, float it in front of you. This helps me to remember that the brain is a construct of the mind, like the world, not the centre/originating point of my consciousness. It also gives me a sense of omnipresence.
Judicious use of fiction: Computer games, books; becoming invested in them and increasing their "realness," particularly that of the characters, doesn't so much decrease the reality of my day to day existence as widen its possibilities. That's clumsily expressed - I can try to elaborate if anyone's interested.
So anyway. Long story short, do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light, etc.
A meditation retreat is on my to-do list, when I can find one which allows pursuit of your own agenda. There are a few vipassana ones in my area. They're ostensibly non-denominational and refuse payment and donations, but they do ask you to commit to their way of thinking/meditating while you're there. You could attend and just do your own thing, but I'd feel like a bit of a fraud, cadging off their resources and time. I mean, it's a victimless crime! But still...
Have you given any retreats a go?
Michael Chrichton of Jurassic Park fame wrote an autobiography called "Travels" which I read years ago. I recall him talking about meditation/spiritual retreats in Joshua Tree which completely captured my imagination at the time. I'd have to re-read the book to see whether they're still the sort of thing that would appeal, but yeah, the opportunity to just single-mindedly pursue contemplation seems like an enormous luxury.
I've often thought that a monk/nun order would be great, with the big caveat that you didn't fall into the trap of creating the perfect monk or nun order (I can see myself getting distracted by this) and forgetting to pursue the thing that made you set the order up in the first place. I think a cave in a hill side would probably be more conducive to making headway, but, like you... not sure I'm ready for that extreme yet. That said, give me another year of Trump-based headlines and I may change my mind.
At any rate, it's good to know there are ways of making it happen if that's what you're committed to.
Hah, I disagree, I think it's very fancy :) It just shows we all have our own different baked-on commitments, but I find any alterations relating to the body trickier than those related to the 'outside' world.
For my own part, I'm trying to aim for some flashier, more overt stuff, than I have in the past, because I identified that I was avoiding anything that could give me feedback on whether I'd failed or succeeded. Ambiguity, I've realised, has become a bit of a crutch for me. It's been challenging, but I think failure is a brick wall I need to throw myself up against until it becomes less of a boogie man in the short term, and less of a thing that even exists in the long term.
Yes! I think I experience something similar. A kind of "compressed" feeling. Usually I feel I need to sit down and visualise galaxies and infinite vistas when it becomes too pressing.
One of my favourites!
And you :) Seems we're all more or less trucking along. One thing that's heartening is that once the SI seed is planted, it's pretty tenacious, in spite of adversity.
It may not grow quickly but it's not uprooted easily either.
Originally commented by u/BraverNewerWorld on 2018-11-02 16:17:50 (e8wb4lz)
No. I used to dream about it but then I realized I am almost always in quasi-retreat anyway, why do I need to go somewhere else?
Early in life I also thought I had to do a lot of sitting meditation, except I didn't like sitting, but I was always walking. Then I realized instead of dreaming about sitting I should take walking as my meditation. Once I did that, I wasn't postponing anything anymore. That was a big step forward for me: to make my mind training fit me as a person instead of making myself fit into some externally conceived idea of mind training.
Actually no longer slavishly and deferentially listening to the gurus and traditional advice was the best thing I'd ever done for myself, because I started moving forward very rapidly once I became my own authority.
Not long after I realized I should stop dreaming about sitting and accept walking as my meditation, I decided that every second of every day is practice, is suitable for training my mind, and so I took all of my life as mind training. Then I really boosted ahead after that and never looked back. I discarded any and all kinds of romanticism I had about formal practice, altars, teachers, groups, etc., and started really paying attention to my own mind every second of every day.
So for me I no longer have any kind of romantic ideas about retreats. But at the same time I recognize that so many others will benefit from those and I don't instantly assume everyone else is just like me. I've read many reports from people who were very happy during and after these retreats.
Part of training for me is to no longer be impressed by appearances. So if suppose I was exposed to a vision of a cubicle farm, I wouldn't let that vision impress me in the same way a regular person would be. Since it wouldn't weigh me down in the same way, I could practice even then and there. And I would always make satisfying myself a higher priority than satisfying my boss, unless my boss lived and died for my benefit or something, in which case I might consider reciprocating, but that would be strange.
My point is: everything in your life is for you, for your benefit, and is your training ground and your training resource. You can do whatever you want and train at any time.
Tibetans talk about this as "taking obstacles as the path." So your ostensibly worldly life appears as an obstacle that you seemingly need to get away from, right? Instead, take it as your path. Alchemically transform lead into gold. Transform your ordinary life into a training ground with great opportunities for yourself. You have to assign to yourself more authority for your life to do this right. Stop feeling like you owe something to others unless you feel they go through their life like they owe you, in which case you're reciprocating. If you look around and you realize no one behaves in a way suggesting that they're beholden to you, then where would your attitude of trying to serve them and live up to their expectation come from?
These visions of other people and your own expectation about their expectations of you is a heavy brick in your mind. Dump it. Convert everything in your life into your own private mind training, and do it in a way that is wise and skillful and avoid any unnecessary recklessness, but taking intelligent risks is a good idea. That's what I recommend, if you find yourself always thinking about retreats and better conditions, which seemingly never arrive.
But at the same time, if you're the kind of person who can arrange such trips, you may enjoy them too, and a formally structured meditation retreat can also produce benefits that are great.
I couldn't agree more. This is a big reason why I don't like the idea of starting a religion or something. I just want to train myself.
Interesting. I tried your crystal brain visualization the other day and it was interesting. I definitely felt something.
Ah, you've said this so well. :) I could not agree more. It's as you say. It's a way of life. A way of thinking. Once seen, it would be hard to unsee.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-11-04 22:05:38 (e90yb8z)