Dream report

I had a crazy dream last night.  I dreamt that I returned home after being away for a short time that I had been robbed.  If could actually remember it correctly I think it was that I came home late and stumbled through the house and then woke up to realize that my house had been robbed.  However, it had not just been robbed it had been completely emptied and stripped of everything.  There was nothing in the house except my green kitchen table, a very very old refrigerator that I had to put back on the wall as it was hanging off and an old coke machine.  I went out to my car and it had its windows broken and everything was out of it as well.  I would start thinking about calling the insurance wondering about how I would replace everything, and then would get distracted and wandering through the rooms just staring at the emptiness.  It turned out that there had been many robberies in the neighborhood but mine was the only one where they had emptied the house.  I went down to check on my old lady neighbor and she looked scared and shaken and said they had taken some things from her house but had not hurt her and not taken everything.

I have lots of repetitive dreams but this one was brand new to me.  I am not sure really where I was going with it in my head but maybe all the buddhist readings are getting to me.

A bit of contemplation going down this morning

Meditation felt like a roller coaster this morning.  My mind was so busy with nothing that mattered and I sensed it was like a defensive strategy of my mind.  I was so busy with diversion thoughts that I felt very far from the real essence of things.  I noticed that all I was about was thinking about problem solving work issues or replaying things that have happened or might happen and it felt disingenuous.  It is difficult to not be consumed by these irrelevant strands of thought - the natural activity of the mind.  In my meditation practice, we leave our eyes open  during the meditation. One of the weirdest things I have experienced is to realize your so lost in thought that you are not even really seeing anymore.  It is almost like I am suddenly blind or they have stopped transmitting to my brain.  I snap to and wonder where I have been, even though I know I have been on the cushion but really I have been miles and miles away.  The eyes turn off when these thoughts take over which makes me wonder what I am missing in my real life when I get so caught up in thought.  

I noticed this specifically after listening to my Shambhala Contentment in Everyday Life final class.  It was an amazing teaching that I keep going back to and trying to really absorb.  My teacher spoke about how we all know there is more to us than the natural activity of the mind, especially once you start to really notice what that natural activity entails.  We have a basic distrust of ourselves and how others interact with us because we know that we do not really know who we are.  She spoke of accepting that we are more than these thoughts, we are basic goodness and that when you have faith and trust in this fact you are free to be more honest with yourselves and others.  "We want to tell the truth and still celebrate who we are"   She said we have a natural longing just to know ourselves. I am not sure if this true.  As a society we seem to strive to stay numb and asleep at the wheel, and it is still a struggle for me why we go away from ourselves rather than towards.

She taught that we all have a source of wisdom and compassion in our being and it is open and clear, naturally inquisitive, and never fails us. We have to experience a glimpse of this and we do that through self-awareness and on the mat with the contentment and meditation practice.  This is why the Buddha sat with himself for so long - to get through the deception to the truth of his being.  Once we get a glimpse of this natural wisdom and power, this knowing haunts us and an appetite starts to develop.  The more we see of this the more we begin to trust ourselves because we know there is this capacity and faculties to know ourselves.  We begin to notice when we are a little arrogant or creating deception or puffing ourselves up on and off the mat and we look for the strength to be more honest and see the truth in what we say and do.

It is funny to me that it comes back to trusting in yourself.  I have more trust in others than I do myself.  It is easier for me to believe in others because I do not know the same dark secrets I know about myself.   My fear of failure and success, my lack of execution and the emotional limitations create a deep sense of distrust in myself.  If I cannot trust myself what can I really offer others about myself and the world.  Perhaps this is what attracts me to the Shambhala training.  The idea that I am basic goodness.  The idea that I could experience myself at a deeper level and really know who I am.  The idea of an honest real interaction with the world.  Something to contemplate.

Grooves

All this time off and I have done almost nothing.  Well that is not entirely true.  I have worked a little (maybe more than a little), read some, watched movies and read most of the internet.  I am not sure what I feel like I should be doing but time is passing in my life without any real intent.  I am often really busy so some down time is not necessarily bad as long as I am living my life and not escaping from life.  This time off has given me the space to think more about my current downward spiral, a common phenomenon, and how once again to reenergize myself and propel myself in a different direction.   However, the thing I love to do most is to contemplate, strategize and determine the course for a new path.  The thing I am never able to do is actually implement and follow through on any of my well designed plans.  I am frozen and unable to put in the effort to make the change.  Why?

 This morning I was reading an article: Why New Years resolutions do not work?  

This is how it is with our emotional reactivity to life. Like attracts like. We will actually seek out and even the circumstances of life that will fit into the familiar neural grooves of our limbic brain. It is important that we stress this point: even if a pattern causes us to suffer we will (albeit often unconsciously) thoughts, feelings and actions that are familiar in lieu of the unknown, which to us seems more scary. Hence the saying, “Better the devil you know than the one that you don’t.”

I totally get this from an intellectual perspective.  I have taught myself ways to hide and become numb and they are the easiest choice at any given moment.  My brain prefers these patterns and prefers firing the neurons through these wide grooves created through years of my heavy use of these habitual patterns.   I get that.  I get that it takes maximum conscious effort and consistency to create these new patterns and eventually the brain will prefer these grooves instead of the old ones.  I get that too.   I just cannot hold on to the new groove for even a day.  

I find myself swearing to a course of action in the morning but by mid-afternoon I have already started to rationalize and compromise my once steely resolve.  I begin to think of tomorrow as the new day and why today does not really matter.  I am living my life for the resolve of the next day which leaves today empty and vacant of purpose.  Today does not matter is a scary way to live - given it is the only thing that really does matter.   I have been struggling with this constant lack of commitment and joined several virtual groups to try to draw motivation.  I find myself amazed at the strength and will of these random people, but it has not even tickled a small piece of me into action.  The ra-ra and the good stories let me know it can be done, gets me back in planning mode and the I am lost to the action.

The doing, the action is a hard one to solve and not for just me.  It really is just doing it but there has to be something that drives and keeps the commitment real.  I think the answers to why we hide and want to be numb in the first place are somewhere hidden in the understanding of suffering and ego.  I do not quite have my head around how to accept these thoughts as just thoughts, the mind as just another sense with perhaps too much  and that the now, the right now is all that really matters.

Reflections

It is that time of year again where I look back and evaluate, judge and beat myself up for everything I did not accomplish.  There is something about a random date of January 1st that gives an illusion of a brand new start another attempt at getting it right.  However in the dawn of the new start, I cannot help but look back at the year that is passing underneath me and wonder how did I fare this year?  Not very well from the outside - I weigh more, am less healthy, have unclear goals and motivations, and I am actively running away from myself.   This is not really surprising as every year the goals are the same and I consistently disappoint myself.

Highlights and lows from this year:

• Left my super-stressful job and went to another similar job but with about 1000% times less stress.  It cut my commute and the people I work with are much easier, but in the end I struggled with how to use my life better.  Still lost on the shores of inaction and avoidance.
• Swam in open water - long time fear never quite conquered but managed to deal with the very high anxiety of not drowning.  I even managed to go to the pool and swim actual laps.
• Reintroduced myself to Shambhala Buddhism which is bringing a new grounding to myself and my life.  I had hoped in some ways it would solve my whole lazy unmotivated issues but it is creating an openness and a path I had not seen.
• Started working on my plan to get out of my current work into something more meaningful.  I made some hard choices and turned down some really interesting opportunities and I think it is the right choice.  I am excited and nervous and terrified I will plan this change to death and never step towards the path.
• My boys are amazing.  I love them more every year.  I miss them more too.  Their steps into adulthood and away from their mom is heartening and melancholy at the same time.  I can see the days ahead where they are lost to me engaged fully in their own lives.  
• I found out my adoptive father passed away this fall from google.  I was not mentioned in the obituary and my last attempt to reconnect that i sent early this year was ignored.  It is so very sad to have lost that opportunity to reconcile and has left me with much to contemplate.
• Lost all motivation toward running, losing weight, marathons, health, and have been on a see-saw of anxiety of HATING the way I look to HATING the idea of self-discipline and motivation.  At a real loss on this one - but that is not anything too new.

2011 in a nutshell.  Some highs.  Some lows.  Heading down a path that is kind of in progress.  Each and every day I struggle to stay present and accountable.    A few things I am doing in the near term:

• more writing as I am trying to get back on that horse again.
• meditation and dharma study
• contemplation on my self-destructive eating and drinking habits.

Same stuff.  Different year.