Progress with anger

Today I reflected on how far I've come in my understanding of anger over the past 15 years. I used to think of myself as a very angry person. It seemed there was a well of anger inside me. I wondered if I just needed to "get it all out" somehow. Anger arose for me in every non-superficial relationship. Expressing the anger was destructive (I didn't know how to express it constructively), and keeping it inside was also destructive. This made relationships really uncomfortable. Gradually, though, I saw that there was no well of anger-- just a set of stories that kept getting re-activated. Wow! And gradually I saw that the stories were empty. So it didn't matter if stories arose when I was around people. I saw that I wasn't being inauthentic to just let go of the stories; there was no need to voice them. I saw the usefulness of exploring the stories by conversing with my child self. Finally, now, doing an intensive guided inquiry into the nature of emotional reactivity, I am seeing that the stories don't even need to arise-- they only arise out of habit, and the habit is not useful and can be broken. I just realized that I no longer think of myself as an angry person. Pretty cool!

My difficulties as a student of Computer Science

Today, a facebook friend who's a computer science instructor asked women in CS, "What helped you get through? What didn't?" Here's what I replied in the comments:

The one thing that I know for sure helped me "get through" was my boyfriend during my Intro to CS class at UC Berkeley in 1979. I didn't know anything about computers and the teacher spoke to us as though we'd already taken CS in high school. (I hadn't taken it in high school because I didn't know what it was, only geeky boys took it, and nobody, but nobody, even suggested it to me even though I was very talented in math.) My boyfriend (thanks, Brian Kell) knew about computers and helped me understand the concepts. (He's now an intro CS instructor!) If it weren't for Brian I would have gotten very frustrated and perhaps given up. In the end I got an A+ in the course and added CS as a second major to Biochemistry.

My parents were not college educated, so I did not have them as role models, but that may have been a net positive-- it gave me a lot of freedom from expectation.

I wanted to get a PhD in CS at UW, but I ended up quitting. I feel really disappointed about that, even though I went on to have a satisfying career. What I think I needed and didn't get was gentle but persistently intensive mentoring. Someone who really believed in me and made sure I succeeded. I have a personality that resists mentoring, even by women. I went through three graduate advisors. My perception was that the (all male) faculty was sincerely trying to support me and it never crossed my mind that any of my difficulties had anything to do with my sex. The only memory I have of any kind of sexism was when I organized a Women in CS luncheon and heard complaints from male classmates. I had chosen an interdisciplinary research topic and felt completely on my own regarding how to bring it all together. I put together an inter-departmental committee and consulted regularly with the faculty in the other departments (Biochemistry and Genetics), took summer jobs in my specialty and designed my own internship at UCSF, but in the end felt frustrated and overwhelmed. I blamed my failure on myself for choosing an overly difficult topic that nobody on the faculty cared about, but in the years after I quit, my peculiar interdisciplinary interest became a hot subject (now called bioinformatics or computational biology) that several UW CS faculty now publish in. Kinda makes you go Hmmmmm ...

Another layer of the onion peels away

Returned a couple days ago from a camping trip to Central Oregon to see the solar eclipse. During that trip I did a couple of intense sessions of inner work. One of the sessions was very uncomfortable and left me feeling down. The sense immediately afterward was that the session was a waste of time: I didn't seem to gain any insight and during the session I felt mired in dark, despairing memories of being hated and ignored as a very young child. I had intended to go to these memories, but had hoped I'd "get through them" to someplace lighter.

But perhaps the session had a positive after-effect, because this morning, while doing inner work, several new insights arose relatively painlessly. I directed my attention to very familiar and long-standing issues, issues I've attended to many times before, and, to my delight, I saw the mind go places I hadn't realized it had been avoiding.

Lately I've been doing more compulsive eating, and perhaps this is associated with having a lot more free time. I've slowly been gaining weight and feeling shame about the growing size of my belly. This has been an issue for me on and off throughout my life, but it wasn't until today that I gave attention to the words and images associated with the shame. Here is what arose: "you are really terrible. You stupid idiot, you massive moron. Can't you just do what's right?" Then, images of children in the schoolyard with their backs turned towards me. I hadn't realized until now the prominence and significance of this scene in my memories of childhood. I was often, perhaps usually, on the outside, sitting by myself at lunch, joining in games of four-square and kickball but not feeling I belonged in the circles of girls standing around talking. And I believed that my (slight) chubbiness was partly responsible. Even though a couple girls chubbier than I were in those circles, I thought that only if I were thin and looked cute in knee socks the way Erin P. did, I'd have more success.

After examining the meaning of my fat belly, I moved onto the meaning of physical fitness. I feel desperate to maintain my physical fitness as I age, yet at the same time I experience a lot of resistance to exercise, and don't do as much as would benefit me. And there is a lot of anxiety around this. When I reflect on my desires for fitness, I see a desire something much more than ordinary elder fitness. I fantasize about being super limber, super strong, and having super stamina. I want to be able to turn cartwheels, throw around bales of hay, and run marathons. I want to be super powerful and superior to the vast majority of my peers. I reflected on what I thought life would be like if I were quite stiff, fat, and weak in old age. Images arose of my caregivers gossiping about me behind my back, and serving me while holding back disgust. I knew I was afraid of this but hadn't experienced it so vividly before.

At some point, the frequent superego message arose, "this is a waste of time". This message has long mystified me: what does it mean to my psyche to waste time? If there was something that the superego thought was more important to do with my time, it wasn't telling me what it was. Today, I again asked what this meant, and immediately saw the deeper message: "I am afraid to go deeper because I don't know what's there. I like where I am; it's comfortable and I don't want to lose it." Ah.

After this morning's session of inner work, I browsed through stuff on my computer and watched a video of Mom during the early stages of her dementia. Anger arose toward her. Previously, I had felt nothing but affection for Mom during the years she had dementia (with the exception of times when she was being extraordinarily difficult). I looked at her face in the video and was able to feel contempt. Score.

In general I have lately been noticing the mind going places I hadn't before realized it had been avoiding. There is a sense of the mind going somewhere familiar, then looking off to the side and noticing that that view was also familiar, then the thought arising, "Aha! I can actually go there as well! Hadn't realized that before! Let's go have a look!" Satisfying.

Dear Diary

Wrote this yesterday:

Gaaah! Has it really been 2.5 months since I last posted?

Spent all day today going slow, giving myself permission to do a lot of nothing. I spent a few sessions of 20-40 minutes with my hugging pillow (or a substitute), feeling the sensations in the body and encouraging the voices that accompany them. Most of the messages are familiar ... I heard one or two new things.

I am in awe of the notion that I no longer need to work for wages. What an incredible privilege. What an amazing Seattle summer to lounge around in--it's been sunny almost nonstop for weeks.

Finished reading All The Light We Cannot See. I really enjoyed the first 30% or 40% of the book. Then it got complicated and I couldn't follow it. Details about what happened during the war.

I spend much of my days fantasizing about the next delicious thing I might eat. A couple of weeks ago I started exerting more restraint in what I've been eating, because my clothes were becoming tight and I really want to wear a certain blue dress to N's wedding in September, otherwise I'll have to obtain a new one.

Last night I saw "Neither Wolf Nor Dog" with my friend S.

Delight and relief at being unemployed

I left my job, the one I'd held for 8.5 years, on January 13. I suffered a fair amount in that job. Pretty much every day since then I've experienced delight and relief at not having to go to that job anymore.

I've also gone over and over the numbers in my head and convinced myself that I really don't need earned income anymore. In other words, I could consider myself retired. Upon reaffirming this conclusion I have also experienced delight and relief.

Today, however, for the first time, I've noticed that the glow of my new situation is beginning to wear thin.

Experiencing this daily delight and relief over the past four months, I have tended to view it as a permanent state. Rationality tells me otherwise: all mental states are impermanent. In this case, although the facts that have delighted me (not having to go back to work at ISB, probably not needing to earn income ever again) have a good chance of sticking around, their newness will not stick around. And it's the newness, the contrast, that has been so delightful. Like falling in love, or recovering from a long illness. It is remarkable that, even so, the mind has clung to the fantasy of permanence.

Settling into this state of unemployment, of not needing to do anything in particular most days, I've watched myself expand the amount of time I spend on certain things that used to, of necessity, take only a small fraction of my time: cleaning house, cooking dinner, attending to finances, weeding the garden, attending to email. Spending time in bed with my partners. I've also watched myself become more sensitive to irritants in the home environment: the barky dog next door; the sounds of weed whackers, lawn mowers, and leaf blowers; sharing space with my partners 24/7 rather than being in a separate physical space 8-10 hours/day.

For the most part, the irritants haven't impinged on the overall sense of delight, and spending more time on mundane tasks has been enjoyable. This will, likely, gradually change.

Upon realizing that I didn't need to earn income, I put on hold the development of my new dementia care business, Team Emily. It might be soon time to begin developing it again. Perhaps toward the end of the summer.
teamemily.net

Exploring my difficulties with samatha, part 2

Some postscripts:

Another familiar difficulty that arose on this retreat is uncomfortable, distracting facial tension. This tended to increase as the days went by.

I want to describe how I get into what I think of as Kenneth's first jhana: In a single gesture, I close my eyes, quiet my breathing, place attention on a broad area that includes the sinuses, and will myself to enter a trance-like state. I can do it immediately. This is a version of a gesture I learned to make in order to enter the first jhana on Tina and Stephen's 2009 retreat. The state I enter now is much less deep, but the gesture is, I think, the same. To sustain this state, I then put attention lightly on the breath at the anapana spot.

This state feels less coarse, less physical, than the state I reach by trying to put all my attention directly on the breath. The hindrances are still present. I feel more locked in than with anapanasati, but not solidly locked in.

I would like to note that I had pretty much not thought at all about Kenneth's jhanas for the past 4.5 years, since he taught them to me. And when he taught them to me, I don't know what he told me about how to get to the first jhana, but I responded by making the familiar gesture above. Since I was able to get to Kenneth's second jhana from there, I figured it was what he meant by first jhana.

Another observation about sleepiness: when I am able to crisply remove my attention from the desire for sleep and back to the breath, I notice a surge of energy/sensation in the body. Does the sleepiness arise from aversion to energy/sensation?

Here are some questions I'm holding now:

-- are the mildly irritating sensations that arise for me with samatha practice the "pleasant" sensations that Leigh wants me to focus on? Or should I try to find something that's actually pleasant to me?

-- is there any use for the state I'm calling Kenneth's first jhana? More specifically, is it a state that can either support insight practice, or help me get to Leigh's jhanas or Tina/Stephen's jhanas? Might it qualify as a way of practicing anapanasati meditation, one that's perhaps easier than what I've been doing?

-- how can I get the guidance and support of a good teacher such as Tina/Stephen, Shaila, or Leigh, without going through the suffering of a residential retreat? I've thought a lot about how to make retreats more tolerable for me. Can I go any farther in making them more tolerable? Would it make more sense to do skype sessions with teachers while on home retreat? Or, what about Shaila's online courses? There are none scheduled at the moment but I could ask her what her plans are. I could also talk this over with Leigh and see if he either has suggestions for how retreat could work better for me, or how he could support me in home practice.

Exploring my difficulties with samatha

This is a detailed and technical post about the silent home retreat I am currently in the midst of. My previous post provides context.

I set aside May 5-12 as a silent home retreat to explore samatha practice. I began the evening of the 5th, and practiced diligently for 72 hours following the instructions I received from Tina Rasmussen and Stephen Snyder back in 2009, the instructions that led me to some kind of jhana state back then. I did anapanasati meditation (mindfulness of breathing), focusing specifically on the sensations of the breath as it passes across the upper lip and outer nostril area, and viewing the breath as an unchanging object rather than as a stream of constantly changing sensations.

Each day I spent about eight hours in seated meditation. I tried to meditate as much as I could without an attitude of forcing myself. I abstained from conversation, using my phone, and doing anything online other than finding audio recordings on this topic. As breaks between meditation sessions, I would walk, do other exercises, work in the garden, prepare and/or eat food, or do simple household tasks such as tidying or folding laundry. Sometimes I did more complex tasks: I steamed the wrinkles from some clothes which required reading the instructions for the steamer, and I organized my storage space in the attic which required thinking about how easily I wanted to access various items. Once I gave a light massage to my partner E, partly as a way to offer him nourishment during this period when I was secluded from most interaction him. I also did a guided compassion meditation with E, and once exchanged 5-minute verbal check-ins (each of stating how we're doing in life). Most mornings I stayed in bed quite late and snuggled with him, usually sitting upright to meditate for part of the time. On the 7th I walked to Janet's house for her weekly Sunday evening sitting, and left immediately afterward, before the conversation. So, in brief, the components of my retreat were meditation and seclusion from mental and sensory stimulation, with low-stimulation tasks interspersed between meditation sessions.

Sometimes my meditation was easy and enjoyable, and sometimes it was difficult and/or dull. Sometimes I felt that I was progressing-- that samadhi was deepening-- and other times I felt that I was not progressing. When I felt I wasn't, I reminded myself that progress does not necessarily feel like progress. I know this from experience and it is incredibly important.

The most effortful practice, but also the least dull and most gratifying, was during the first 24 to 48 hours, while the mind was settling from the busyness of non-retreat life. It was not exactly enjoyable, but I knew what it was I had to do, I knew how to do it, and it produced the desired results. Initially, distraction was strong; the mind repeatedly (every second or so) wanted to dwell on something other than the breath. I felt skillful during this period. I knew how to redirect the mind back to the breath. I could recognize each of the traditional five hindrances (desire, aversion, restlessness, sloth/torpor, doubt) as they occurred and could, as soon as recognized, immediately return attention to the breath. I employed appealing (to me) metaphors that I'd learned from various sources: slowly submerging my body in a cool pool on a hot, humid day (the Buddha's teaching); kneading soap flakes and water into a homogeneous ball of soap (also from the Buddha); cleaning house (one of Shaila Catherine's students, as reported in one of Shaila's books), deflecting the attacks of the hindrances one by one with ping-pong paddles (also from Shaila's books). As I write this, I feel gratitude for these small supportive teachings, and this leads me to gratitude for the deeper and greater teachings that have supported me in so many ways on this retreat.

Often the mind wandered into trains of thought that could last for several breaths. When I noticed this, I would bring attention back to the breath. At some point I realized I was doing this harshly and with self-judgment, and I remembered there was another way: to instead call up delight that I'd noticed the wandering mind. Still later I re-read Leigh Brasington's instruction which in the past I had found quite useful: when it is noticed that the mind has wandered, pause and relax before returning attention to the breath. This really helps the mind avoid harshness and self-judgment.

Somewhere during the first 24 hours, I realized that doubt was strong. Doubt can be hard to recognize. It dawned on me that it was not only a frequent momentary hindrance, it was a pervasive attitude that was coloring my entire practice. I remembered that on perhaps day 6 of my 2009 retreat with Tina and Stephen, Tina began the evening dharma talk with, "Why do you not yet have jhana? It could be one of the defilements." She then gave a talk on how to work with the defilements, which are deep delusions that color our experience. I don't remember any of the content of that talk, but I checked online and saw that doubt is listed by some as a defilement. I saw that I had a belief that I was not good enough, not worthy, that this practice would never work for me, that I was wasting my time. And this belief was leading to pessimistic judgments of every activity and experience. I was glad to recognize this and hoped that simple awareness and self-compassion would relieve me of the harmful effects of this doubt. To help, on May 7th I did something that is almost universally recommended but that I have long resisted: I began the day with a statement of purpose that included my immediate goal of developing and understanding samadhi, my overarching goal of relieving my own suffering and the suffering of all beings, recognition of my own skill, wisdom, and worthiness, and expressions of gratitude for all that supports me in my practice. I had the sense that this was helpful. But it was hard, so I didn't do it the next day.

[Note to self: perhaps creating more ritual around my day will be useful. It was hard to start my day on the 7th with a statement of purpose partly because I don't normally do it. To support myself in doing it regularly, I can compose a statement and just read it each morning. The idea of composing such a statement is appealing.]

Often I was visited by sleepiness. For many years my strategy with sleepiness was to struggle to stay awake, perhaps by switching to a standing posture. Later, averse to struggle and seeing it as counterproductive, I adopted a practice of yielding to the sleepiness by taking a nap; this resulted in a lot of sleeping and unpleasant grogginess upon waking, and I knew that the sleep was probably not actually needed. More lately, including on this retreat, I've tried seeing sleepiness as a defect or mistake in attention, as I think I read in Shaila Catherine's book Wisdom Wide and Deep. I can see now that sleepiness is a desire for escape that suddenly arises and that attention immediately goes to. When it appears, sleepiness is very seductive, like a piece of delicious chocolate cake-- I feel like I just have to have it! Sometimes directing the attention immediately, firmly, and without fuss back to the breath is enough to dispel the sleepiness, and this is wonderfully gratifying. But sometimes it doesn't work. During some meditation sessions I would attempt this 3 or 4 times, and in the end find myself falling asleep or, quite unpleasantly, with a story of struggle and defeat. Such stories are quite demoralizing in my practice.

So these were my challenges during the initial day or two. I was more or less happily meeting these challenges and looking forward the pleasure and satisfaction of deepening samadhi. Once the mind is concentrated, it locks onto the meditation object, and less effort is required. This state is sometimes called access concentration because it is the state that allows access to the jhanas. Enjoyment increases as the jhana factors of piti and sukha arise. I was hoping that the nimitta would arise-- typically a bright white light in the mind's eye that is necessary for the attainment of the deep jhana states taught by Pa Auk Sayadaw-- but I really felt it would be OK if it didn't, that I'd be quite happy and satisfied if all that occurred on this retreat was access concentration.

But, by the 8th, I was still not in access concentration. Ever. My mind was always drifting off into thought for multiple breath cycles. Further, meditation was less engaging because the hindrances were weaker. Now, one wants the hindrances to weaken! This is desirable! But without desire, aversion, restlessness and doubt assailing me over and over and over again, the mind didn't have anything to occupy itself with, and it grew lazy. At least that's my interpretation at the moment.

The one time when I knew every breath, when the mind didn't drift into thought, was when I was listening to talks online. I listened to talks by Tina and Stephen on the 6th and 7th and found them very motivating. And while I was listening, I was putting my attention on my meditation object, the sensations of breath at the nostrils. And my sense was that I was aware of each one without interruption. So, by giving my mind something additional to do (listening to the talk), I supported it to be able to pay attention to the subtle sensations of the breath. It seems there is something to be learned here.

But when I was not simultaneously listening to a talk, my meditation became dull, unengaging. I can't think of any better words for it. And I just didn't want to do it. I remembered my experience of doing samatha practice for six weeks straight at the Forest Refuge in 2011. It was such a slog! Some of my sittings were easeful and joyful, but it was not consistent at all. Often ease and joy only arose after an hour or more of sitting; often they did not arise at all in a given sitting. After the first few days, it didn't appear to me that samadhi was deepening further. I kept practicing, kept trying to have faith, kept using readings and the teacher's words for inspiration, kept trying to adjust my practice. Now, as I write, I am quite aware that I am telling a particular and sad story, and I am aware that putting this story onto the page is to reify it. Reader (especially future Terry), keep in mind that this is just one view of what happened for me at the Forest Refuge. But, anyway, given the story that six weeks of slogging at the Forest Refuge didn't teach me a lot about samatha practice, I didn't have a lot of hope that slogging was going to help me now. I don't feel motivated to slog again.

The evening of the 8th, I went to select another audio recording for inspiration.  There were only a few relevant Tina & Stephen talks, and I wanted to ration them, so I thought I'd listen to a talk by Shaila Catherine this time. Also, I was quite interested in hearing varied perspectives on the practice. Shaila had only one pertinent talk online, entitled "concentration". I listened to it and was disappointed-- it was quite general, without specific instructions for practice. (I just now found that she purposely chose to not provide talks with specific instructions, preferring to offer them only in contexts where she can give individual attention to students. She does occasionally provide online courses in samatha practice, something I may someday want to consider.)

I came away from this general talk without the added inspiration I'd been seeking, and, in retrospect, it was then that I gave up on my initial specific intention for this retreat: to attain access concentration by practicing samatha meditation many hours each day with the support of seclusion. I still held the more general intention of exploring samatha practice. But I began to be less stringent about seclusion, and I began to add more diverse activities to my day, including the very engaging post-gate Liberation Unleashed inquiry work I'd been doing before the retreat.

The next day I read samatha instructions from two authors who teach lighter jhanas: Leigh Brasington (who teaches what I'd call middle-depth jhana) and Daniel Ingram (who writes about a pretty light jhana). Both authors instruct the meditator to get to access concentration before attempting to enter jhana, but their criteria for access concentration are correspondingly less stringent.

After reading, I sat and meditated, and, interestingly, found that my mind for the first time all retreat did stay on the breath without distraction for something like 20 minutes. Maybe "giving up" allowed me the relaxation necessary to concentrate. This success was pleasant but not hugely inspiring.

The day after that-- yesterday-- I remembered that on my 2009 jhana retreat with Tina and Stephen, thoughts were always more present in my mind than it seemed they were supposed to be according to the instruction. I vaguely remember reporting this to Tina and having her tell me that it was probably not a problem. I vaguely remember that even on the threshold to jhana, and perhaps in the jhana state itself, there was more than just "wispy" thinking happening. Tina and Stephen, Shaila Catherine, and Leigh Brasington all state that in access concentration thoughts are not only "wispy" but usually about the meditation itself, rather than planning, daydreaming, or judging thoughts. But if I remember correctly I always had planning, daydreaming, and judging thoughts all the way through that 2009 retreat.

Yesterday I thought, "My assessment has been that I do not have stable access concentration. But maybe that assessment is incorrect. Let me try to use the samadhi I do have to enter Leigh Brasington's middle-depth jhana." I've known about Leigh's technique for years. It's simple: once one attains access concentration, shift attention to pleasant sensation and wait for jhana to arise. I've known about this technique, but have hesitated to apply it, for two reasons: I'm still interested in, and have hope of attaining, a stable nimitta, and I have the notion that if I'm going to do Leigh's technique I want to do it right and not just play around with it. This notion is consistent with the part of my personality that deeply fears straying from instructions.

So yesterday I did anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing) for just a few minutes, then shifted attention to pleasant sensations in my hands and arms. When I am doing samatha meditation, pleasant sensations are usually present throughout much of my body. They generally arise immediately with the first breath. I think of these sensations as instances of piti, the first jhana factor. I should add the caveat that, over the years, I've actually shifted from seeing these sensations as entirely pleasant. In fact, I now see them as kind of irritating-- and it is said that piti can become irritating. But I think these are the sensations that Leigh is talking about, so I shifted my attention to those. I found it required significant effort to keep attention on those sensations. Leigh's specific instruction is to pay attention to the pleasantness of the sensations. Since I didn't find them totally pleasant, it might be more accurate to say that I put attention on the character of the sensations.

I tried this for two or three meditation sessions. In each case I waited for jhana for only a few minutes. (It didn't arise.) In the afternoon I noticed that my body was filled with these sensations at an uncomfortable and distracting level. I did something, can't remember what, to take my mind off of them, and they subsided.

I tentatively concluded that I actually did have strong enough samadhi for Leigh's jhana practice, and that all I now need to do is refine the way I pay attention to pleasant sensation.

I've been writing this in fits and starts for several hours, and there is still more on my mind to say, but I want to turn toward practice now. So I will end this here. Maybe I will try Leigh's practice again now.

My experience with samatha meditation

Samatha meditation: any form of meditation intended to cultivate a one-pointed focus on an unchanging meditation object, or samadhi.

Samadhi is pleasant. The mind in samadhi is calm and undistracted; the body experiences physical pleasure. Every meditation experience includes some degree of samadhi, and it is common to mistake this pleasantness as the end goal of meditation. In actuality, the pleasantness is a temporary side-effect; the end goal is liberation, and if one single-mindedly pursues samadhi in one's meditation, one misses the real fruits of a meditation practice. According to the Theravadan Buddhist path, liberation arises from insight into the true nature of reality, which in turn arises from Vipassana or insight meditation. The effectiveness of insight meditation is said to be greatly enhanced by samadhi, and this is the more wholesome reason to pursue samatha meditation.

I began earnestly pursuing samatha meditation in 2009 when I did a weekend retreat, followed several months later by a two-week retreat, taught by Tina Rasmussen and Stephen Snyder. During the two-week I experienced a deep state of samadhi called jhana; this state is said to be extra powerful in enhancing the effectiveness of insight meditation. Since then, I have wished to build my skill in attaining jhana so that my insight meditation can be more effective. Although jhana is very valuable in this way, it's also difficult to achieve and master (depending on the standards for jhana; more on this below), and that is one reason why most Western lay practitioners do not master it. Over the past decade the jhanas have been taught much more in the West than they had been previously, but still, although a good number of experienced meditators have now been exposed to jhana practice and have tasted the state of jhana, few have mastered it such that they can enter jhana routinely and make use of it in the course of their daily practice, or even in the course of their Vipassana retreat practice.

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After the happy and rewarding, though effortful, retreat of 2009, I signed up for a two-month retreat in 2011 to develop my skill in jhana. This retreat was going to be taught by Pa Auk Saydaw, the great master who had taught Tina and Stephen. I was joyful on the fifth day of this retreat to experience the familiar jhana state I'd experienced in 2009. After emerging from the state, I went on my afternoon run with a post-jhana lightness and mental clarity that was also familiar from 2009. My joy was short-lived, though. When I reported this experience to Sayadaw, saying, "I think I entered the first jhana today," he immediately replied, "Full absorption is sure". (The jhana state is described as a state of absorption.) With Sayadaw's Burmese accent, it initially sounded like "pull abchorpchon eschure," and it took a while for me to comprehend the disappointing message: my teacher did not think I'd entered jhana to his standard-- if I had, I wouldn't have had any doubt about it. The immediacy of his answer suggested he knew this before I even said a word. It is said that great masters have the ability to sense the jhana factors present in other meditators for a short time after each meditation session; I wonder if he saw that I did not have all five of the necessary factors.

Every day on this retreat I practiced with sincere determination. The teacher's assistant instructed me to not try to enter jhana again until the nimitta, a bright white light seen with the mind's eye, was strong and continuous. This never happened. A weak nimitta was sometimes present but usually it was completely absent. As the retreat progressed I developed an aversion to samatha practice. I strategized techniques to work with the aversion, to ignore it, power through it, or inspire my way past it. After six weeks I felt so angry and discouraged that I abandoned samatha practice and spent the rest of the retreat doing the Vipassana practice I'd been doing as my main practice since I became a regular meditator in 2001. Aversion to samatha practice was persistent and I did not try to do this practice again for several months, perhaps over a year.

Was the jhana I'd experienced in 2009 not "full absorption"? Was the state I reported to Sayadaw in 2011 the same as what I'd reported to Tina and Stephen in 2009, or somehow lesser? The fact is that in the world of meditation there is a wide range of standards for jhana (see Richard Shankman's book for a review), and Pa Auk Sayadaw is known for having probably the most rigorous standards in the world. In both 2009 and 2011 I'd experienced some kind of absorption that some experts would have called jhana. Each state called jhana is useful as preparation for Vipassana meditation, but the deeper the jhana (the more rigorous the standards), the better.

I did not intend to choose the teacher with the most rigorous standards. My path simply led me to him. He had taught my good friend Shaila Catherine, and she advised me to learn his method. At the time I didn't know there were choices. On the other end of the spectrum, in 2012 another teacher, Kenneth Folk, led me through what he considered to be all eight jhanas in the course of a single skype session. I played with those states for a couple of weeks but never made them an integral part of my practice. Let's try to remember ... yes ... I do remember how to enter Kenneth's first jhana, I just did so and it took me about two seconds to enter it! I never placed value on this jhana. I see now that I never even believed that it could be a useful prelude to Vipassana meditation. It just seemed too easy. Let me say that it would probably not be easy for a beginning meditator. It was easy for me, someone who'd practiced Vipassana for over a decade and who'd just come out of a 2-month silent retreat.

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Fast forward to 2017. This year I am, by choice, unemployed. I have vast amounts of leisure due to good health, financial security, and few obligations. I have felt interest in again pursuing samatha meditation, but at a more leisurely pace than before, without necessarily going to any retreat centers but by, instead, creating conditions of seclusion in my own home. So far I have done three four-day periods of seclusion, of "home retreat", and I am now in the midst of a seven-day. During all of these home retreats I've explored, with varying levels of intensity, samatha practice. I intend to talk about these explorations in another blog post.

Postscript: I just noticed that earlier this year I wrote another post on this same theme.

Dreams of my living situation

This summer, Z, E, and I are embarking upon six months of living in our house without other housemates. I've felt anxious about this, about losing the presence of other people and about losing income. I've also felt anxious that we would become entrenched in the lifestyle of living without housemates and that inertia would keep us from having housemates again.

Z has been the mover toward this period of not having housemates, and often, she thinks her ideal is to never have housemates. I've expressed my anxiety to Z. At one point she said, "well, I might be open to having just one housemate, in the basement" and I said, "but I like it better with two housemates." In exasperation, she replied, "What is it that makes you want to stuff our house with people?!"

I felt very defensive in that moment. But lately I've realized more and more that when my partners accuse me of something in anger, it almost always has important truth in it. So I've pondered this question on my own: what is it that makes me want to stuff my house with people?

In 2008, I bought the 3-bedroom house I now live in. My intention was to live there with E (I had not yet met Z) and two or three housemates. E and I would share one of the two large bedrooms, a single person or couple, or parent with small child, would live in the other large bedroom, and another person would live in the third bedroom. I would receive rental income that would enable me to afford the monthly mortgage. With the income I had at the time, I would not have been able to afford the mortgage payment without rental income from E and at least one other person. Even if I put nothing into my retirement fund, I'd still need that rental income to stay in the black.

I was anxious that I would not be able to create a harmonious living situation. I'd always been in favor of living in community. At least in theory. In practice, I found that when I lived with others, I almost always over time developed irritations with people's idiosyncrasies. In fact, these irritations have developed in every living situation I've stayed in for more than a year. For each such situation, I can remember complaining to somebody about the situation and, from time to time, feeling dread about returning home at the end of the school/work day and needing to be in close contact with my housemate(s).

My solution back in 2008 was to only have housemates who wanted to live with us for a year or less. This is in contrast to most communal living situations, where folks are seeking long-term housemates. I was anxious about my solution because it revealed to others my misanthropic intolerance. However, I mustered the courage to move forward with it, and it has served extremely well. We have had over twenty different people live in this house and each situation has been quite harmonious and enjoyable.

Then, in 2015, the 4-BR house directly behind this house came up for sale, and I bought it with intention to extend our household. I added a bedroom in the basement of that house. Now, there are typically six people living in that house (the west house) and five living in our house (the east house). By U.S. standards, both houses are indeed stuffed with people! What is it that drives me to create this uncommon situation?

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I've had two dreams lately that have helped elucidate the answer. The dreams were similar. The second came last night and is fresh in my memory.

In the dream, I am living with the same people I live with now in the east house, but instead of being an aesthetically pleasing 1926 Craftsman, it's a very plain ranch style house with a plain white walls and inexpensive wall-to-wall carpeting. It's a long house, with the living room in front and a long hallway with bedrooms leading to the back door. There is a scene where I'm standing in the sparsely furnished living room talking with a woman housemate, and in the middle of our conversation I notice that two young men are also standing and talking in the living room, and I remark, "This household is so great, there can be two pairs of people conversing in this room and it doesn't feel crowded, in fact I didn't even notice those guys were there until just now."

Through the course of the dream, people are constantly coming and going in the house. Some are housemates, some are familiar friends, and some are people unfamiliar to me. They are young people, multi-racial and multi-ethnic but mostly white, and there is a sense that they are flowing through the house. Often they come in the front door and leave through the back door. At any given moment, I don't know exactly who is in the house, and this provides me with mild satisfaction and delight. There is also some uneasiness, but it is manageable and worth bearing because it is so pleasurable to know that the house feels like home to so many people.

The backyard is barren, triangular, and enclosed by a low chain-link fence with a gate on each side of the triangle. This backyard is similar to the backyards of houses I've stayed in in Denver, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe. I go out the back door and into the yard. People are flowing through the yard, too, sometimes staying a while, sometimes just passing through. I have an encounter with a dark-complected man in his 30s. We have some kind of disagreement. There is struggle, verbal, emotional, and physical. We end up on the ground, and I know that he is considering raping me. I think I could get away and run into the house, but I feel drawn to staying in this interaction. There is something I want to get out of it; I want resolution. I can't remember this part of the dream very clearly now; it has faded from memory faster than other parts of the dream. It is similar to many, many interactions I've had in real life; it is typical for me to feel that I cannot extricate myself from a relationship, even an unwanted and potentially harmful relationship. Through psychotherapy and solo inner work I have a strong sense that this relationship pattern began in infancy with my mother, and was reinforced during a very dimly remembered episode of sexual abuse with an older male relative (who, I realize now, would likely have been a dark-complected man in his 30s). At some point the interaction with the man in the dream ends and other things take place.

In the dream it is very close to the birthday of K, a woman who in real life was our housemate until just recently. K has planned a party for herself at the house, and guests have begun arriving, but K is nowhere to be found. In fact, none of us has seen her for several days. I am anxious, but not so much for K's well-being as for the party that she organized-- I feel I must do something about it, I must make it happen successfully. It's not clear to me what day the party was set for, today or tomorrow. Guests arrive at the house, then leave as part of the general flow of people. I fear that they won't come back. Still, I order a cake for this party. I'm irritated that K was so flighty as to disappear without telling us where she was going or when she was coming back, and had organized this party leaving me to take care of executing it. I'm vaguely aware that I am getting myself more involved in this party than is called for, acting out a pattern that recurs in my real life.

Nearby there is a community swimming pool, also with a low chain-link fence around it. There are two pools, small and large. The large one has a deep end, like a 12-foot deep end. I am standing near it talking to someone, maybe the dark-complected man from before. He is explaining that the large pool is supposed to be empty for maintenance, and as I look more closely I see that it is empty with a layer of dirt at the bottom. And he points out to me that the heavy rain currently happening is accumulating in that large pool. Again, I look more closely and see that there is a puddle at the bottom and that the dirt is dark, like mud. It is known that this is important, something should be done about it.

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After waking I talked about this dream with E, and he helped me relate this dream to what may be going on in my psyche, and what is happening in my real life.

Throughout my life I have found it uncomfortable to be alone with one other person. I fear being trapped, or feeling trapped. When I am alone with one other person, I feel that I must give my full attention to that person, especially if they are talking to me, and that it is dangerous to stop paying attention. Anxiety arises and my sense of my own wants and needs almost completely disappears. This manifests in short, medium, and long time scales. For example, I'm ill at ease talking with one other person at a party, working one-on-one on a project, and being in a long-term intimate relationship with one partner.

When I was first getting to know my partner E, we went to an event where scores of friends were all camping in the same campground. After we set up our tent, E wanted for the two of us to hang out there together. I felt a strong drive to get out of the tent and mingle. I explained, "I want to be with the people."

In addition to feeling afraid of being alone with one other person, I also fear committing to a small group of people. I don't join leadership teams or boards of directors. I once joined a musical group with full commitment, but after a very painful interpersonal conflict, I declined to ever offer that kind of commitment to any other musical group. I sometimes feel an initial burst of enthusiasm for starting a new small group of people to pursue a common interest, but almost always escape before the group has coalesced. And I don't want to commit to living long-term with a set group of people.

So all of this contributes to my desire to live with an ever-changing group of people.

In 2008, when I envisioned the kind of community I wanted to create in my house, I envisioned exactly the kind of flow that I saw in my dream! One specific of my vision was that we'd have weekly salons at our house where an ever-changing group of very smart and interesting people would gather, enjoy refreshments, and develop amazing world-changing ideas. I also envisioned that my goddaughter R would regularly drop by the house after school with her friends. Flow!

Perhaps this why the one major flaw I saw with the house was that its only door to the backyard was from the basement bedroom. There was no way to get directly to the backyard from the common areas; it would be necessary to go out the front door and around the side. This felt bad to me. I imagined a trapped feeling. I thought the house would feel constipated. As soon as I moved in, I arranged for someone to build French doors from the kitchen to a new back deck, which would then lead down to the back yard. After this was completed, I asked the previous home owners if they'd ever thought about doing this. They said that it hadn't crossed their minds and that they'd felt completely satisfied with the previous arrangement.

Reflecting on the images of flow through the house, another image arises: that of blood cells coursing through blood vessels, occasionally eddying and churning around corners and obstacles. Curiously, another word for blood cell is corpuscle, deriving from the Latin corpus for body.

Long before I bought the west house, I'd had dreams of buying the west house. And always, a core element of my dream was to take down the fence between the two backyards, allowing folks to move freely between the two houses and also to pass through to get from the street the west house faces to the street the east house faces. The houses are both in the center of a block that's 1/4 mile long, so normally it's a 7 minute walk to get from house to house. It brought me immense satisfaction to take down the fence and create a path between the two houses that allowed us to shorten that walk from 7 minutes to one minute. My fantasy extended to opening up the pathway to everyone in the neighborhood, but in real life I decided this would lead to litter and noise issues I'd rather avoid.

Last month we had a house guest whose daughter and son-in-law were living on the streets in a town a half hour north of here. They were using heroin. A friend helped our guest locate the two and bring them back to Seattle; our guest texted me and asked if the two could stay in our house with us. I brought this up with Z and E and said, "The answer is No. We can't have heroin users in the house. They may steal our stuff." We discussed it a bit more but decided in the end that they couldn't stay with us. Although I gave an emphatic No at the beginning, I was in part saying No to my own self, who longed to say Yes. Yes to every part of everybody.

My identity as a polyamorous person arises from the same desires and fears. I want to be able to say Yes to everybody. And I am afraid to be alone with one person, to feel trapped.

Inquiry into desire and ill will

Last couple weeks I've been working on breaking the Ten Fetters using the technique of a fellow named Satyadana as shared in the Liberation Unleashed forum and facebook group. (Although anyone can go to the forum-- and I highly recommend you do if you're curious-- the material on breaking the Ten Fetters is only available to you after you've gone through their process of seeing through the illusion of self-- again, highly recommended.)

Was reading a thread wherein a student was being guided to look at desire for chocolate. The guide instructed them to see what the initial sensation is when first seeing chocolate. I thought I knew what the initial sensation was for me: an uncomfortable conglomeration of tensions in the body that I call craving. But when I looked more closely-- when I first looked at a blank wall, then looked at the chocolate, alert to the initial sensations-- I saw that before the conglomeration there is a neutral sensation in the back of the mouth/top of the throat. Exciting to see that!

Now I am supposed to stay with that initial sensation, notice the nascent reaction (the conglomeration of sensation and thought I call craving) without yielding to it, and inquire: what links the two? This inquiry is called "staying in the gap".

If I can stay in the gap-- and I can-- clearly the reaction does not necessarily have to happen. Supposedly, seeing this really clearly can weaken and even break craving and ill will across the board, for all objects. Super exciting!

For me, the link seems to be a thought chain: first, "here is a food I especially enjoy". Then, "I should try to consume it because it is productive to obtain and consume delightful things; it builds up the Terry entity".

This second thought I know to be false. Even the first is suspect.

What makes those thoughts arise? Clearly they don't have to. I suppose it's habit.

I intend to do this exercise some more and see if craving in general diminishes.

Somanautics - last day

I enjoyed day 6, the final day, of my cadaver dissection class, doing a variety of things. I spent another couple of hours with the shoulder, really trying to understand the bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. I enjoyed dissecting a testicle; this is something I've had the urge to do for decades, perhaps due to some latent misandry. The teaching assistant showed me how to remove the fatty tissue of the mesentery, leaving behind a delicate lacey network of blood vessels and nerves. I did that for a little while but found I didn't have patience and interest to do the whole thing. I visited another table and saw a classmate doing similarly with a kidney.

I worked with my teammates to reveal Zinc's spine from the rear. I was amazed to see how tough the material is protecting the posterior portion of the spine. I'd thought it would be easy to take away everything but the bone, but we didn't even get close to that. Likewise, I saw on a different form that the vertebrae and intervertebral disks were covered in very tough material; the disks seemed as hard as the vertebrae. I felt reassured to learn that my own spinal column was so well protected.

My teammates and I then turned Zinc over onto his back so we could dissect the thorax, where we saw that the lungs were quite damaged from Zinc's COPD, and the heart was enlarged. I was surprised to see that the heart was encased in a thick fatty layer and I enjoyed removing that layer to reveal the pericardium (membrane surrounding the heart).

Gil gave us a fascinating detailed dissection demonstration of Zinc's pelvic organs: genitals, prostate, urinary bladder, and rectum. He also did a dissection demonstration of the brain of another form; I only half paid attention to that as I was absorbed with my shoulder dissection, but it was easy to see what he was doing because he had someone train a video camera on the dissection and this was connected to several very large monitors around the room.

As the end of the day drew near, we worked with more abandon, cutting up organs just to see what was inside. In the end, our form, Zinc, was quite dismembered.

I found the whole day fascinating as one body part after another was revealed to me in more detail than I had understood before.

We spent the last 45 minutes putting the remains of each form into a sort of body bag, and the bag into a cardboard coffin that would be transported to a crematorium. We had saved all the tissue we'd dissected away throughout the week in separate bags for each form so that all the tissue could be reunited in the end. We then put all the dissection tables into a star formation, as they had been when we'd arrived on day 1, with flowers and tea candles on each one, and we once again thanked the donors and their families, and one another.

I highly recommend this class for anyone keen to dissect a human cadaver.

Somanautics - days 3, 4, and 5

I wrote this at the end of day 5:

On Day 3 we removed the deep fascia from the muscles and differentiated the muscles from one another. On Day 4, yesterday, we opened the abdominal cavity and began examining the viscera (internal organs). Today, we continued our exploration of both muscles and viscera from the back of the form.

Tomorrow is our last day. Leaving class today, I felt sad that tomorrow we'll be saying good-bye to Zinc, our team's cadaver form. It's like a second death for him; nobody will ever be with his body again. Over the past few days we've learned things about him that he never knew about himself. His body was massive in every respect, and although he died at age 70 of COPD, every part of his body we've observed so far has been in surprisingly magnificent condition. (We haven't looked at his heart and lungs yet.) I feel connected to him and grateful to him and his family for donating his body for study.

Throughout the class, my attention has been drawn to parts of the body that have particularly interested me in myself. There is a spot on my lower right abdomen that is peculiarly sensitive, and that desires deep massage. I strove to see what was inside the abdomen at that spot that could create this phenomenon. After exploring and also consulting G, the professional in massaging the viscera, I could not find a conclusive answer for this. Deep in that spot is the psoas muscle, but it doesn't feel to me that this spot is that deep. More shallow is the mesentery and the intestines, and, in particular, the appendix and the spot where the small intestine joins the large intestine. A body worker once remarked to me that perhaps I was feeling that junction. Finally, G suggested I could be feeling adhesions that formed early in my life as a response to trauma.

I've also been drawn to exploring the rotator cuff, since a year ago I developed inflammation in that area after doing some house painting and the pain has not gone away. Over the past three days I've spent several hours dissecting the left shoulder of the form. I now feel that I understand the rotator cuff. It is composed of four distinct muscles: the teres minor, the subscapularis, the superspinatus, and the infraspinatus. One of the tendons of the superspinatus passes under the little hook that protrudes from the top of the scapula before inserting into the head of the humerus; perhaps this is the spot that still hurts when I lift my arm overhead or use my arm to move something from the side of my body to the front.

I also opened up the joint of the great toe, because I have arthritis there. I felt envious of this 70 year old man who had no arthritis in that joint.

Out of 29 students, 25 are women. I really like that. Not only do I not have to worry about muscling my way to the dissecting table, I am forced to learn from and rely on the expertise of other women.

Somanautics after day 2

Last night I was exhausted at the end of class. My thought was that if I hadn't already paid $2500 for the class, I'd probably not come back. We'd spent the second half of the day, nearly four hours, removing skin from the forms (Gil calls the cadavers "forms"). It was hard physical work, especially for the 6-person team I'm on: our form was well over 6 feet tall, quite broad and heavy, with thick, inflexible skin. We named him Zinc, after a white residue we could see on his skin. I had the idea that we needed to remove all the skin yesterday, so I was working hard to do that, and my focus was on getting it done rather than satisfying my curiosity. It was fun at first, novel, and I enjoyed trying to develop my skill with the scalpel in cutting right at the border between skin and superficial fascia (a.k.a. the adipose layer). But the novelty wore off and I felt exhausted well before the 5:00 quitting time.

At the end of the day, Gil advised us to have a complete change of pace for the evening (he called it a "state change"). He also advised us to spend several minutes gazing intently at a natural form that is different from what we'd been staring at all day, a flower or a tree. I followed both pieces of advice. I found that gazing intently at a flower was very refreshing; I could feel something relax inside me as I did it. It reminded me of the relaxation I felt during the nature scenes that Gil inserted periodically into his dissection videos. As far as state change, I took a shower as soon as I got home, then prepared a spread of wine, cheese, and crackers for me and Z in the patio, where we spent the whole evening.

Today we spent a couple hours debriefing from yesterday and listening to Gil's semi-spontaneous philosophical and anatomical musings, including stuff about how the superficial fascia has a bad rap in our culture to the point where people undergo damaging home "remedies" to reduce it and/or redistribute it. Then we dove into removing the superficial fascia from our form. I enjoyed this more than yesterday's task. It was physically much easier. And it was interesting to try to discover where the superficial fascia ended and the deep fascia (the very thin layer covering the muscles) began. I felt more playful today and less worried about making a mistake.

In the middle of the afternoon, Gil came to our table and did a nearly hour-long lecture/demo on male genitalia, including lengthy remarks about how circumcision just doesn't make any sense at all. It was fascinating to watch the dissection. The lecture, complete with ribald jokes, was a little uncomfortable for me, so I made myself comfortable by continuing to remove fascia from one of the legs while Gil spoke (manual work generally soothes me when I need to listen to anybody at length).

Before Gil's demo, I sliced into the scrotum myself and pulled away the tissue until I'd exposed one of the testicles. This is something I'd always vaguely wanted to do when handling the scrotum of a living human.

Gil then wanted to do a lecture/demo on female genitalia, but, sadly, the two female forms in the room had already had their genitalia accidentally mangled to the point where an exposition of the clitoris was not possible.

I am noticing that my knowledge of what the body looks like on the inside is gradually growing, and this is what I came to the workshop for. I feel happy about that.

My fears about the teamwork being uncomfortable or challenging have not come to fruition. The teamwork is very easy and harmonious. I am enjoying all my classmates. Camaraderie is growing. I've been interacting most with G, an Israeli manual therapist who focuses on the abdomen, and T, a mathematician, ballet dancer, and Pilates teacher from Singapore.

Somanautics, day 1, morning

I'm on lunch break. Our Workshop is being held inside a dental school near the Moscone Convention Center. This morning, we introduced ourselves to one another, then to our cadavers. There are 29 students in the class and five cadavers. The students are mostly white and mostly women, but a range of Ages, from maybe late twenties to Mid sixties.

We feel like we already know our teacher, Gil Hedley, because we all had to watch many hours of video of him doing dissections. He's quite a character, and I like him so far. He has a very, very holistic approach. He's interested in the body as a whole, and interested in our relationships with the cadavers. He encourages us to take care of ourselves.

This morning we spent time with the cadavers in their intact state. They've been embalmed, and are several months old, typically. The color of the skin, the texture of the body, even the shape of the body, when embalmed, is quite different from when it's in its natural state. I was quite engaged at first, then found myself fatigued and Restless. I took Gil's invitation to self-care seriously, and wandered around the room while he was talking. Tuning in on and off. At lunch time, we covered the cadavers with the white cloths they had been covered with when we arrived, and I felt a sense of relief. I wonder what it is that is stressful for me about being with the cadavers? Or maybe I was just ready for lunch.

While some people had trepidation about seeing the cadavers, my initial trepidation was about needing to work together with people I did not know. However, after this morning, that trepidation has passed. We have a team of six working on one cadaver, a tall and broad older male we have named Zinc.

Somanautics: before the workshop

Tomorrow will be Day 1 of my six day human cadaver dissection course in San Francisco with Gil Hedley. He calls the topic of the course somanautics, and we students are somanauts.

I heard about Hedley's courses several years ago. I think it was Fall 2012. I was talking to an acquaintance I met at a meditation retreat (I think), and, I'm not sure, but I said something like, "I've always wanted to dissect a human cadaver, but you have to be a medical student to do that." And this person said, "Oh, no, actually there is this guy who offers these courses that anybody can take." I got very excited and looked up the courses, and wanted to sign up right away for the April course in San Francisco, but somehow it didn't fit into my schedule at the time.

And every autumn since then I've considered signing up for Hedley's San Francisco course the following April, but always decided it wasn't the right time. Until this past autumn. It's funny because although I clearly remember the excitement with which I wanted to sign up back in 2012, now that I'm on the threshold of the course, I no longer feel that excitement. Just a quiet, hopeful anticipation, and some anxiety that I will find it physically, mentally, and/or socially draining.

It's a requirement that we all watch 7.5 hours of dissection video before the course starts. It's in eight segments, and I'm watching segment 7 right now. By my side is an exquisite text lent me by my friend Joan, Grant's Atlas of Anatomy, Fifth Edition, 1962. The segment I'm watching is an examination of the intact viscera (internal organs). I'm finding myself unexpectedly enthralled, going back and forth between the video and the text and thrilled to see the correspondence between the cadaver and the hand drawn illustrations. Here are a few things I've been excited to learn:

• The small intestines are all connected by a planar piece of tissue called the mesentery! You can see it illustrated here. And I guess I've seen illustrations like this before, but there is nothing like seeing someone handle the mesentery and follow the entire 6 meters of the small intestine. The mesentery and intestine together are like a Chihuly glass flower, with the intestine at the outer edge of the flower-- except there is a lot more folding in the mesentery in order to have an edge 6 meters long. According to Time magazine, the mesentery is a newly discovered organ. They must mean that it is newly considered to be an organ, since it is illustrated in the 1962 text I am using.
• The liver is massive! And the nutrients and toxins gleaned from food in the small intestines travel through blood vessels through the mesentery to the mesentery root and then directly to the liver.
• The diaphragm is not a thick, dome-shaped muscle, but more like a thin, drapable sheath covering the liver and stomach. I see now that every time I breath, the diaphragm is gently rocking and massaging those organs!
• Incredibly, covering the lower abominal organs like an apron is an intricate layer of tissue I'd never heard of called the greater omentum. Apparently this tissue can be removed without major side effects, but according to Wikipedia it is involved in "infection and wound isolation" and "can often be found wrapped around areas of infection and trauma". In fact, in one of the cadavers in the dissection video, when the abdomen was opened the greater omentum was not covering the organs like an apron but was "snuggled" (Gil Hedley's word) up below the stomach. So it's a large piece of tissue that somehow travels around and helps heal whatever needs healing!

One good thing about watching these videos is that it's gotten me accustomed to seeing a human body being cut into. When the first cut was made in the first video, it was a bit shocking.

Someone suggested I keep a journal of my experience during the class. If I do, it will be here.

Watching rape on TV with my father

I'm visiting my Dad in Millbrae, staying with him in the house I grew up in. I've done this 1 to 6 times per year since I struck out on my own as an adult. Until a few years ago, Mom was here, too.

During my 20s, 30s, and even 40s, staying here was significantly uncomfortable. Those discomforts mellowed out, and now I feel quite comfortable here. One of the biggest discomforts used to be the constant sound of the television in the common area of the house. I could hear it in my bedroom, and although it wasn't loud there, just the idea of it enraged me, triggered a sense of powerlessness. Now that I feel more in control of my own life, the idea of Dad watching lots of TV doesn't bother me much, and I've found that I can mute the sound of it by opening the bedroom door leading to the patio and running the fountain there.

Dad has always watched TV shows and movies that include sex and violence. This used to sicken and enrage me. I never wanted to be watching TV along with him when such scenes appeared, especially sex scenes. I don't like sharing anything sexual with him. I still avoid being in the room when he watches these shows.

Just now, I was sitting at the kitchen table eating the dinner I'd prepared for myself, and Dad was watching one of these shows. I knew I could move to the patio or even eat in my bedroom, but I didn't want to move. I was reading the newspaper but was aware of what was going on in the show. I could see that a rape scene was about to happen -- a teenage girl had been kidnapped by a middle aged man, and he had said to her, "let's get you cleaned up." Then, the rape scene happened. Then, another one. Then, another one.

I thought to myself, "am I re-enacting my own abuse by staying in this room and not saying anything? Am I re-enacting the situations in my childhood where I felt absolutely unable to say 'no'? Is it peculiar that I am staying in the room? Is it peculiar that I cannot even think of asking Dad to not watch such shows while I am in the room?" To ask him not to watch such shows while I'm in the room would require me to engage him on the topic of sex and violence, and I don't want to. My sense is that it would feel icky to me, the way watching these shows with him feels icky, and that he wouldn't be sympathetic. Or, if he were sympathetic, he'd ask me to let him know when a show was too sexual or violent, and then I'd need to engage with him repeatedly.

It's his house.

But I'm not wanting to control what he does in his house, exactly. I'm wishing for my own father to have some sensitivity on the subject of violence and rape. I want him to know that by displaying these scenes to me he is, in a sense, violating me.

I never thought this before, but right now the word "compartmentalization" comes up when I think about my relationship with my dad. I appreciate him for his affection for me, his goodwill toward me, the hard work he did to support our family growing up, and the practical lessons he taught me. And I just try not to think about his extreme lack of sensitivity regarding sex and violence.

Deep dialog with inner child

Slowly, gradually, I've more and more been tuning into the channel of the inner child. I'm not sure that's the best term for it. I'm talking about the inner voice that narrates the deeper experience, as opposed to the louder voice that talks about what is desired in the moment, that constructs stories about what is happening right now, that strives for self-improvement and constantly evaluates self and others, that plans and ruminates.

I'm here in Millbrae at Dad's house with a free evening. I found myself mindlessly browsing Facebook and not wanting to do any of my to-dos. So here I am. I'm sitting with an improvised hugging pillow and I now intend to transcribe the inner child channel to the best of my ability.

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oh how embarrassing what I just wrote ... I like the inner sensations but there is longing ... but pleasant tingling in the throat and chest and limbs ... tension in the shoulder ... longing longing ... this is never going to work what a waste of time .. what do I mean when the words waste of time arise?  Lonely, alone, void ... the enneagram books say this is where the gold is ... in the voidness dark, is treasure ... I've been here on the brink of the void so many times, ow to find the courage to enter?

glad I stopped the avoidance and came here ... to meet myself. what a treasure what an opportunity to be able to meet myself ... to have the time and safety, the leisure ... the support from my partners and therapist and books! hellow me. I know with certainty, I am the only one who can love me, to be present with me. it's all that matters.

the void ... gently playing with the edges of it .. i've heard there is spaciousness in there ...

I've been bad, just did stuff on my phone ... I'll never get anywhere unless I'm more diligent! no wait ... that's the story that always comes up ... it's not true! it's just a thought! ... it is in a way safe and cozy feeling here with just me and the body sensations ... safe ... and here is the void ...

the lyrics "Stay with me ... let loving start " roll through my head, my body. they are among the most heart wrenching lyrics I've ever heard ... Eric used to listen to that song while we worked together in our early years and it tore my heart apart ... I usually tense up against the feelings of melancholy ... relaxing into it I see that "stay with me" is what I longed for from my mother as I knew her as an infant .. the loving mother ... it's the thing I long for most, reunion with that unconditional love ... that I know now I can give myself. Here I am, me!

let's listen to the messenger who says, "this is the wrong thing to be doing, if only you'd do the right thing, you'd be happy." What tales does she have to tell?

<long break>

whatever sensations arise, most of them aren't the right ones. They're sensations that signify I haven't arrived, that I have more work to do. Why, I ask? How do I know that this is what they signify? ... it's because I am bad, therefore any sensations I experience are bad ... it's that if I'm bad or if I'm doing the wrong thing, I have company (mom?) ... if I'm good or doing the right thing, I'm alone, my people are not with me.

Resuming concentration practice as a primary practice

I have a hankering to take up concentration practice again as a primary practice. For the purpose of this post, concentration practice is synonymous with samatha practice and the word concentration is synonymous with samadhi. The fundamental form of concentration practice, as I've been taught, is anapanasati (breath) meditation, specifically with the breath at the nostrils as object.

I first learned concentration practice at a weekend retreat with Tina Rasmussen and Stephen Snyder in August 2009. During that retreat I thought I'd attained access concentration (where attention is on the object--the breath at the nostrils--almost effortlessly). This was very encouraging. After that, I signed up for their 2-week year-end retreat. In the weeks before the retreat I practiced 1-2 hours every morning so that I'd hit the ground running on the retreat. The retreat was challenging but mostly exciting and enjoyable, and Tina said I'd attained the first jhana (a very deep state of absorption) around the 9th day of the retreat.

I was excited to develop my skill in this area, so I signed up to sit with Tina and Stephen's teacher Pa Auk Sayadaw at the Forest Refuge September-October 2011. Meanwhile, my daily practice was mindfulness meditation. I didn't see any advantage in having concentration practice as my daily practice in the mean time. When I arose from mindfulness practice I tended to feel equanimous, whereas when I arose from concentration practice I tended to be irritable. More importantly, it seemed that concentration practice was only useful in the context of building concentration for jhana, and this could happen only in retreat-like settings. I did do concentration practice during a 4-day weekend in April 2011, and I also did it as my daily practice in the weeks leading up to the Forest Refuge retreat.

The Forest Refuge retreat was very challenging. I thought I'd attained jhana on the 4th day, but my teacher said I had not. During the first few days of the retreat I developed an aversion to concentration practice. There was constriction in my right throat (and also sometimes in my right belly, chest, and/or head) that was associated with an unpleasant emotion. I now see that emotion as an aversion to being forced or forcing myself. When this constriction was present I was averse to concentration practice (and, indeed, averse to doing anything other than distracting myself). The remainder of the retreat was a dance with this aversion. The final two weeks I stopped doing concentration practice entirely and went back to mindfulness practices. The retreat was very fruitful (see other blog posts for details) but left me with strong aversion to concentration practice.

Coming home, I went back to mindfulness meditation, eventually using noting as my main practice under Beth Resnick-Folk's guidance, and, according to her, attained stream entry in July 2012.

I went back to concentration practice for a weekend retreat with Tina and Stephen in, I think, late 2012, and then for a 2-week retreat with them in spring 2013. During the 2-week retreat I again developed aversion to the practice.

I had noticed that when I'd been away from the practice long enough, the aversive reaction subsided and I could do the practice for a few sittings or even a few days with great pleasure. It's a practice that cultivates joy, and that is pleasant!

After the 2-week with Tina and Stephen, I stopped doing retreats for a long while. Then I did a short retreat in January 2016. I chose concentration practice for the pleasure of it. Immediately after that I did the Liberation Unleashed program (which I highly recommend for anyone interested in seeing through the illusion of self) and focused on inquiry into the nature of my direct experience for the subsequent 12 months. That brings me to today.

I quit my job at the Institute for Systems Biology six weeks ago. I had planned to vigorously embark upon a new career in free-lance dementia care, but a couple days after leaving ISB I realized that there was no need to rush into being busy with the new career. I decided that 2017 would be a year of relaxed exploration.

During 2016, my interest in long periods of meditation practice greatly diminished as I became interested in the concept of sudden awakening. Then, three weeks ago, Z invited me to join her for a 2-day meditation retreat at her parents' beautiful lakeside home while they were out of town. I began the retreat with six-elements practice. A friend had sent me an article about this practice, and I was curious. I did a few sessions of this practice, then felt like giving it a rest. I transitioned to concentration practice for the pleasure of it.

And then, just a few days ago, the thought arose, "I'd like to immerse myself in concentration practice once again to see where it takes me, now that I am 5+ years more mature than I was at the Forest Refuge. I have the space in my life to do this, and this space is an incredible treasure. I can immerse myself in home practice, enjoying the comforts of home and avoiding the expense and discomfort of retreat centers."

I re-read my journal from the Forest Refuge. This was the first time I'd re-read it carefully since 2011. I was curious just what the difficulties had been for me. I know some things now that I didn't know then:

First, I know more about the constrictions in the right throat, belly, chest, and head. I know that I can create ease for myself by offering myself compassion. I better understand the importance of such self-compassion, and I have more tools for expressing that compassion, specifically dialoging with the inner child. I have been supported in these practices by Beth Resnick-Folk and by Tina and Stephen, so I have a lot more confidence now than I did in 2011 that these practices are wholesome and supportive, not just a weak distraction from real practice.

Second, I know that concentration practice is wholesome in and of itself, even if it does not lead to jhana. Tina and Stephen had said this, but I didn't really believe it until U Jagara said it to me during an interview at the Forest Refuge retreat. Each hour spent in this practice leads to a better understanding of what concentration is, and a more intimate relationship with the meditation object (the breath). I am more able to immerse myself in the practice without goal-orientation. I see a bit more clearly that to long for and look forward to jhana is a form of craving just as hindering as craving for mundane sense pleasures.

Third, I have a less confining idea of what intensive practice looks like. I learned that, at the Forest Refuge retreat, Joon read the New York Times every morning, and Shaila worked on her book every evening. Whoa! I had thought, from Tina and Stephen's training, that it was of the utmost importance to keep such activities to an absolute minimum in order for jhana to arise, and thus had really pressured myself at the Forest Refuge.

The other day I did a bunch of concentration practice. Then I noticed the aversion I'd noticed at the Forest Refuge, an aversion connected to a constriction in the right throat. I honored the constriction, dialoged with the inner child, and did some garden work. Then I found myself eager to return to the concentration practice. Another time I did a meditation session where I alternated between attending to the breath at the nostrils and reassuring the inner child. Very unorthodox, but it feels right to me.

The impersonality of reactivity

When Z speaks strongly with a blaming message (whether blaming me or someone else), I react. First there is a tensing in the torso and a constriction of breathing. Thoughts arise: "I notice I am having an aversive reaction, but I would like to respond kindly and compassionately. I want to run away, but I'd like to stay present." After a minute or two, judgmental thoughts arise: "She's so hypocritical and uncompassionate!" And then after another minute or two, I attack her verbally. The strength and speed of the attack vary depending on whom she's blaming and the intensity of her expression. If she is blaming me or E, I react more strongly and quickly. If she is blaming a public figure, I am slower and less violent.

Even when her blaming message has a lot of truth to it, there is a strong impulse to align myself against her. Lately I have been looking at this more closely, thinking, "Much of what Z says, I agree with, and I myself have had a blaming attitude about this very thing. Z would feel supported if I expressed my alignment with her." I then consider expressing my alignment, but feel a very strong resistance. It feels as though by aligning myself with Z, I would be making myself very vulnerable, intolerably vulnerable. I can force myself to do it, but there is great internal conflict. The words come out haltingly.

Today, I rode home in the car with my friend E, whom I find challenging to be with. I noticed the reactions as they arose. E was impatient and complained about some issues that had delayed her from picking us up at the curb. An aversive reaction arose, then the thought, "E is so self-centered and blaming; I hate that about her." She leaned on the horn at a hesitant driver. An aversive reaction arose, then the thought, "This is why I don't like to ride with E; this is why I took the bus this morning." Another passenger in the car talked about getting lunch at Met Market. An aversive reaction arose, then the thought, "I don't like people who like Met Market; it's overlit, overpriced, and overly bourgeois." I realized more deeply than before that most of my opinions are formed in order to distinguish myself from others. I wondered: do I find E challenging precisely because she exhibits many aspects of myself that I dislike? I had always thought I found her challenging because we were very different, but maybe the opposite is true.

I do sometimes align myself with others, though. I am very aligned with Z on the importance of meditation and spiritual practice. Although I leap to distinguish myself from her in many areas, in this area I do not recall ever trying to distinguish myself from her. We have been aligned for five years. So on what topics, or under what circumstances, do I feel compelled to distinguish myself?

The last couple of days, reflecting in these ways, I'm realizing that my personality is really as distasteful and challenging as anybody else's, but that I am constantly telling myself stories to cover that up. Stories about how rational I am, how insightful, how open-minded, how patient, how well I am able to see the other side of every situation. What I try not to see is that I am very defensive and that I use my power to get my way, noticeable most recently in my relationship with Z.

What helps me see and accept these things is seeing more and more that my personality is pretty much out of my control. In the car today, noticing the aversive reactions, it was obvious that the reactions weren't something I was doing. They were just arising. As were the subsequent opinions. Makes me really want to question my opinions.

Some of the contents of my mind this morning

I don't feel inspired to write, but yesterday Sandy told me how much she and Gerry enjoy my posts. And I've been wanting to get back into blogging again, now that I have more time. So let's just get over the hump and write something here.

It's 9:44 a.m.; I feel bad about myself right now. Writing here highlights that; the resistance to writing likely was related to avoiding the self-judgment. The bad feeling is associated with one of my psychology's signature thoughts: "I am doing the wrong thing right now." I am sitting in my bathrobe, it is late morning, and I haven't gotten started on any of the things I really should be doing. Like what? For this mind, there's always something. Today it's contacting Water Protectors who have been arrested. Or, if not that, finding ways to get involved in the dementia care community. (I'd like to volunteer, but not in any ongoing, committed way, and I'm unsure how to find that.)

I'm feeling sad that, this afternoon, Zarina will be leaving to spend two weeks at her parents' house in Kirkland, and tomorrow, Eric will be leaving to spend four days at Fort Ebey producing a very large trail run. When they're both here, I feel crowded, claustrophobic, and irritable. But I imagine that when they're both gone, I'll feel lethargic and bad about myself a lot. Perhaps I should schedule those four days as a personal retreat where I do inquiry, dialog, and meditation on the bad feeling.

Today I was browsing through writings I've kept over the years (accompanied by the refrain, "I am doing the wrong thing right now") and I found a missive I'd written in summer of 2008 after a session with Dr. I, my previous psychotherapist. I was winding down my time with him (I moved to Seattle that August):

Yesterday I asked Dr. I how to think about my psychology. To the best of my recollection (which is always biased and always inaccurate), he said, “Think about how [or why?] you find it so important to believe that I am about to leave you, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” 

At the time, I came up with the following (highlighted):

What benefits do I receive from believing that Dr. I despises me and wishes to leave me?

• I was right all along. Therefore, superior. I like to be superior because it means I don’t need people and I am a distance from people.
• I don’t have to look at my desire to leave him. This is very uncomfortable for several reasons:
  • I think endings are always tragic
  • I think he wants to retain control over me and manipulate me, and will punish me for leaving
  • I think that any action I choose for myself, including leaving him, will lead to disaster
  • My desire to leave him comes partly from my disturbing image of him as a bloodsucker (this image came to mind when I thought about paying him)

What benefits do I receive from believing that it would be a disaster for Dr. I to leave me?

• I don’t have to think about more important, and more difficult, things, because I can be obsessed with this one thing.

Dr. I also said yesterday that I can accept that I wish others ill (e.g. want to consume them or destroy them) instead of projecting that on others and thinking that they wish me ill. 

Right now, the thought is arising, "I should be able to go further with this. Now that I have some distance, and more maturity, I should be able to digest the above, keep it in mind, and use it to gain more insight," But I'm feeling resistance to actually attempting this. And there are beliefs underneath that thought that are likely unfounded: that Dr. I's advice is really juicy, valuable wisdom that is key to my happiness if only I'd be a good girl and follow the advice.