spiritual practice

[Guest guest]

Current practices:

 

1. Sitting silently in meditation posture, being aware of What Is. This

usually begins with awareness of body sensation, but then expands to include

awareness of thoughts arising and awareness of sounds and anything else that

appears in my awareness. Sometimes I find myself trying to identify myself

with this awareness, as if to say "I Am this awareness," but paradoxically,

that seems to shut down awareness. It seems more fruitful to instead have

the attitude of an inquirer into Who I Am, an openness rather than an

asserting of Who I Am.

 

2. Same as number 1, but moving in yoga postures instead of sitting. Here

there is naturally more attention given to body sensation, since the

movements produce more and different sensations than are experienced in the

sitting posture. The postures are generally done slowly, as that seems to

facilitate the entry of awareness into each nook and cranny of my body. As

the body relaxes and the sensations are witnessed in stillness, what is felt

seems to be not only the physical body, but a more subtle, non-physical

body, an "energy body." Sometimes, when this feeling is very intense, I

will move this energy body while the physical body remains still. This is

from the Kashmir Shaivist tradition as taught by Jean Klein. I am only

toying around with this, though; I don't feel I really understand what I am

doing. So I play with it. Come to think of it, that's all I'm doing with

the physical movement, too, is playing with it. I don't really have to

understand it, do I (with my mind, that is)?

 

3. Same as number 1, but instead of sitting silently, I perform simple

yogic breathing exercises.

 

4. Same as number 1, but going about my daily routine instead of sitting

silently. All activities to be done in awareness of What Is, as opposed to

the usual condition, dwelling in What Isn't. (Daydreaming, anticipation,

etc.)

 

The following could be seen as practices in themselves, but I tend to see

them more as pointers which are subsumed in, or equivalent to, the above

practices.

 

5. Being Here Now. Seeing that there is only Now, that thoughts of past

and future are occuring only Now.

 

6. Bare attention, mindfulness, self-remembering, the Witness. Same as #1,

really.

 

7. Noting that anything which appears is not an object unto itself,

unrelated to the Whole, but an appearance within Me (Consciousness). And

the Me, being Consciousness, is openness, not an entity. It is seeing, not

a seer. The objects, the seen, refer back to this seeing. More precisely,

they are not separate from this seeing.

 

8. Feeling that there is no 'I." Functioning in my daily life as if

everything is just Happening By Itself, with no controller, no volition, no

doer. Sometimes I will say: Okay, for just the next hour, or the rest of

the morning, everything is going to happen with no Person. It is just going

to unfold spontaneously, with nobody there trying to "make things happen."

Somehow everything seems to get done just fine!

 

9. Feeling that I am Everything, the Totality, the Vastness, the Universe,

and that everything is appearing within this Me. Same as #7, basically.

 

10. Accepting everything just the way it is. Welcoming it, even.

Understanding that this is the way it Must Be. Wanting anything to be

different changes nothing, for whatever happens, happens. This does not

mean that if a car is about to run over somebody you must just stand there

and watch. The fact of you running to pull the person out of harm's way is

also part of the way it is. If we are not accepting What Is, everything

that happens, from indescribable beauty to unbelievable horror, we are

suffering.

 

Mark