I meditated this morning before work and was so busy today that I’m just now getting around to blogging.

I don’t remember much that was special about today’s sitting. Body scan, whole awareness/thoughts see-saw, time’s up.

I do remember thoughts that referred to experiencing myself as a living, changing body-mind system (aka an energy field) and projecting that onto every single one of the nearly 7 billion human beings on this planet. You, reader, are an energy field.

Then back to no thought.

Oh, well. If other thoughts come back, they do. If not, something else will come along.

This morning I began sitting about 6:45. I thought “body scan” and then quickly scanned my body from head to toe! “It” just jumped in there (me) and did it! Intent and action sped past my plodding conscious mind.

This is definitely not linear, nor what I expect. I’m curious now. Is “it” the energy of intention and action combined? Do I “merely” think it and it happens?

So, yep, I’m all here. I do it again with more mindfulness. I spend some time with my shoulders. My trapezius muscle across the back of my shoulders is a place where my body can really collect some tension. Not pain right now, just tightness. I tell my shoulders it’s okay to relax and release the tension. What I get in response is thanks, it will do that as much as it knows how.

Mental notes to self: Spend some quality time with trapezius later. May be a connection to sitting at my computer. Together my awareness and my trapezius can notice what we didn’t notice before about undoing tension.

(Recent discovery: I don’t need reading glasses at the computer most of the time. )

Then into exploring awareness. Today my monkey mind is civilized. It allows me to explore awareness without thought for longer periods. Thoughts interrupt exploring. Today exploring is much more interesting. I return to exploring. Wash, rinse, repeat.

So here’s a metaphor for my subjective experience. Imagine the first really warm sunny day in the spring. It’s 80 degrees and balmy. You find a quiet place to sit and close your eyes. You feel the warmth of the sun on your head and then feel it  all over your body.

It’s like that, only the sun is coming from the inside. This state feels peaceful and quietly blissful.

I wish that everyone could experience this every day.

Met with Peg this morning during the Sunday sitting period. It was good to see her. She’s been away for several weeks.

I caught her up about the blog and about my experiences on the cushion that I’ve written about in these posts. She’s okay with everything.

I asked if she had any new directions for me, and she said just to keep doing what I’m doing.

I’m on track then. It does help to have that confirmation from someone who’s been meditating for 43 years.

We discussed attention and awareness. She agrees that awareness includes the nonconscious mind. It includes attention and whatever attention is not on in the moment.

I have had a thought about awareness that feels scary. I can feel myself pushing it away and it coming back. What if…it’s all there really is? That’s vast, too much right now.

I enjoyed Peg’s presence. Her eye contact feels really good. Open, present, curious, patient, loving, wise, and at the same time, nothing special. Just an ordinary human.

I like being with someone who can be that way. Silence is welcome. What comes up comes up. No big deal.

Meditated today about 6:30 pm. Mango sat on my blanket-covered legs. Samantha was nearby.

Took my time with the body scan, really going into areas with tension, such as where shoulders meet neck in back, feeling it from the inside.

After that, I sat. A question came to mind: Can I hold my attention on both the whole body-mind system and be aware of specific sensations as they arise?

My third-eye chakra resonated with that question. I took it as a “yes, explore this” comment.

The answer, today at least, is yes, my awareness can hold the whole body-mind system, and as specific sensations arise, they move more into the foreground of awareness while awareness of the whole system moves more into the background. Awareness of specific sensation fades, and awareness of the whole system moves back into the foreground.

Ahhh. Do I even know what I’m talking about?

There is this word, awareness. I am sure that I have used it synonymously with the word attention. Yet I’m beginning to wonder if they are actually different.

A sound or a touch captures my attention. My attention greets sounds and touches.

Awareness holds attention. It holds sound and touch, and not sound and not touch.

Attention moves, awareness is. Attention has objects, awareness does and doesn’t. Awareness includes attention.

Whoa. What if awareness is the living, changing body-mind system?

I see my teacher tomorrow. I’m looking forward to that.

Sat this morning atop my bed in a cold, cold house. Although I was warm under the covers, the room temperature was 50 when I got up. Quickly, turn on the heater fan!

Today my sitting was unremarkable, except that my outside cat, Mango, was inside because of the extreme cold, and he doesn’t have any experience with me sitting like my inside cat, Samantha does. (She usually ignores me, or curls up quietly nearby.)

Mango interprets me sitting still as an opportunity to be petted. I pushed him away once and off the bed the second time, and then he curled up next to me and we sat together.

My spine felt a bit stiff this morning. I had gone to a two-hour class last night, came home, and bundled up to watch a Yin Yoga video. If I had actually DONE yoga last night, I doubt I would have felt so stiff this morning. I worked through it sitting.

About my living, changing body-mind system. Although it is centered in my body, it definitely can extend through my skin out into the environment. I don’t know how far it can extend–I sense it extending a few inches, occasionally, when a chakra is wide open, 2-3 feet.  I don’t believe my energy body actually has a clear outer limit, but my perceptive acuity has its limits.

The system seems to be porous, to have a lot of space in it.

Sat this morning on my zafu on top of my bed. My monkey mind was quieter today.

Noticed differences when I am internally verbalizing about a possible future event and when I bring my attention to my body-mind.

I sense that the location of activity when doing the former is a few inches away from the right side of my forehead.

When I rein my attention “in”, my awareness literally feels centered in the middle of my forehead. The energy extends out a little ways and has a softness to it. This experience has more energy and brightness to it.

At least this is what I experienced this morning, as best as I can describe it several hours later.

I also realized this morning that my other blog has a lot of posts that are in some way related to my path toward…something…like…my understanding of enlightenment. Poems, articles, interest in the brain, the mind, love, yoga, health, and so on. It doesn’t have anything like this daily practice, though.

So I’m thinking of combining my two blogs into one and renaming it, with labels such as zafureport, yoga (watched a video on Yin Yoga last night and got the connection between meridians and asanas!), scientific discoveries, inspiring poems.

It’s a big job and now I’m wondering when I’ll find time to do it. I’m going to check out some other blogs first.

I felt tired yesterday morning and didn’t do an early sitting. After work, I had a meeting and then dinner with a friend. Didn’t get home until nearly 9. My 1906-built house was chilly.

I turned up the heater and pulled my zafu, timer, blanket, and yoga mat from my studio and closed that room off to conserve heat. It will stay closed off until warmer days arrive again.

Last night and this morning, I meditated with my zafu on top of my bed, covers around my legs. It’s the warmest room in the house.

Settling in last night, I notice the difference in location and then that thought slips away as I focus on my body.

After doing the body scan, and then moving awareness to my living, changing body-mind system, a particular area of tension draws my attention, and my attention spins off into a thought.

And then I make a connection: the thought is associated with that place in my body! The thought started as a memory, then morphed into thoughts that seemed connected to releasing the tension.

I feel a little surge of excitement, yet the process feels a bit tenuous.  Am I onto something?

Today, I can’t remember where the tension was or what the thought was.

When I get really centered in awareness of my body-mind system, thoughts can seem like flies buzzing around my head. They’re there, but in the background of awareness. Sometimes thought fades away entirely for a bit into blessed silence.

This morning, monkey mind ran away with my attention even while scanning my body. A couple of times, I gently, firmly led my attention back to scanning to complete the process.

I am curious about this monkey mind. Why do I have days when it just wants to run wild?

Woke before alarm, feeling energized in outer phalanges of feet. Warmth of bed, lying in darkness.

Then alarm at 6:30, Deva Premal singing the Gayatri mantra. Sang it along with her. Stretching the length of my body, then pelvic circles, cat-cow with bent knees, bridge and figure eights with pelvis.

Swing legs over edge of bed and I’m standing on floor. Put on slippers, take heater to meditation corner, plug it in, turn it on. Pee. Feed Mango, my big male orange outside tabby with the gentle voice, and here comes the possibly-feral gray and white cat with the obnoxious voice. Feed him too (but not in the bowl–then they fight.)

Sit on cushion, turn on timer, wrap blanket, begin body scan. Attention to crown. Throat chakra blossoms. Back to crown. Slow feeble energy opening, growing stronger. Moves down forehead, face. Rest of head, neck.

Energy surges in inner upper arms simultaneously. Continue opening, bringing attention to places where the energy doesn’t spontaneously open. If it’s not there, at least I’ve brushed it with gentle loving attention. Sit bones strong, knees, toes, done.

Whole body awareness. Remembering yogic concept of the body as sheaths. The physical body, energy body, emotional body, thought body, bliss body. Ancient yogis liked to write of these as progressive layers, but that’s not how I experience them.

It’s all (I’m all) really a living system, constantly changing, I think, and I feel congruent with this thought (I get an inner yes). My awareness moves from my head area to my solar plexus, the center of my living body-mind system. Yes.

Today I sat about noon. Three sun salutations, then to the cushion, with blanket, socks, no heater.

My body scan was partly deliberate, partly spontaneous. Sometimes when I first bring my attention to my crown, my third eye, throat, and heart chakras open when my crown chakra does. It seems nearly simultaneous. Then various energetic pathways make themselves known. It’s not exactly a linear scan from head to toe.

Then on to whole body awareness. I’ve been exploring active approaches and passive approaches. Sometimes I’m “successful” for a short time, and sometimes not.

Today I felt sick of myself before sitting. I felt a little frail and confused and discouraged. Something in me wanted to retreat from the endeavor of whole body awareness, and I allowed my mind to seek comfort in a familiar place.

(I have internal places, and they may or may not correspond to my physiology.)

My familiar place is dark. My eyes are closed, and I am seeing the inside of my eyelids. My pupils are gazing slightly up and toward each other. This seems to activate something. (I did peripheral walking yesterday.)

Sometimes colors and patterns arise and shift against a near-black background that strangely enough has vague features in it. Sometimes I see only darkness. Sometimes my attention is not on what I see.

It’s as if the center of my consciousness is somewhere near the middle of my brain. My awareness radiates from this place.

I notice that when I’m in this familiar place, my breathing changes and becomes more automatic.

This is my still point. It feels safe and warm here in the darkness. I feel loved and comforted.

About 20 minutes in, I hear a key in my front door and voices. My daughter and granddaughter are back from their trip. They are coming in. They don’t know I’m meditating.

I greet them cheerfully when they come in, but I don’t get up.

They see I’m meditating. I used to not respond when this happened, and then I realized that was not necessary (it would be if it happened often, but it doesn’t). Isn’t part of meditation being present with what is?

They are quiet and respectful anyway and say they’ll come back. I say goodbye, get with you later.

I finish my meditation in peace. Then I call them to welcome them back.

I sat about 8:30 this morning. No need to stretch or do yoga–I was pretty fresh from bed. Just fed the cats, turned on the heater, wrapped myself in the blanket, turned on the timer, and sat.

So many ways to do the body scan. With energy, softening, with sensation on skin. Temperature differences, pressure of clothing and touch.

As for whole body awareness, I have experimented with how to do this. My coach asked me to do this. It was something I hadn’t tried before.

Hmm. I quickly noticed that it’s not my typical frame. My attention in meditation has moved from body part to body part, feeling a tightness here, a softening there, a blossoming here, a twinge there, interspersed with awareness of my monkey mind doing its thing.

Somehow I  needed to get bigger to attend to my whole body. Like Alice.

Feeling my energy body all at once is elusive, because the energy is in motion, surging and abating in various parts. Being aware of my field of active energy: I can do it for a few seconds at a time before my attention moves to a particular surge.

Then I create an image of myself sitting, as if looking in a mirror, only I’m dark and the background is dark. I fill it in with lights–chakras, nervous system, finally cells. I view my whole body in front of me. I notice my mirror inhaling and exhaling. My mirror gets up and sits down in my body, and we merge. That was fun!

Then monkey mind quiets. I breathe and feel physical and energetic expansion on each inhalation, and relaxation on the exhalation. Big me and little me. Expanded me and contracted me. Extraordinary me and ordinary me.

Another time I give up on trying to be aware of my whole body. Awareness diminishes to a place that seems to be in the center of my brain. It’s deep and dark and nothing is there. It’s very still. Time seems to slow. Just doing nothing.

That was the most restorative of all my experiments.