Category Archives: spirit

More on ego death: Experiencing emptiness

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From the book What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America, by Tony Schwartz, a quote from Sandra Maitri, a teacher of Hameed Ali’s Diamond Approach (she later wrote The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram):

“Emptiness can be experienced in very different ways,” Maitri explained, after we’d done the exercise. “Often you almost literally fear you’ll die if you stay in that emptiness, and in a sense that’s true. A given sector of the personality will die if you don’t keep trying to fill it up. But there is something deeper. Emptiness feels like a black hole when it’s viewed through the prism of the personality. But that same hole is experienced as open and pristine and very peaceful when you are in essence. It may take a leap of faith to let go into this emptiness — whether from courage or desperation. But when you do, it is very spacious, and it’s anything but deficient. It is the beginning of opening up to our true selves — to the empty space in which everything arises, to the ground of our fundamental nature.”

This popped up into my awareness after writing previously about jumping off the train, a form of ego death.

Jumping off the train, or the joy of being wrong

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It’s been 10 years since I jumped off the train, and my life hasn’t been the same since. It’s been so.much.better.

Ten years ago, I had just moved from Dallas to back to Austin to a new job. I was very wound up about some choices that someone close to me had made, choices that were terrible, with dire consequences, in my opinion.

My friend with whom I was staying followed a spiritual teacher called Prasad. I went with her that day to one of his satsangs.

I wasn’t sure what to think of him — a long-haired American dude with a Hindu name, dressed in white, sitting on a carpeted platform with flowers, answering questions as if he was a guru.

He looked like a hippie putting on airs to me. I was silent during the satsang, observing.

But Prasad said something about “jumping off the train,” meant in the sense of shifting into a more authentic way of being. “Jumping off the train” was a nice metaphor. It stuck in my mind.

That night, which was the night before I was to start my new job, I laid awake, mind whirling with anxiety and anger about what this person had done and what I believed the consequences would be.

I could not fall asleep. The clock slowly crept past midnight into the wee hours as I lay awake, monkey mind going a hundred miles per hour.

I knew how important the first day at a new job is. I wanted to make a good impression, not be bleary-eyed and tired.

That part of me was really annoyed that I was letting this worry get to me so much. That part was self-centered.  That part remembered “jumping off the train” and decided I had nothing to lose by trying it.

I imagined myself on the top of a train speeding through the darkness. The train was my train of thoughts and emotions. Monkey mind on speed.

Crouching atop the train like an action hero, I could feel the cold air and the wind generated by the train’s speed.

I began to think about jumping off. What would happen to me if I did? Could I die?

Yes, definitely I could die from jumping off the train!

I did it anyway. I flung myself off the train, somersaulting into the air.

And what happened was this: Nothing happened. Literally. Nothing happened.

I found myself experiencing dark, silent stillness. I didn’t land. I didn’t die. And in that nothing was a blessed, blessed relief. Peace. Peace of mind. At last.

I slept like a baby the rest of the night and felt rested my first day on the new job.

I later recognized that jumping off the train was an experience of ego death. What died was my self-important belief that I had to worry and suffer because someone I loved made what I thought was a dire mistake.

I began to accept the situation and recognize for the first time in my life that worry doesn’t do a thing for anyone, especially the worrier. I found ways to love that person without losing sleep, without taking their choices personally, without suffering but with compassion. For both of us.

I have since noticed that when one experiences ego death, humility accompanies it. Humility and humus come from the same root in Latin. It is grounding to experience humility, and it brings grace.

Ego death. Believe me, we spend a lot of energy fearing and avoiding it. And when it happens, grace follows.

How else can I be wrong and find grace?

Leaving a job, embracing the unknown

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How much change do you need or seek?

I need a certain amount of change in my life, and I’ve worked in an environment for the last six years where people often stay in the same job for decades.

I gave two weeks’ notice at my job on Monday.

I once worked at the same place for eight years, although that job involved promotions, various managers, and several reorganizations. In my current job, I have done the same thing for the same manager for six years. I’ve liked working with her. She hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve felt comfortable with her supervising my work. She’s a literate technologist, and I appreciate her. Now she’s retiring, and I’ve come to see it is also the best time for me to leave.

Even though giving up a secure job brings insecurity, I feel strongly that I did the right thing anyway! I feel exhilarated and insecure, free and scared and adventurous.

I’m excited about the new opportunities I have — to work in a health food store, to work in a garden center, to spend more time with my granddaughter, to catch up on my reading, to devote more time to improving my blogging, maybe travel a bit, take some workshops that intrigue me.

To rediscover my own biorhythms instead of those artificially imposed by an employer’s needs — yippee!

And of course as I’ve mentioned before here, I’m selling my house, planning to downsize into a vintage trailer, and have been accepted into the Academy of Oriental Medicine of Austin with a summer start date.

I am witnessing doors open — like being asked if I’d be interested in teaching an “old men’s” yoga class!

I notice a kind of shedding that accompanies leaving this job. My mind feels sharper and more resourceful. I feel more alive.

I am not who I was six years ago. Dang, but I have done a lot of yoga since then, substituted for my teacher, and finally trained as a teacher.

I’ve taken two levels of NLP training and presented on NLP topics, with plans to do more and some coaching again.

I finally read all the Carlos Castaneda books and discovered some great poets and took up the pennywhistle.

I’ve traveled to Maui twice and discovered West Texas.

I’ve been in and out of relationship a couple of times.

I’ve been a support for my daughter while she’s gone to nursing school.

I’ve been an integral part of my granddaughter’s life.

I’ve worked hard on several health issues with a lot of success.

I’ve made some friends at work and gotten kudos for my work.

And of course, I started meditating and started this blog.

Really, I cannot count all the changes I’ve made while working in this same steady job. The job has made it possible for me to grow and change, and now it seems I’ve outgrown the job.

I’ve come to accept that truly, life is change, that change is the key characteristic of life. I walk towards it now.

Suffering more effectively

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Every Wednesday, I get an email from Nipun Mehta called InnerNet Weekly, also viewable in a browser. Here’s the link to view this week’s message on how to suffer more effectively, written by Shinzen Young.

Therefore, there is nothing whatsoever to be said in favor of pain per se for meditators. It can just as much create new blockages as it can break up old ones. Everything depends on one’s degree of skill in experiencing it. Very little depends on the intensity of the discomfort itself. A small discomfort greeted with a large amount of skill will break up old knots. A small discomfort greeted with a large lack of skill will create new knots. The same is true with respect to big discomforts. The trick is not so much to endure massive doses of pain, but to develop that skill which will allow you to get the maximum growth out of whatever happens to come up.

Click the link above to learn more about the skills needed.

Here’s more from Thomas Merton on suffering:

Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture. This is another of the great perversions by which the devil uses our philosophies to turn our whole nature inside out, and eviscerate all our capacities for good, turning them against ourselves.

3,000 views! Thank you, readers!

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Just a quick note to share my gratitude with you, the readers of my blog. Today my odometer rolled over, so to speak, and I have reached the milestone of 3,000 views!

Last summer, after a jump in readers, the number 3,000 came to mind as a goal I hoped to reach by the end of this year.  Now I’ve reached it a month and a half early. That means the rest of this year is pure lagniappe! Or icing on the cake, or gravy, if you prefer those metaphors.

Thank you for stopping by.

The number doesn’t really tell me much. It’s just the number of people who have viewed my blog.

It doesn’t tell me which posts and topics you like most or which titles whet your curiosity. I do know that a few of you are subscribers, some are occasional readers via Facebook and Twitter (@zafu_report), and some find my blog by accident, searching for information on, say, trauma releasing exercises or brain waves.

I posted an analysis on October 1st, and the way I put it all together bears repeating:

What I get from this analysis is that you guys, my readers, are curious about body/mind/emotions/spirit connections. You want to read about discovering/returning to some kind of integrated state of healthiness and wholeness. You’re interested in ways to frame experience, to give it context and perspective. And reading about geeky brain wave states does not put you off!

The brain geeks among you have something to look forward to. I’ve been experimenting with theta waves and will post about it before too long.

Writing and reading are a reciprocal exchange. All I can ask is that you come back, enjoy yourself, and please do not hesitate to give me feedback and comments!

Again, thank you for stopping by.

The joy of being a Five

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I finally figured something out, something that has been fishy for a long time where I work, that no one will speak openly about, like a shameful family secret.

I have wracked my brain trying to figure out what makes sense about this situation, which has been rather crazy-making.

I went into a theta state listening to a new CD, and I got an image of being in a rowboat out on the water, and the large and long arms of a woman who remained submerged reached up and grabbed control of the boat.

Oh, and when the other chief instigator of crazy-making, the one who is not submerged but deeply connected with long-armed woman’s energy, came into my office to say hello, I just happened to be watching this hilarious video.

The image and that “coincidence” tell me a story about what’s really going on.

I’m going to use this blog post to address this shadowy, long-armed woman. Everyone else who reads it, please pray for the most wounded of the two women to find peace. We will work on the other one later.

I know who you are, and it is time for you to completely let go. Way past time. This is no way to be living your life, through someone else.

I am sorry that you are in so much emotional pain and carry such a great need to control things. There must be a great well of tender vulnerability underneath that furious need to control others.

Your path to true happiness — and it is as available to you as to anyone else — lies in fully acknowledging your vulnerability and your fear.

Life is short, time passes quickly, and with it our only chance. Soften.

Let go of the need to control, let down your guard, and heal your heart.

By doing this, amazingly, you become able to lovingly protect yourself, tend to your own life, and become the magnanimous, self-surrendering, courageous, forgiving person that you really are.

You can find the help you need.

Best wishes to you. Now go your own way.

12 states of attention

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Update: This post was originally written in 2010, and it’s now 2023. Some things have changed. I’ve met and taken several trainings with Nelson. He’s a crusty, lovable curmudgeon and very, very smart.

You can find Nelson’s archived Navaching website here.

You can get a new or used copy of his book The Structure of Delight on Amazon.

If you’re a fan of Nelson Zink and in particular his work on peripheral vision and nightwalking, you might be interested in attending a nightwalking training in Taos, New Mexico, with Katie Raver. Details here.

~~~

My most recent post, Refining Awareness, includes some instructions about using your vision to focus down to the pixel level, and then to open your vision and let everything come into your field of vision.

These activities are based on a set of exercises called the 12 states of attention that I learned about and practiced and taught, so that now I seem to have internalized them enough that I don’t consciously think about it.

The three main senses we use are seeing, hearing, and feeling, or visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. NLP 101.

Each of these senses can be experienced externally and internally. For example, I can see the computer in front of me, and I can close my eyes and remember the image or imagine the computer morphing into a piano. That’s Visual External and Visual Internal (remembered and constructed).

You can further expand your sensory acuity by practicing using each sense as broadly and as narrowly as possible. Hence, look at a pixel, then let everything come in. Those states are Visual External Narrow (VEN) and Visual External Broad (VEB).

You can do this with hearing as well. You can focus on one sound in your environment (or in your memory or imagination), and you can focus on all the sounds.

Same with kinesthetic awareness. Internal, external, narrow, broad.

A man I’ve never met but who has been a teacher for me came up with the 12 states of attention. His name is Nelson Zink, and he’s got a pretty amazing website, Navaching. Click here to read about the 12 states of attention. He’s got a lot to say and says it well. (And check out his other pages. It’s pretty fascinating. I also do nightwalking. And read his book, The Structure of Delight.)

The point is that through our conditioning, most of us come to favor some states and neglect others. If you enjoy having more resources, you can practice these states and gain awareness skills. You never have to be bored again, and you will reach more of your potential!

So when I meditate and do a body scan, I may bring to awareness my skin, starting with my head and slowly going down my body to my foot, bringing each area into awareness (Kinesthetic External Narrow).

Or I may attend to how my head, chest, and belly feel (Kinesthetic Internal Somewhere-Between-Narrow-and-Broad).

When I do whole body awareness, I am using the Kinesthetic Internal/External Broad state of attention, including my energy field.

(The convention is that the skin is the boundary between external and internal for the kinesthetic sense. But because my energy body radiates through my skin, my skin is a permeable boundary, and I’m sensing internally and externally at the same time.)

The kinesthetic sense may actually be a lot of senses, including balance, knowing where my foot is in space, temperature, tactile, muscular, and so on. Emotions are usually classified as kinesthetic as well, since we feel them in the body.

Anyway.

Wisdom is a broad state, no matter whether we’re seeing the big picture, hearing the cosmic OM, or feeling connected to Source. Big Mind is a broad state, and that’s a skill gained from meditation.

Check out Zink’s website and practice the exercises given, if you like. It will bring you gifts of knowing yourself and experiencing more of your full potential.

Writing a new chapter in my life

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Just finished 6 weeks of cleansing and flushing my body of parasites and toxins and nasty old stuff that needs to go.

Now it feels ripe to do the same for my worldly goods.

I’m downsizing. Selling my East Austin house where I’ve lived for the past 10 years, making some big changes.

I’m hoping to buy a used vintage trailer in good shape and wanting to find a nice place to put it — on someone’s big lot or country acreage not too far out.

The trailer parks on Barton Springs Road would also be a good location, if I can get in there.

Or perhaps I’ll rent a trailer first and see how I like it.

Releasing, shedding, letting go, removing, reducing, downsizing, lightening up… I have too much stuff. I’m so ready for clean, spare, minimal. I could have so much more free time to do things I love.

So much to do… Prune the branch that hangs too low in front of the house, obscuring the view. Clear the entry path. Clean the house and make it ready for prospective buyers. Take stuff to Habitat and Goodwill and Half Price Books. Sell stuff on Craigslist. Maybe even sell the house on Craigslist!

I’m feeling my way through this, flying by the seat of my pants. Wanting to find a good neighbor for Bruce, someone who will honor the house and remodel, not tear it down and build ugly.

This house has been good to me, and it’s time to move on. I’m preparing for finishing my work at my current job sometime mid-2011. I’ve committed to stay through the session. Hopefully the last day of May will be my last day there.

And… I’ve been accepted into AOMA (acupuncture school). I deferred my entrance until next July, so I can do all this stuff at a pace I can handle.

I’m not 100% sure it’s right for me, but it sure feels like I’m moving in the right direction, and nothing else I’ve found resonates so much with me. Oriental medicine feels right, and it’s daunting. Three and a half years of eastern and western medicine is pretty intense, and it’s been years since I’ve been in school. But how fascinating, exotic, and practical. It will definitely keep my left and right brain hemispheres working!

In many ways, these changes are a side effect of meditation. Questions arise: How am I not living my right life? What is my right life? What do I love to do so much that I would do it for free (and making a living at it is icing on the cake)?

Words, images, dreams, realizations arise. The answers I’ve found so far are: doing/teaching/learning yoga, learning about the subtle body’s energies, learning to think like a Daoist, helping others and myself on the path toward health and enlightenment, being of joyous service. And writing.

I hope you’ll wish me good luck and lend me your support.

An amazing surrender process

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Bill Hornback sends daily emails about Eckhardt Tolle’s The Power of Now. I really liked this one and asked him if I could post about it. He said yes.

Bill writes:

Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now – “The pain you create is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.”  Ouch! This is so true it hurts!  Since resistance to what is does not work, let’s chat about surrender. 

A few years ago, I went thru a surrender process once, and it was . . . amazing.  Until you’ve gone through this process, or one like it, you are just ASSUMING you have surrendered or know what that means. Perhaps instead of surrendering, life has only been a test of your flexibility, perhaps.  Surrendering, especially for controllers like me, is almost too difficult an experience to describe . . . but I’ll try. 

Imagine every reference point of your life, everything you know, every tangible object, every dream of the future, all being taken away from you, without any expectation of return . . . and imagine being good with that. Imagine that you’re OK with all that. Imagine it’s because it’s as if your mind has been stripped from you, or at least turned off, and you experience what it is like to just BE.  Perhaps you understand, for the first time, that nothing outside yourself defines you. Nothing outside your SELF establishes or diminishes your Being.  You are, and will Be.  Perhaps for the first time, you KNOW, truly KNOW that you can create what you want to create, and would if everything you had disappeared.  You are thankful, truly thankful, for the relationships you have, because you know those relationships were not created by you alone, they are the other person’s choice too, and they chose you, just as you chose them.  You didn’t control the situation, you were only part of it, and were blessed by the mutual choice.  Imagine understanding that your life starts over from this moment forward.  If you can imagine all this, you may have a glimpse of what it means to “surrender to what is.” My life changed for the better from that moment. One of the first things I did was choose Julie again, and luckily for me, she chose me too. 
I’m sorry if this is seems scattered or incoherent.  I tried, but the experience was, as I said, difficult to describe.  Many changes I’ve made in my life since then revolve around the concept of surrendering control, which is significantly easier to do at this point.

So, will you “surrender to what is” today, or beat your head against that wall time and again?
Intent: I will look for situations where I need to surrender to what is.
Outcome: Everything will become easier, simpler.
Presup: Respecting every person’s model of the world, including my own, is immensely useful.

I’m not sure I have experienced anything like this. In fact, I’m pretty sure I haven’t, except maybe for a few moments in my deepest meditations, when being just comes really alive.

I get that this is difficult to talk or write about, since it is a nonverbal experience. It is awesome to know that this is possible for someone and therefore possible for me.

I’d love to know more about how it’s done — as a guided meditation, perhaps.

Developing the skills of meditation

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I was thinking today, three-quarters through my year of daily sitting, about skills that I have developed so far.

It took about three months for me to be able to sit for 30 minutes without spending a good chunk of that time being aware of some pain somewhere in my body. Usually it wasn’t major pain, though, but sometimes the pain seemed to accumulate during a session, and right before the timer would go off, I’d start feeling like I couldn’t stand it any more.

That probably doesn’t count as a real skill. It’s more like acclimating the body to the practice. It felt like grace when the pain (mostly) went away.

Most of the pain was around my sacrum and left sacroiliac joint, where I’ve had injury. Whatever. Do not let this stop you from meditating. You will not experience pain like I did. Yours will be different. And you will learn from it. Unjudged, pain is sensation, pure and simple.

It also takes core strength to be able to keep my spine erect for 30 minutes while unsupported. I had this ability before I started sitting, developed from both yoga and sitting on an exercise ball with my back unsupported at my job.

If you’re thinking of starting a sitting practice, it’s a good idea to work on your core strength.

Another skill for physically sitting is knowing that your knees should be lower than your pelvis. I have used a round zafu, a crescent zafu, folded yoga blankets, and a yoga bolster to create this posture.

The physical skills of a sitting practice are far easier to describe than the awareness skills.

I’ve posted quite a bit about how I’ve been given the instruction “whole body awareness” by my Zen meditation teacher, and my various explorations of how to do that. It’s been a koan — something you try to “figure out” but can’t, and meanwhile you pay of attention to your actual experience.

One of the things I’m recognizing now is that being able to shift between what’s in the foreground of my attention (hearing a siren outside) to what’s in the background (hearing everything I can hear — the siren, traffic sounds, a helicopter, birds, squirrels, conversations, my refrigerator, my breathing, my cat purring, my tinnitus) is a skill developed in meditation.

Hearing everything I hear without labeling it: another skill to practice. Let it all in and be unnamed!

To further develop meditation skill, you can take that ability to move from narrow to wide from one sense (hearing) and include another sense, such as touch.

Expand to include your other senses: what you see (even with your eyes closed, unless you are sitting in pitch darkness, some light comes through your closed eyelids, smell, and taste.

Include your thoughts and your emotional state.

Let your senses blend with each other. Let them merge. Keep moving between the foreground and background, from narrow to broad awareness.

Another skill of meditation has to do with size or location, perspective or point of view. This is the hardest thing for me to write about right now, because I’m exploring a new edge of my sitting experience.

When I first started trying to become aware of my whole body after months of my attention being drawn to body parts that either hurt or felt good, I had to learn how to “back off”.

To become aware of my whole body, I had to somehow enlarge my awareness.

Now, that’s not something you hear often. “Hey, you, enlarge your awareness!”

At first I though this meant taking in less detail to get a bigger “picture”. It’s not that the detail goes away. I can zoom back in, so to speak. And it’s not visual, and not like a camera. Those are metaphors.

Here lately, I have experienced backing off even further, to where I experience whole awareness — aware of my body as an just another artifact of my nervous system, not really “my body”. Meanwhile, my nervous system is taking in everything.

There is not a clear way for me to tell you how to “back off” in meditation. It’s like I stumbled upon it by accident, and at this point, I don’t quite know what I did, but I do know that I experienced an interesting shift.

Maybe by the end of this year, I can be more clear. I appreciate you readers who bear with me in this exploration. I think we are getting some nuggets out of it.

And when you can let all of your awareness of the background become the foreg