Gary's Practice Journal 2

I figure I will start part two, as I the flow of the previous journal has stopped. To some extent, the intent of my practice has gotten hijacked by itching. Kind of a skin rash with itchy little bumps. My doctor called it contact dermatitis and prescribed a topical corticosteroid. I did not want to use it, and went to see my acupuncturist. My acupuncturist calls it eczema and practically begged me to use the corticosteroid. So I ended up using it, but only got temporary amelioration, as the outbreak returned when I stopped using it. I have started using it again.
This problem has gone on since my last entry here near the start of April. The itching gets very very strong and requires utmost equanimity to refrain from scratching, or taking very hot showers, which put me into a state of unequaled physical bliss. Probably the worst thing I can do, worse perhaps than scratching, but it gave me the most pleasure.
Of course I use as much mindfulness as I can bring to it: Be mindful of the itching! I tell myself. Sometimes it fades away as I watch it. Other times I have this sense of my skin just glowing. Not itching at all, but a very pleasurable glowing. I rarely can get to that pleasurable state through mindfulness. It mostly just happens by itself.
I started taking ice cold showers. This takes some equanimity and brings relief that lasts for hours sometimes. I have not changed my diet, but I know this may come from food allergies.
At any rate, it has derailed my intent to practice 2nd gear. I tried to incorporate 2nd gear with itching, but I find the itching brings my attention out to the surface of my skin, so I go back to first gear practice. Itching has a quality of physical discomfort, but even stronger mental or emotional discomfort. I try to separate itching from the desire for relief, but itching calls me to action, more than pain does. I can have equanimity with pain much more easily than with severe unrelenting itching.

I hope you feel better soon. FWIW I have occasionally had outbreaks of illness that are simply stress-related, and that stress can even come from practice-related stuff. I had a friend who had a good rash going for a while during a very difficult dark night. On the rash front I once got a bad case of hives right before a physics exam. Take care of yourself as best you can. The combo of eastern and western medicine and self-care stuff usually helps. It covers all the bases, in any case!

Thanks, gira. I don't have abnormal levels of stress recently, but I do have a high baseline due to my work. That may have caused this. Or this may have come about due to detoxification. I had major surgery over a year and a half ago, followed by a very difficult recovery period, and had a lot of lung problems and reactive airway troubles since that time, up until March. Skipping the details, the lung problems, such as frequent lingering colds and coughs, and persistent allergic reactive coughing and throat clearing, went away as I started to practice Misogi breathing. I actually started it during the first week of March, while fighting another cold with congested cough. This cleared up, and so far I have gone almost 8 weeks without colds or reactive airway allergies, which represents a considerable break from that ongoing pattern.
However, in Taoist medicine the lungs and skin have a strong connection, so an energetic imbalance that may have expressed through my lungs, may now have found expression through my skin. A step away from my core, at least, suggests improvement.
This counts as the second time in my life that Misogi breathing has helped me to deal with recurrent serious lung congestion, pneumonia, etc.
I learned Misogi breathing from an Akido workshop with Koichi Tohei. Very simply you breathe in deeply through the nose, then you make the exhalation go very slowly through the MOUTH, making an AAAHHH sound, not vocally, but by constricting the pathway through the oropharynx. This can make the exhalation last a very long time. I track my breathing rate with a timer and a mala. I set the timer at 10 minutes then count each exhalation on the prayer beads. After 10 minutes I do a simple calculation such as 17 breaths= 1.7 breaths per minute. Sometimes when I feel more wound up I will get over two breaths per minute, but mostly I stay under two. Koichi Tohei related that he cured himself of Tuberculosis using Misogi breathing and cold baths.

Misogi corresponds in some ways with Buteyko breathing. In Buteyko breathing, you also learn to make the breath last a long time in order to elevate your level of carbon dioxide. This results in an opening of airway passages from the nasal passages to the respiratory and terminal bronchioles of the lungs. Over breathing causes inflammation of these passageways. So in Russia, and more recently in the U.S. and other countries, they use it as treatment for asthma and other disorders. I practiced Buteyko breathing for several months, but I prefer Misogi breathing to achieve the same goal. I talked to Shinzen Young about this once and he told me that he knew of a Monastery in Japan where the Zen practice consisted of breathing with a quick inhalation and very prolonged exhalation. I never found out the name of that Monastery. He said that form of breathing definitely will put you in a trance state. I found it works well with very prolonged sits because it alleviates pain.

Also I found I can do it while typing or reading. So I can bring at least a rudimentary form of mindfulness into these complex activities. It works consistently, unlike most things I have tried for sustaining mindfulness while facing computer keyboards or reading material.

This morning I spent 20 minutes doing Shinzen's "do nothing" meditation, then I did an hour of Misogi breathing.

I did a Shinzen phone retreat yesterday on expansion-contraction-gone. With expansion force I note "expansion" and feel this radiant fullness of being in my upper body. Very pleasant. Then with contraction, I notice the void or emptiness in my gut, an inward directed force I label "contraction". It feels unpleasant. Then Shinzen leads us in noting "Both" for both forces occurring at once.
I've never intentionally done that before with these particular intense feelings at once. It seems weird to me that I have not done this before, or even conceived that I could do it. Usually I see the contraction force as unpleasant and therefore a problem that I need to resolve. Often it has shifted, disappeared, or transmuted into expansion, connectedness, and pleasant feeling. Many times I have thought "I've finished with all that void/emptiness since my latest awakening. I'll never have to feel that again".
But then it comes back spontaneously, a truth that kicks ass on all my assumptions.
I have not felt that feeling in a long time, well a couple months anyway, not that I thought I had come to another "resolution", just that it went into abeyance as I experienced mostly fullness and life busyness. Then I noticed emptiness and voidness returning after reading the book "The War of Art", and thinking about what the author "Pressfield" calls "Resistance".

I realized from Pressfield's description that I experience what he calls "Resistance" and have generally looked at this feeling as a spiritual problem rather than an artistic or practical problem. I thought of it as the void or emptiness or contraction. I wondered then if I could simply change frameworks and start calling the void "resistance" and then get on with the war against resistance that enables a person to manifest their true life's calling or art. I wonder if I could quit worring about getting more awakened and adopt a more practical approach to life.
Anyway, along comes this little phone retreat with the Shiz, and I have suddenly another option. Feel both expansion-contraction at once. I did a sit this morning and zeroed right in. Both, both both both both. One feels unpleasant, the other pleasant. They just stayed that way.
Life is war.
Oh yeah, we did gone too, in which I focused mostly on sounds disappearing and noting those gones. Lots of birds and noises around our place so I found gones pretty easily.

In my sitting meditation, I keep coming back to the expansion/contraction paradigm. I feel the sense of emptiness or void (or in the beautiful words of Igor Stravinsky "the anguish of unconditional freedom"). I feel this mostly centered in my abdomen without any noticeable tension in my abdomen.
At the same time I feel this sense of radiance and expansion from my core. Contraction/expansion.
Black hole sun.

That phrase occurred to me and I like it as a poetic description of this state. I don't know the meaning of this song by Soundgarden, but I always liked it.
It does not totally describe the state because another element exists: the "I" sense or witness to black hole sun. And the I evokes black hole sun. The I does not exists as a passive observer. The I chooses this state. And I don't see any separation between the I and the choosing.

"I" gets implied as choosing happens. Choosing relationship.

Morning sit. Outside in nature. Dropped into pure listening. No preference for silence, for no-thoughts. Why assume thoughts come from inside? Listened to my thoughts as if they came from outside, part of nature.
Transparent to the sound of the neighbor's air conditioner.
Transparent to the numerous birds singing their celebration of the morning.
Transparent to the great turning of this eternal floating world.
The riveting kaleidoscope of now.

Hit 113 MU for the week. Reverting to following the breath for slightly complex activities. In sitting, I listen and inquire, allowing thoughts to become transparent. The "I" appears to exist because we reverse engineer it too fast to notice the process, like a false memory. In what sense does the past actually exist?

"This train of grey tubes, that houses peoples' thoughts." Captain Beefheart

"It says 'choo choo choose me', and there's a picture of a train!" Ralph Wiggams

"I'm the decider" George W. Bush Jr.

IN YOUR FACE!

How rude of this universe
to thwart all our reasoning,
and continue,
relentlessly,
to exist.

Yesterday I meditated for an hour mostly relaxing my viscera. Smooth muscle tension. I don't know how much voluntary control we have over it, but I practiced both equanimity and brought as much relaxation as I could to it. Seems to help. How much of my feeling of voidness comes from smooth muscle tension? It amuses me to think I can make a spiritual problem out of heartburn. Oh well. Probably whole religions have originated from heartburn.

Spent more time sitting outside this AM. Feeding the mosquitoes. Listening to my thoughts and to the birds. Lots of pleasure sensations. Not listening to my thoughts but through them. Thinking in the music of the present moment. Thinking in dreamsong.

I completed 169 units of mindfulness this past week, which includes a 4
hour phone retreat with Uber Prime Buddhis Geek Shinzen Young. On hearing!
(Focus on hear). One of my faves. The abundance of birds singing lately makes "hear out" easy.
During the "accelerator" practice time, (accelerating mindfulness practice through
mindfulness+activity). I took it outside to do some weeding in our garden.
Using the "hear out" label, I noted the sound of each weed either pulling
free from the soil or snapping off. Noting each of these sounds (hear out, hear out) gave me
satisfaction from accoplishing two things at once..I know I should not snap them off because
they will grow back faster, but in this case I gave mindfulness precedence
over efficacy of weeding.

Turns out "feel flow" has become very important to me this past week, but I'll have to say more on that later.

Zooming

They say that the earth whirls around the sun at 67 thousand miles per hour.
Or one thousand one hundred and sixteen miles per minute.
I went to bed last night and woke up 420 thousand miles away
from the place where I went to bed.
And everything looks the same!
Just another day.
Hurtling toward breakfast,
only 45 thousand miles away.

103 Mindfulness Units this last week. Sitting practice now consists of sitting in the radiant void. Expansion contraction. Thoughts arise and pass in the radiant void. Not just observing, but staying in relationship. Sitting in it now, at the keyboard. What does this relationship consist of? This choosing of a feeling. Relaxing in it, surrendering to it, abiding in it. Centering in it.
Mindfulness in daily life has grown more difficult. My strategies don't work as well as they did a few weeks ago. I question the whole concept of noting. I question the fracturing of the narrative flow. The fight against random thoughts pulling me out of awareness of now. What hidden price do I pay for this awareness of now? But I don't have anything solid to replace it with. So I stay with it, at least fulfilling the minimum commitments to myself and my teacher.
Alan Clements.
I blame him. The only awakened teacher I know that says something different. I read his book "Instinct for Freedom" and I've read half of "A Future to Believe In" He does not recommend more mindfulness practice, but more participation in helping the world. Activist politics. Aung San Su Kyi in Burma. I have always thought "first I'll get more awakened, then I will get politically active", but I never get enough awakening. I never commit to sustained action in the world.
When do you say enough? Do you have to reach some perfect ideal? Questions like those decrease my momentum for practice.