SO, if you read Part I you will know of a 2.5hr daily meditation practice that lasted forty days and that the next couple of blogs will share with you the latest Self-Embodiment roller-coaster ride.
Straight up…ANY practice done daily helps us meet ourselves. Pouring ourselves through a filter day after day, reveals to us what lays hidden. Daily Self practice allows all that we have repressed and distracted ourselves from to surface. And with courage (and many softening strategies!) we can learn to sink beyond the panic to meet our Unknown and in doing so lovingly confront the reality of our experience.
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It was 31st Jan 2016, the night before I was due to start the 40 days that I decided it was an impossible task unless you lived in an ashram and gave myself full permission to not even consider it.
Ha!
The following morning I woke at 4am feeling anxious. Without being able to identify the source I accepted it was too much of a coincidence to wake up at this hour and in this state without responding to the meditation challenge. I mean what else was I going to do, lie there in anxiety and watch the hours go by?
So this is how I found myself in the practice Day 1.
The settling in phase is always a bit foreign. You haven’t had quite enough of the apple to know what you’re dealing with, so inevitably there is anticipation and in equal measure a call for patience. Waiting, a lot of waiting, watching, listening and waiting…
My first pattern usually emerged around the 30mins mark, the boundary of my concentration. This became my new training ground and involved some fairly significant habits.
Let’s cut to the chase – Super Honesty gets you REAL…real quick. Prepare for speed bumps. Here’s my ‘Get Real List’ Day 4 in.
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- I invest an enormous amount of energy in distracting myself from the present moment.
- I am addicted to the next moment.
- ‘Something’ in me is numb.
- ‘Something’ in me wants to avoid contact. This ‘something’ is permanently singing ‘Tra la lah, tra la lah’ like a child trying to ignore it’s sibling.
- 2.5hrs is a long time.
- 2.5hrs with myself is even longer.
- Distraction equals avoidance. OBVIOUSLY!
- Breadth avoids Depth.
- I fantasise with a dose of the grandiose.
- I Think a lot. About a lot of STUFF!
- I look around the room when I’m meant to be looking internally at my third eye.
- I slouch.
- I multi-task. YEP!
- I move to avoid stillness.
- “Blah! I don’t find a rhythm, I am not finding bliss… Where is the nectar anyway?” Ah I live by expectations.
- When I lose my curiosity I lose my discipline.
- I am an impatient child currently about 7yrs old.
- Bored. BORED. BORRRRED. Oh no… I use boredom to change tack and avoid going deeper. Bother!
- I have an 11yr old drama queen in me whose been sent to her room to think about her behaviour… Feeling imprisoned, tortured and proudly insolent.
- Bombshell breakdown moment – There is a chasm between what I think I am, what I think I uphold, what I think I want, what I think I am and the actual TRUTH. S**T!
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BTW this is the list I wrote (Honesty 13: multi-tasking) while meditating! yep! true, true! Ouch it hurts being this honest.
Here’s what I noticed amongst the quagmire of distraction techniques I have up my sleeve… There can be a comfort in being distracted. Directing one’s mind is often used as a healthy technique however the motivation behind it makes all the difference. I was using activity to occupy my mind to soothe me. Distraction can be comforting. Distraction stops me from going in. It reminds me of my binge-eating days – the soothing moments of over eating (prior to the self-loathing after) – avoidance junkie.
As oddly soothing as it may seem, distraction, aka avoidance, demands an enormous amount of energy to keep us out of the body. And when we are not standing in our own body, there is no ground to stand on.
Without a ground for our being to rest in we need a substitute for the feeling of being grounded. Much of what passes for culture, entertainment, progress and “personality” tends to fall into this category.
Most of our distractions are wrapped up one way or another in our identity so closely, we can’t see that they are distractions at all. For some it’s work or our career, for other parenting and the distraction that children bring, for others being busy and industrious, for some it’s running, cleaning or green smoothies and investing a lot in lululemon.
It isn’t just packaged in negative strategies like self-harming, it’s almost worse when they are cloaked in things we pride ourselves in. Somethings are hard to detect in ourselves because we or others value the very same things that are limiting us. Who doesn’t respect a go-getter, a clever career woman or a sportsman.
We build sand castles of secondary satisfactions, in our multifaceted and varied attempts to find substitutes for the wholeness that somehow got lost.
The problem with an addiction to distraction in whatever small or big form it shows up, is that we are practicing running from silence and from any genuine somatic experience. The result is that, what we practice we make more permanent, practicing disunity results in a large gap… a very large gap.
And while distraction in the acute phase may offer comfort, in the long run it itself becomes deeply uncomfortable.
And anyway… What are we busy running from?
The threatening presence of no-thing.
What do you notice about your patterns, habits of avoidance and distraction. What activity do you engage in, judged by yourself or others as positive or negative that helps you avoid being in direct contact with your Self, what helps you avoid closing your eyes or sitting still or meeting your unknown or connecting to your truth?
Give yourself 3 mins on a timer and storm it out without too much thinking, go into the feeling of avoidance and describe, list what comes to your attention.
Remind yourself – this work is a practice of moving into the Unknown with trust. A practice of witnessing ourselves as we think we are. A practice of acknowledging ourselves as we actually are and everything in between.
It’s not a motivation or instruction to change your reality, in fact please avoid trying to do so. It’s a call to befriend your idiosyncrasies, notice them, sit with them but do not not force them away – practice getting closer, be stealthy and move quietly, notice what emerges to block you from getting closer.
These are the gems you are after finding. This is where the work starts.
Home Practice:
As the blog is monthly see if you can practice a month’s commitment to an 11mins daily meditation.
2.5hrs is possible if you fancy it…but 11 mins if you have never sat with yourself before will be quite long enough 😉
Keep a journal of what happens.
Your 11mins could be sitting quietly it could be a specific meditation but whatever you choose, repeat the same one each day. It is the accumulative affect of the same practice that gives you the hidden treasure.
Should you find a panic surfacing now or as you start to practice, this month’s podcast will guide you through some preparatory softening techniques to help you sink beyond the panic to the heart of the matter. If you are new to using intervention strategies you could always choose one of these as your month’s practice.
As always keep me informed, feedback on Facebook Self-Embodiment Page and support each other in the process.
BodyMind Blessings,
Sally X