Behind the melancholy of old songs

The past week I've been re-watching the PBS documentary, The Vietnam War, together with Dad. It's in 10 parts, a total of 18 hours. As we move through the course of the war, the events increasingly are things that I have memories of. Yesterday's episode spoke of Vietnamization; I remember hearing that word but not knowing (or really caring) what it meant. It also covered the Kent State shooting of student demonstrators by the military, with four dead, also an event I have a vague memory of. The episode ended (I think) with the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song, "Ohio", explicitly about this shooting. The sound of the song is very familiar to me, yet I didn't know what the lyrics said until I first watched this documentary in 2017. "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming. Four dead in Ohio."

Music from my past typically stirs a deep sense of melancholy for me, but this song particularly does. I'd never deeply investigated the stories behind the melancholy, but I did so with "Ohio" last night. Here they are:

Those who sang that song, those who protested, the young adults of that time are the ones who really lived! And I missed it. I was alive, but I wasn't there. I was separate from it. That was where the real life was. Why wasn't I there? I was too young. It's not like those people were necessarily happy but they were really living and I was not in it. I should have been there. If I had been energetic and smart I would have been there. But there is something wrong with me and I wasn't there and I missed out on real love and real life. I had a chance and I blew it. Why didn't I recognize what was happening and see that I was missing out? Why didn't I go there and participate? I was deficient. I didn't know enough. I didn't take action. It's my own fault.

Hmmm, sounds like a variation one of the basic stories that colors my life. Obviously this story doesn't hold water in reality. It illustrates the fantasy I have that it's better to be grown up, and that to be a child, or child-like, is to be horribly vulnerable. This fantasy drives my passion to teach skills to kids, and my occasional lack of discretion in speaking about adult topics with them. 

A possible unravelling of a subtle yet pervasive mental habit

The last few days, when awaking early with fright, I've been doing noting practice instead of giving voice to the emotion. The practice of giving voice to the emotion was seeming to take me to the same place each time and new insights weren't coming.

This morning, doing the noting practice in a half-awake state, some habit of mind seemed to drop. Some micro-habit of thought circling back on itself. There was a moment when it was observed that this circling back wasn't necessary, and the circling back didn't happen. And for the next few thought cycles (taking place every couple of seconds, perhaps), there was a sense that the circling back was about to happen, then an understanding that it didn't need to. Then, an awareness that I couldn't make the circling back happen now even if I tried. Then, a wondering whether this was a shift, an awakening. Then, an observing with wonder and curiosity. Wonder, but lacking in delight. Was this a shift? It seemed like it was. There was a sense that something had been lost. A piece of my experience, or even of myself, was missing. There was an emotion different from my usual emotions, something akin to grief. Thoughts of conceit arose and fell away: "Am I more enlightened than before? I was doubting whether my practice was effective, but this is an amazing result! What teacher should I go to to talk about this? Shaila? Christiane? Satyadhana? How will life be different? I hope that suffering will be less" And, "Oh, all of this is the personality trying to take ownership of this shift. Just like they say happens." This habit of personality was familiar. I kept watching to see if it continued to seem the case that a mental habit had fallen away, and it did continue to seem the case as I lay in bed next to Eric.

Remembering the dangers of conceit, I went back to noting practice. It seemed difficult to focus. I wasn't sure if it was because my mind was unfamiliar to me now, or because I was so distracted with thoughts of conceit. Those thoughts are so seductive.

After perhaps 45 minutes, I fully woke up, along with Eric, and moved into the daily activities. Now, everything seems the same as yesterday, though as I wrote the above, there was a sense that a thought habit had indeed dropped.

Either immediately before, during, or immediately after this insight, I had a dream that I was in a situation with a couple, a man and a woman, that I was newly acquainted with. They'd been talking about some situation regarding other people rather vaguely for the previous 24 hours or so, and finally something happened that made me feel I'd had enough and that I really wanted them to be more clear with me about what was going on. I pleaded with them, and finally they began telling me. But before they had made it all clear, the usual background din of noises from nearby airplanes intensified, and the sound of one plane in particular became really loud and we could see out the window that it was extremely close to us. Then something hit me in the abdomen. It didn't hurt but there was a sense that it had really harmed me and I thought, "Oh! I didn't realize it until now, but before this moment I was considering this whole thing to be an entertaining game. Now it's real; this is a real life-changer."

Resistance/discomfort on inhalation, on vocalizing exhalations

I  haven't been writing. But my explorations have not diminished in intensity. Every so often I feel disappointed that I haven't been recording my explorations. I have more free time than ever before, but somehow writing has not occurred.

The morning negativity still happens every single day, and even more intensely than before. It often awakens me as early as 3 a.m., or perhaps even earlier. I rarely look at a clock when it happens; I usually stay lying down with my eyes closed in a half-asleep state and either work with it, or, more often recently, resist it and struggle with it. I still think of myself as a good sleeper, easily getting 8-9 hours sleep each night, but in fact most nights the second half of those hours is spent working with the morning negativity.

Given that I am working with it several times a week for several hours, the results, if any, are subtle. Sometimes I wonder if I am crazy to continue with this inner work. There are some things in life that one might make progress in only slowly: improving at a musical instrument, athletic training. But the slowness of my progress in this arena seems an order of magnitude greater even still. I wish there were a way of measuring it. Am I closer to awakening? I cannot know. Is my daily life  more free of suffering? I don't think so, but some patterns of reactivity are beginning to unravel. In particular, in recent weeks I've exposed some supporting beliefs andfound myself more often and more quickly letting go of stories that fuel reactivity.

Just a half hour ago I was lying in bed doing this inner work and the urge came to write about it. I was feeling into the sensations behind the negativity, and, as has happened dozens or  hundreds of times before, I proceeded into a state wherein I was vocalizing on each exhalation. And I started to tune into the thoughts and sensations that occur on each inhalation and each exhalation. And I saw that there was discomfort and resistance with each. And also that there was pleasure, joy, with each.

On the inhalation, there is resistance, especially I think at the beginning. I've known for decades that I resist breathing in, but I've never explored it in detail.

On the exhalation, the vocalization is uncomfortable, especially initially, and I suspect that there is fear of making noise.

Throughout the process there are very brief moments of pleasure, easy to miss.

I began trying to explore the resistance but experienced strong doubt. "I'll never be able to see it clearly because it is so fleeting, occuring only at the beginning of each inhalation and the beginning of each exhalation." "This whole project is a waste of time; it's not bringing fruit in daily life."

That's when I thought of writing about it.

I'll now go back to this exploration.