Friday, February 8, 2013

More Dispatches from the Magic Mountain

...seems like it happens again and again with the meditation thing...every time I think I’m getting somewhere...or, y’know getting nowhere since there’s nowhere you need to go...opening things up, going DEEP, it goes haywire...seems all I can do is fidget...can’t get past the minor discomforts of the surface...as there’s some kind of hyper-vigilant sub-conscious life-guard blowing his whistle, yelling “come back in, there’s rocks out there, there’s sharks, go too deep and you could drown”...
 
...Jack Kornfield compares training the mind to training a puppy, but the mind’s a lot harder to train, and makes much bigger messes...

...two or three yoga classes a day, in between lengthy program sessions of intense meditation and discussion of compassion and mindfulness...sympathetic joy and trauma...loneliness and equanimity...kale and tempeh...peace and trauma...empathy and rage...

Show me that I’m everywhere and get me home for tea...
George Harrison
 
...didn’t even know it was officially contemplative week at Kripalu...so not only are we generally expected to be quiet within our group...with a suggestion to be totally silent for the week...but the dining hall is silent for all meals, and hallways are mostly filled with whispers...while I, of course, am committing what’s gotta be pretty much the ultimate in apostasy for a meditation retreat...multi-tasking...here both for the retreat and to reconnect with friends from the teacher training two years ago...so, y’know, I couldn’t, like, not talk to them....today, we were supposed to be practicing mindful eating at lunch, but I wanted to meet up with my friend for the noon vigorous vinyasa class, which left me really hungry and with less than fifteen minutes to eat...so I wolfed down a tray-full of stuff with great abandon, just mindful enough to have some consciousness of the fuller experience I was missing...

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,
no light and no land anywhere,
cloud cover thick. I try to stay
just above the surface, yet I’m already under
and living within the ocean.
Rumi (Coleman Barks, trans.)

...Wednesday morning...not feeling my best...(though, admittedly, it’s kinda like that bumper sticker about the worst day fishing vs. the best day at work)...woken by the alarm...6:15...best not to remind myself I don’t actually have to go to yoga class...gentle yoga...not gentle enough for the stiff, sleepy curmudgeon...then breakfast...pretty good, but disappointing after the French toast yesterday...then on to the first session...incessant sitting makes my knees hurt more every day...and I’m even sleepier than I was in yoga class...and who the hell cares what Thomas Merton said?....then walking meditation...I hate walking meditation and he’s telling us to go outside where it’s snowing, and I didn’t even bring shoes...they’re back in the room with my jacket and hat...at least it’s better than more sitting...go to the room, then outside...walk mindfully, matching footsteps to the in-breath and out-breath...across the grass and down the hill...to the spontaneous realization that everything I see, everything that exists, is infinitely, unspeakably beautiful....notice after a while that everybody else has gone back inside...guess I missed the bell, again...make my way back up the hill...

...cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown...
Van Morrison, Alan Watts Blues

...Friday morning, now...major snow storm blowing in...no way I’m driving home in that...guess I’m trapped at Kripalu ’til it’s over...nothin’ to do but sign up for a weekend vinyasa workshop...stay ’til Sunday...as misfortunes go, it’s not bad...


Sunday, February 3, 2013

Return to Hogwarts


...January hit like a giant hunk of ice in the forehead...days of severe lassitude...not much work but that little bit took all day...endlessly seeking minor forms of stimulation, trying and often failing to avoid the ones that make things worse in the long run...

...this morning, dragged myself out early through a brushing of snow, drove five hours north to Kripalu, for the first time since the yoga teacher training two years ago...where I'm gonna spend the week in a meditation retreat with Jack Kornfield...Meditation for Freedom and Compassion Everywhere...(should definitely work better than meditating to right-wing talk radio to teach myself to be less compassionate...in line with my reverse-Boddhisattva vow not to attain full enlightenment until all sentient beings in the universe are as miserable as I am)...(just kidding)...

...hugged some old friends, mindfully chowed down the healthiest lunch I've had in a long time, took a walk in the woods, went to yoga class, had the healthiest dinner I've had in a long time, went to the first meditation retreat session...where they urged me to turn off the electronic devices and be silent for the week...oops...felt like I had a minor yet satisfying psychedelic experience, took a walk down to the beach in the dark to look at the stars while listening to Miles Davis In a Silent Way on the purple ipod...oops, again...maybe gotta wean myself a bit...

...now, it's almost 11:00 and I got yoga class to go to at 6:15 in the morning...oh yeah...