Superhighway to Happiness

MEDITATION

Whatever you're focusing on, you're experiencing.  Simple.  What's not so simple, until you've got the inner musculature stronger, is moving your attention at will.  If you want to be able to do 100 pushups (yes there's an app for that too...), you've got to start with 1 pushup, well performed.  Then you can move to two and 20, and according to the app, within six weeks you'll be doing 100 pushups if you follow the program.  There's some work involved, and if you don't know why you're setting out to be someone who can effectively do 100 pushups (at one time), then when you hit challenges, it's easy to get distracted which leads to diminished results which leads to quitting.  If you're human like me, you've done this in your life, at least once, if not more.

So what are you focusing on?  What are you giving attention to?  Do you like it?  Does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy?  Or does it make you a bit prickly, a bit difficult to be around when you're obsessing internally about your insecurities? 

If you're suffering, you're focused on an illusion and relating to it like it's real, true, and likely permanent.  Nothing is permanent.  That's basic Tao 101, Change is constant.  Yet when that feeling comes up, yes, you know the one....the one that takes you out of commission when you believe it....the one that your mind starts gathering all variety of "evidence" to support....when that feeling comes up, and your ego is building the case, there's an addiction at play.  There is literally a secretion of hormones in the body, a particular order of neurons firing and the system gets habituated, or addicted to that feeling, however lousy it may feel. 

Then there's the accompanying feelings of powerlessness to change that can come along for the ride.  The next thing you know, the mind is chiming in with all the "to do" items that are more urgent and time-sensitive than actually stopping all action and getting back into your right mind, into the felt presence of contentment, or even authentic happiness.

At this point in my life it's clear, the only thing I have a say over consistently is my own inner state.  The stronger my inner state, the more leverage I have in the outer world.  The weaker my inner state, the more the prevailing challenges in the world have ongoing impact on every aspect of my life. 

You can either become an organizing principle, or be organized and shuffled around by the chaos of the world.  An organizing principle in the way I'm working with it here is a power point, deeply grounded into inner strength that is grown through attention and practice.  Like an electro-magnet that turns neighboring iron filings into mini-magnets, you become this force that life organizes itself around.

So to begin this reversal of the power back to you, back to your choice to be happy independent of circumstances, we start with what you're focusing on, what you're paying attention to, what you're animating and perpetuating with your own life force.

At some point, this kind of self-reflection becomes an ongoing habit.  Along the way, it's not only an enormous support, it's CRITICAL to set aside daily time for formal practice.  What do I mean by 'formal'?  Suit and tie?  Cocktail dress and Jimmy Choo's?  Not so much. 

I mean specific scheduled times each day with set beginning and ending times that you don't let get preempted by anything. 

What do I do during this time?  Since the focus of this note is meditation, I'm going to suggest actually meditating.  It can be easy, it can be enjoyable (which is a key to depth in meditation), and there's a tremendous amount of support for learning how.

I use the EOC Institute's "Balance" mp3 (http://EOCinstitute.org) nearly every time I meditate.  It uses tonal frequencies through your headphones, masked in the sound of gentle rainfall to literally train your brain and nervous system to live in meditative states.

Working with a seasoned teacher shortens the learning curve tremendously and helps troubleshoot places where your attention is getting caught or stuck, and restoring you into the awe-inspiring free-fall of deep meditation.

Just start. 

The Grace of Fierceness

As I navigate the deeper waters of meditation lately, there's a lot I don't know.  Acknowledging that while I'm practicing helps me to pry the ridiculously tenacious fingers of the controller OFF my meditation.

About half-hour or so into my meditation this afternoon (guessing here), I realized I was just treading water, so-to-speak.  I was working with my mantra, allowing thoughts to catch my attention, and just generally feeling like I was in an all-too-familiar holding pattern.  Ironically I've been feeling the same way out of meditation over the last several days.  Actually, it's not really ironic at all.  It's pretty much a "duh" type realization.  No real rocket-science.

While at this seeming impasse, a type of active seemingly impersonal fire of anger-like energy starts to focus itself in my awareness.  It's not anger in the sense of being mad about my experience and pouting about it.  More like a focused, clear, and take-no-prisoners "Enough is enough" sentiment.

In the moment, I had the sense that this uprising of will could easily just pass on by and I'd be back in the malaise of sitting rather aimlessly.  Grasping this fire and basically ingesting it into every cell of my body and awareness, I sharpened the intention to harness and focus this force through the Heart, to churn as much visceral self-love as I could possibly conjure, mix it into this fire, and PIERCE the stuckness -- not just once, continuously.

If it's true that God, Guru, and Self are all One, then all of it dwells within me.  Waiting hopefully for someone outside to show up on a white horse and make all the differences in my life that need making is pointless.  Until I make the shift deeply within, my life will continue to mirror exactly the places my attention is rooted consciously and unconsciously inside myself.

I've been feeling for some time that it's now time to take my life deeper, and I've been experiencing a lot of frustration about not seeing the kinds of support from places I feel like I've given so much support to over the years...the exact kind of support that my ego was convincing me would make all the difference for me in expanding the quality and experience of my world.

In this meditation, I just basically said, "Fuck it.  If it is to be, it is up to me."  I don't mean the little me that would go off like Chicken Little to do all the work of making the bread herself just to be right about how great she is and what a jerk all the other animals were for not helping her out.  That paradigm is called Victim clothed in arrogance.  I've danced that dance so many times it makes me nauseous just thinking about it.

This impulse of it being up to me, is pointing at a deeper aspect of self, a quality of will that I'm discovering has great power within it.  In the Tantras there's the description of Iccha Shakti, the energy of will, and in that context, it's a very pure form of will with little ego around it, if any.  I'm sensing, and hoping that what's dawning is the opportunity to sense, tune to, and work with that type of will.  If it isn't it certainly feels like it's on the road to that zip code.

Regardless of the official truth on all of this, whatever that might mean, something turned today in meditation.  The awareness that sitting isn't meant to be passive if it's going to lead to a deeper realization.  Nor is it to be forceful.  Both those are flip sides of the same hand, the same energy.  Some how what got sensed and tapped today seems to run right up the middle.  We'll see.

ADDENDUM ~  In re-reading this piece, I realized I left out a crucial piece from the meditation and the ardent (thank you Zaven for that word) firing up of intent.   At the beginning of the shift in this meditation from the malaise to focused will, I had a vision of my Guru's feet.  In the Tantric understanding, the feet are said to be an access point to the Guru's shakti or spiritual force.  It's also understood that the outer Guru is a mirror for the truth of the Guru within.

At this moment of glimpsing his feet, I reached out and grasped them firmly in my hands, determined not to let go, and lowered my head to place it squarely on them, as my body flooded with goosebumps and my awareness felt like this giant bellows-like fantastically alive pulsation.

This firing up of will was not conjured by me alone.  It was and is inspired by Grace.  It has all the hallmarks of True Support.  May I never forget.  May I always remember.


Copyright 2011 Scott Patrick Schwenk, All Rights Reserved.