#456 Awakening to Things as They Are

     We progressively awaken to the moment-to-moment reactions we have to life by noticing how each reaction is preceded by a felt physical sensation. Two amazingly frequent sensations:
     1) closing off, tightening / hardening of the body - particularly the heart-mind - towards stimuli that we negatively judge. This is aversion or hatred - a rigid, adversarial reaction.
     2) aching hunger - particularly in the gut - towards stimuli we judge to be enticing, desirable. This is craving or clinging - a wanting, wishing, pining away for, desperately desiring to keep reaction.
     In aversion / hatred we're running from / fighting off stuff, in craving / clinging we're running after / desperately hanging-on to stuff, based on the fundamental misunderstanding: that things as they are, are unacceptable. 
     And how actually are things as they are? Fluidly changing, ephemeral - far more like inner transient energies than solid external chunks of matter, that can either be accumulated in our bedrooms, or hauled far away to be buried.
     These are not dogma, simply observations at a given stage of mindfulness meditation practice. From a Western psychological perspective, it represents a normal, healthy shift from rigidity towards psychological flexibility & accepting reality.

St. Andrews by John England   http://www.fogforestgallery.ca/bios/bio_england.html

#355 Physically Connecting with Life

     "The most powerful thing I've learned in practice is to tune in to how I actually feel. Our tendency is to either bury or act on feeling but not to actually feel feeling - and I don't mean a particular feeling but the felt sense that is underneath all feeling: our beating heart, our humanity, our basic goodness. The most important thing is to connect with that, and then everything else is just our life. ... our path is not a project, it's life. It's so powerful to realize that practice is fundamentally choiceless. It's just about being a human being, about being able to connect with our humanity on a more complete level."   Judith Simmer-Brown

Gretel in contemplation

#222 Physically processing emotions - Mindfulness meditation's systematic desensitization

     Staying with (acceptance of) the unpleasant physical sensations of emotions such as fear, AND witnessing it objectively (a process Western psychology calls cognitive defusion) is how we "physically process" or work our way through difficult emotions in mindfulness practice.
     Amazingly, we learn this powerful, far-ranging skill during mindfulness meditation by simply sitting still - when our nose tickles, when our feet want to move, and even when we want to get up and end the sitting prematurely. We're fully aware of the physical feeling, without words or stories, we examine it with curiosity, accept it fully, and stay with it, observing how it arises, remains for a while, changes, and disappears from whence it arose, without us ever having to react. (Psychiatrists & psychologists use similar concepts - systematic desensitization / graduated exposure therapy - to treat phobias & other anxiety disorders.)
     We learn in a very direct experiential manner how we can intentionally “outgrow” the clutches of fear, anxiety, chronic pain, etc. All that we fear, worry about, or are otherwise imprisoned by, can thus "lose their solidity." We are no longer fused with these transient energies (phantoms) passing through the mind.
     We remember "the story", but it's no longer "my drama," for the emotional charge progressively dissipates. We free ourselves. Our mind-heart becomes relaxed, free, open. We come home to the stillness and silence of our center.

     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/12/physical-processing-neuroscience.html

Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) - "Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo"