Denial of achievement

I've had a growing awareness lately of some odd mental activity that occurs when I achieve a goal. I first noticed it while orienteering. Orienteering is an off-trail cross-country running sport. You have a detailed map with a number of control locations circled, and you try to visit them all in order as fast as you can, on foot. Each control is marked by an orange and white flag in the field.

I've noticed that when I glimpse a flag I've been aiming for, my mind kind of tries to block it out. For about a second, there is a tangled jumble of mental activity--I can feel sensation in my brain--it seems as though there is a cascade of reaction too fast for me to discern. Next, a kind of mental numbness. There is little or no joy in the achievement. Almost disappointment, and bewilderment. Within one or two seconds, my focus has shifted to the next goal (traveling to the next control).

Right now, this very moment, I am on the verge of achieving a minor goal at work. I have been trying to create a web interface for visualizing some data. I think I am on the cusp of getting it to work! Instead of forging ahead with the last little bits, though, I'm doing a thought experiment: what will my reaction be to actually achieving this?

I imagined getting it to work, seeing it work, and thinking, "I've done it!" And some voice in my brain answered, "No you haven't!" Incredible.

Then I imagine setting aside that message and thinking, again and again, "I've done it!" I notice resistance, discomfort ... a fullness in the right torso ... slightly constricted breathing.

It's dangerous to have achieved something. The parents will smash me.

Is this why I struggle constantly, at work, with feeling like I am too slow and that I haven't done anything?

When is meditation harmful?

I am planning to do two months of retreat under Pa Auk Sayadaw starting September 1. This will be an order of magnitude more intense than any retreat I've done so far, the longest a 2-week jhana retreat. Today I googled long meditation retreat harmful OR dangerous, and found Can Meditation be Bad for You?, by Mary Garden. She summarizes various research and anecdotal evidence showing that it can sometimes be bad. This evidence is far from conclusive, and it will be great when better research is conducted.

I am grateful to Mary for exploring under what conditions meditation can be harmful. This question is neglected in meditation communities. If you are interested in how and when meditation may be harmful, I direct you to her link. I have little disagreement with what she has to say, but I do have a comment on her conclusion.

She ends her article by saying that her life is "immeasurably richer" without meditation, that she "no longer regards the world as a place from which to escape or detach myself". She then quotes from the poem "Against Meditative Knowlege", by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore:

Those who wish to sit, shut their eyes and meditate to know if the world's true or lies, may do so. It's their choice. But I meanwhile with hungry eyes that can't be satisfied shall take a look at the world in broad daylight. (1896)

I think Mary, poet Tagore, and others may have searched for extraordinary experiences in meditation. For me, meditation is a practice that helps me look at the world in broad daylight. It helps uncover my hungry eyes, by giving me a better understanding of the fear that so often keeps those eyes closed.

Mary states that her morning swim relaxes her as effectively as meditation. For me, too, vigorous exercise is relaxing. But it is not as enjoyable. During vigorous exercise, I am haunted by anxious resistance. During meditation, I make the space to look the anxiety in the eye, and each time I do, I know it a little bit better.

Staying aware of self while listening

diffuse glowing sensation centered in lower right abdomen, the sensation I call Julia's fire
changes like the weather
one year ago it was just coming out of hiding, I was usually unaware
now it is there nearly always
it is not always diffuse glowing
today it is
it's like the sun
but even now as I watch it, it's no longer centered in the abdomen
center moving up, to chest, to throat, with shimmers all up and down the right side
from pelvis to head
echoes in the genitals
lurking in the throat, evidence of something unsaid, not yet safe to say

trying these days to stay aware of this while listening to others
deeply engrained habit to NOT be aware
deeply!
feels as though something very bad will happen if I put any attention there
while another is speaking to me
feels like multitasking, not holistic
worry that I'll miss what the other is saying, and what if they find out!!
they will either abandon me, or demand that I get it
by taking more of my attention and explaining in further excruciating detail

The voice that says, "You are doing the wrong thing"

I just saw this morning that there is a blog at blogspot.com with the same name as this blog. And with the same kinds of musings. The more explorers, the more productive our explorations can be.

Woke this morning and, after spending 30 minutes groggily waking up while infused with feelings and thoughts of dread, sat in bed on 2 pillows. I explored, both mentally and manually, the unusual sensations in my right torso, the ones I've been working with for the past year. I noticed sensitivity, yearning, responsiveness to massage, in the superficial tissue just at the bottom of my ribs, across a maybe 6 inch width on the side. I gently massaged there.

Then, a thought that I was doing the wrong thing. A thought that pervades my daily life. The past ~10 years, I've practiced dismissing the thought. This was progress over what I used to do, which was to think about what I should be doing instead. But today I went further and examined the source of the thought. It seemed accessible in a way it had not seemed before. Just barely.

I knew abstractly that this thought was probably an internalization of multiple external messages, external messages that were so strong that they terrorized me. This morning I thought, "I internalized these messages because it felt better to pre-empt them by delivering them to myself, rather than to be shocked by them coming from outside each time." Not a new thought, but today I could feel the truth of it. I could feel the inevitability of it--internalizing the messages was the only thing I could do to survive.

I visualized a gigantic Dad approaching me from above and attacking me for something I'd done. I thought, "If I were really ready to work with this idea, I'd be using my body and fending off the attack, but I just don't feel that impulse." But I did feel a tiny pre-impulse, maybe just a fullness in my torso, a desire to energize my arms. I carefully followed this impulse, not knowing at all where it would take me. As usual with such exercises, it required a lot of determination and focus, and was accompanied by a boatload of uncertainty. But over the course of maybe 10 minutes, I was indeed fending off the imagined (or remembered) attack with my body. My right hand continued to massage the lower right side ribs while the other protected my head from blows. Then my right arm tired of massaging, even though my ribs still desired it, and I used my right arm also for protection. Breathing, imagining ... twisting my body slowly from side to side ... just imagining the gigantic Dad coming down on me and following impulse, not knowing where the impulse would take me next. Felt constriction in the throat, knew that if I could give that some space then I'd see some opening there, too, but didn't have the mental bandwidth to do that exercise.

Tired of this work, I allowed myself to transition into yoga. During yoga and beyond, I stayed alert for the voice that said, "You are doing the wrong thing," and remembered the gigantic Dad, and felt more freedom.

What delight, to think that underneath the voice that constantly goads and punishes myself is a wisdom that actually knows the right thing to do. I fear that, underneath, there is no impetus to act at all, that without the voice, I'd languish and sink into a state of greater suffering. But my confidence is growing beyond that fear.

This work is one of the biggest adventures of my life, but not one that can easily be shared and celebrated with others.

Why it all feels futile

This morning while meditating I paid attention to sensations in my right upper chest and throat. Strong urges to dismiss them: "what a waste of time, it's useless, I have more important things to do". Kept directing attention there again and again. Eventually got into mindset of myself as a very young child, feeling clearly in my body the certainty that if I acted, if I tried to do what I wanted or needed to do, I was going to get smashed. This is where the idea "it's useless" likely comes from. At that time in my life, it was indeed useless, futile, to try to do what I wanted. Others had absolute power over me. I knew this abstractly before, but today felt it for the first time. Felt lighter the rest of the morning.