Day of mindfulness 07/13/13

Today is the one year anniversary of the experience that my teachers Beth and Kenneth said was stream entry.

I had an amazing home retreat. It felt so good to have a whole day with nothing I had to do. As much time as I wanted to just be with myself. It didn't feel good a lot of the time, but I have faith that it's important for me to learn to be with myself. After watching the men's relay, I slept until 8 or 8:30. Then I meditated for about 80 minutes, then did some yoga. Then I sat on a bed in the attic, supported in front by a giant pillow, and paid as close attention as I could muster to how I felt. It required constant effort and courage. Although I've done this many times before, every week or two I seem to be facing a new layer, and each layer is as challenging as the previous. Today it seemed that I was noticing a finer granularity of experience than before. I worked against a huge force of habit: to use thinking to smooth over this granularity. Every moment I mustered courage to turn my mind away from thought and toward my direct experience. As in the past, a torrent of thoughts kept insisting that this was crazy, that I really ought to go do something, that there wasn't enough time. On this last count, today I was able to tell myself that I did indeed have a lot of time. I loved that I could do that.

It seemed that when I gave attention to this finer granularity of experience, anicca was evident, and this was unsettling. For some periods of time it seemed that everything was constantly changing in a way I hadn't observed before.

One way I motivated myself was by seeing the process as some kind of game or race. "Just a little bit more, just a little bit more. The more you do, the bigger the reward." I wasn't forcing myself to do something painful. I was just continuing to apply effort against habit.

When I began, there was a tight knot in my right chest -- something very familiar. During and after this, the knot loosened.

My session was interrupted by a call from Mom. She was scared about Dad. She was with Liza. We spent 45 minutes skyping via my cell phone. One very nice thing about using the phone is that it is very portable. I took her on a tour of the house. I felt very relaxed and available for this call, although I forgot entirely to attend to myself.

Finally, around 4:00, I lay down for a nap. I had worked hard and I really wanted to give myself some rest. Also, I find that I process things in my sleep. During this nap I was quite aware of processing, though I can't recall the details now.