Discovering Awareness Blog

Boulder, CO

How often can I practice awareness in a busy life? Awhile ago I asserted that that “If I want or need to practice awareness, there isn’t an hour when I can’t find a minute; a day when I can’t find an hour; a month when I can’t find a day; or a year when I can’t find a week.” This sense of space and possibility gave me great peace when I was in a job that kept me way too busy. Now that I have control of my time, it’s less urgent but still comforting.

I also likened awareness to a skill that can be practiced at many levels: from occasional to professional, like a person who enjoys a stroll in the woods or an explorer headed for Mount Everest. And everything in between. Or like a person who takes a few minutes now and again to really smell the roses or a monk who awakes at 3AM every morning and spends six or more hours a day in formal meditation practice.

There is no good, better, best in any of the above. Getting goal oriented isn’t usually helpful in discovering awareness. There isn’t anything to be achieved or won or bagged. The universe doesn’t care if you are a full time monk or an occasional practitioner or even a non-practioner. You shouldn’t either. If you want to discover awareness, go ahead at your own pace. If you don’t, forget about it.

All this is prologue to something I am about to do that draws blank stares of amazement from my friends who ask what’s up? Marie and I are driving to Old Snowmass, Colorado for a seriously intense retreat. It’s ten days of silence, meditation and vegetarian food in a gloriously austere setting of a Trappist Monastery. There will be about 20 of us, we’ll sit for three 90 minute sessions a day, eat meals in silence and help with a few chores. Ten days of seriously intense awareness. It’s the “week in a year”. It’s closer to Mt. Everest than to a stroll in the woods. My friends are amazed that anyone would want to be silent for ten days. I do it because I want to and, in a way, I need to. I can’t really explain that. The closest I been able to come is “I’m going for ten days of peace and quiet.” Some of the time, that helps a little.

For you, dear blog reader, I’ll say a little more. I choose this seriously intense path fro a couple of reasons.

It feels like an adventure into unknown yet familiar territory maybe like a hike in the Alaskan wilderness, a hike I’ve been on before but still holds mystery, beauty and adventure. It will deepen and sharpen my skill. I’ll practice silence, awareness, spaciousness and gratitude.

I’ll practice compassion for myself and for the others in my immediate vicinity. There is nothing like ten days together to bring out the edges that rub one another the wrong way. The singer, poet and sometime zen monk, Leonard Cohen, explained that monasteries work on monks the same way pebbles carried in a soft bag work on each other, eventually wearing away the rough edges leaving them smooth and polished.

Also, the deep quiet and soft acceptance of self and others allows a gentle healing and awareness to occur naturally and effortlessly. My image for this is in a video from our wilderness trip in Alaska. Several huge humpback whales passed within feet of our little boat on a perfectly clear, bright and calm sea. As the leviathans surfaced and returned to the deep, they left in their wake an immensely powerful roil that slowly dissipated as the sea returned to a mirror-like calm.

These are my hopes and dreams as I head to Snowmass.

Boulder, CO

One of my friends who loves practicing yoga related an experience that is a little zen poem.

She was in an early morning class and the instructor was introducing a new and challenging posture. After demonstrating the move, the class struggled as they tried to move into the new position. Limbs shook, muscles quivered, joints strained as the class tried and tried. The instructor gave small corrections to help each member of the class into the position insofar as the limitations of their bodies would allow. Satisfied, the instructor added in a quiet voice to the entire class, “Now, imagine replacing effort with awareness.”

Awareness of your body as it is, in the present moment, without judgment or evaluation.

When I was a lad, my stern father would see me struggling with something and bark, “Relax!” Of course I never could. Now I’ll change my ego’s command into a soft voice that says, “Now, imagine replacing effort with awareness.”

Got it?

“Be careful of what you wish for, it may come true.” goes the old saw.

I say become aware of your wishes, hopes and dreams. What are they, right now?
Can you observe them without judgment or evaluation?

Lately, I’ve been haunted by the end of winter and the birth of spring. I want to attend to this annual miracle. When I was eighteen and a freshman at MIT I was struck enough by Housman’s poem “The loveliest of trees, the cherry now” to memorize it and recite it to myself or anyone who’d listen every year since. It’s been fifty years, fifty springs so for me the crucial line should now read:

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty Three springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Now my dream is to savor the bloom. In Pablo Neruda’s love poem (written when he was about eighteen)

I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees.

And so, aware of my dream, Marie and I booked a trip to Washington, DC for April 2-4 when the thousand cherry trees surrounding the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin will be in peak bloom. It’s an impulsive trip based on deep awareness of wishes, hopes and dreams. Also longing.

Some final thoughts on Judith Warner’s March 5th post Being and Mindfulness. It generated 589 thoughtful comments from 10 PM to 3 PM the next day. Ms Warner clearly hit a nerve or maybe a couple of nerves.

It would take more time than I have to wade into the debate and diatribe. But at a high level, I take the following from the attacks on and the defense of mindfulness.

Awareness is a practice. It’s hard to talk about with people who haven’t experienced it and it’s probably a waste of everyone’s time to do so. So I discount comments with people who haven’t practiced. They are certainly entitled to their opinion especially because some of us are inclined to savor meditation while others are inclined to run for the exits. I speculate that some of this reflects differences in the ways our brains our wired and some of it is due to our individual psychological development. I don’t think a person is in anyway better or worse for being inclined towards meditation. It’s simply too individual.

Second, the idea that we and all our problems will be fixed by awareness is naive. So is the idea that we can make a self-improvement project of awareness. We simply become aware day by day. It doesn’t erase our false self; it just tires it out a bit.

Finally, the fruits of the practice are in everyday life. Our efforts are to be more connected to reality, not to a “pod” like anesthetized state. Anger and frustration still occur; we just ditch it quicker. The “edge” Warner writes about I will leave to generations younger than I. I know that I don’t want to nuture the aspect of my personality that Robert Burns lampooned two centuries ago in his portrait of poor Tam o’ Shanter’s wife, who sits at home brooding and awaiting her drunken husband’s return:

Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

That’s an edge I can do without.

Judith Warner does an Op-Extra blog for the New York Times called Domestic Disturbances. Her March 4, 2009 post “Being and Mindfulness” made fun of mindfulness in a friendly sort of way. It’s a playful piece with an edge that makes me want to respond.

Here is one of her points:

“…people who are embarked on this particular “journey of self-exploration” … tend to want to talk, or write about it. A lot….the truth is, however admirable mindfulness may be, however much peace, grounding, stability and self-acceptance it can bring, as an experience to be shared, it’s stultifyingly boring.”

I guess I am one of the guilty; this blog is exhibit one, Discovering Awareness exhibit two, and the various talks I’ve given to groups exhibit three. Seems to me Ms Warner has a point. Talking about awareness may be boring; however actually discovering awareness is seldom boring.

Here are two books that are both “stultifyingly boring” and invaluable. I love them both:

Nothing could be more boring that reading the directions for a hike in the Rockies; nothing could be more wonderful than hiking the Rockies.
Nothing could be more boring than reading a four recipies for a meal; nothing could be more wonderful than cooking and eating one of Alice Waters’s meals.

I take two things from Ms Warner’s piece: 1)Talk less. 2)Cook and Hike more.

Learning to turn down the critical voice within is the three key things I do when I practice awareness. It’s come up in the blog in various contexts: listening to a concert, recovering from a stroke, etc. Here’s another example.

As you’ve gathered by now, I’m a skier. When I’m learning, the critical voice within me has a role in evaluating my progress and deciding on what to do next. However, when I’m actually skiing and focused on performance, that voice is not much help and is often in the way. Athletes and their coaches know this and have developed some ways to be focused completely on the performance and to turn down the voice of fear and criticism.

In skiing it works this way. If I’m standing at the top of a challenging hill with lots of difficult obstacles, I recall images of me or another skier skiing similiar terrain very well. Usually, I will have watched video tapes of an expert doing what I am about to do. I’ve watched them enough to recall the entire tape; I can visualize the skier and every move he or she makes. In my mind I replay the tape, focusing carefully. As I visualize, I remember the kenesthetic sensations vividly enough that I feel them. Then, as soon I stop the visualization, I immediately start to ski focusing completely on a single aspect. It could be moving my hips and shoulders across my skis for example. I totally drop judgment and evalution and simply focus on the present moment, that is the movement I am making.

If you watch Olympic atheletes you can probably see them visualizing and recalling the kenesthetics of what they are about to do before they perform. What I’ve been taught to do is similar.

It works. Instead of being fearful, I am focused. Instead of criticizing my last turn, my entire focus is on the turn I am doing. My skiing jumps a notch. I’m not transformed into a 20 year old racer but in a very difficult situation, I can execute the movements I’ve learned in easier situation with relative ease. In a way, by turning down the critic and the fear, I ski up to my potential.

Stated in the language of “Stroke of Insight”, I’ve told the hyperactive left side of my brain that I am ignoring its input in favor of the kinesthetic and euphoric right side, at least for the moment.

I regard this practice as an awareness exercise. I know the mental skills I learn on the snow help me in the meditation room. It’s the same voice I turn down. The one that says something like “There you go again. You don’t concentrate well do you?”
When that voice is faint, I can hear the whoops of joy from within.

To see what I’m talking about, take a look at this video of me having fun in British Columbia. The video of me meditating is too boring to post.

“Assume a posture that helps you stay relaxed and alert.”

Relaxed and alert is a great goal but what about falling asleep during meditation?

Every so often, this happens to me especially in early morning sessions when I find myself dozing. When it happen, I try not to judge myself or the session. I simply return to my focus as gently as possible and resume my meditation.

Thomas Keating, the founder of Contemplative Outreach, says he regards it as if a baby fell asleep in its mother’s arms. Something soft and beautiful.

Soft and gentle. Relaxed and Alert. No Violence.

Some like to keep their practice exactly the same day to day. Same focus (breath or sacred word), same time, same place, same cushion, same bell, same incense. I find that routine can ease the path into a relaxed but alert state of awareness.

I also appreciate variety in my practice. I change the focus often: sometimes it’s my breath, sometimes sounds, sometimes body sensations, sometimes it’s the Coming Homephrases described in our book.

A few days ago, I experienced a vivid and warm experience of physical security and comfort, as if being held in a warm embrace. It felt like a sleepy child cradled by its mother or resting in its head on its father’s shoulder. It’s the state evoked by Julian of Norwich’s words, “…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

So today, I tried something new. I tried to use the embrace as my focus. I recalled the experience and tried to stay with it. This was kinesthetic for me. I recalled how my body felt. When my mind wandered as it always does, I returned to the kinesthetic feeling. I tried to do this without thinking, without describing the experience. I wanted to stay beyond words.

Slowly some words emerged: enfolded, safe, free. I slowly savored the experience and the words.

I’ve found a new focus for myself. One that can help me discover “Home” along a kinesthetic path.

I was riding up the ski lift with a wise and good friend. The rosy fingers of dawn just touched the high peaks. The white snow and deep green lodgepole pine seemed to absorb all sound. After a few minutes, my friend asked “Bud, why do you meditate?” It was a question I couldn’t refuse.

I thought out loud with my friend for a few minutes and then had the good sense to ask him, “Why do you ask?”

“Because I’ve meditated and enjoyed it but one of my friends goes on and on about a green light, an aura, he sees surrounding everything during some sessions. I don’t believe in this stuff, and I can produce the same light by rubbing my eyes. I’m a physician and tend to think there is a physiological explanation for most things. I’m suspicious of a lot of things that people attribute to god that may well have simpler explanations.”

I thought out loud some more and asked some more clarifying questions that brought us to an interesting rephrasing of the question: “Do you meditate to experience things you perceive as magical/supernatural? Do you meditate because of your religious beliefs about God and what he expects? Is there any place in meditation for a skeptic like me?”

My answers are: no, no, yes.

I meditate to experience everyday life more fully, I meditate to decrease the amount of criticism, judgment and evaluation I unconsciously apply to the situations of ordinary life. I meditate because I find it leads me to more compassion for myself and for other s.

As to God, I’ve always like the Alcoholic Anonymous formulation: “the only thing you need to know about the higher power is that you aren’t it.” I meditate to quiet the part of me who thinks it is god and to experience myself and my world as it is, not as I think it should be. There are times I experience a decrease in separation from others, a sense of connection to the world around me, and an oceanic dissolving of boundaries. Some see this a contact with the divine. Some see the same effect in people who have strokes that disable the left side of their brain. I really don’t care which it is. For me, the point is that the connection is a reality. We are nowhere as separate and independent of each other as our internal critic imagines.

At this point my friend said that he though much of religion might be a mass brain washing, beliefs inculcated in us by organized religion.

With a wink, I told him I was interested in the opposite view. That the commonalities in religious and spiritual practices across cultures might not be due to brain washing but to humans trying to understand the things that happen in their heads. Here is what I mean: Think of yourself at peace watching a magnificent sunset. Most of us experience feelings that are poorly described by equations and statistics but are part of the magnificence of poetry…that which is beyond words. We use songs, dance, images, epic stories to try to capture the magnificence with our poor symbols.

I believe some very deep insights will occur as we unravel the mystery of how the human mind works. We will see what this means for organized religion and the scientific secularism of our time. For me, right now, given a choice between Maxwell’s equations and poetry, I’ll bet on the poetry.

That’s a vague way of saying why I meditiate.

The folks I talked to on Sunday recommended reading “My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven year old Harvard trained neuroanatomist who suffered a massive stroke that devastated the left side of her brain. Because of her training, she was uniquely able to observe as she lost the function of the rational, grounded, detailed and time oriented part of her mind leaving the intuitive, kenesthetic, and euphoric part of her mind in dominance. In the months ahead, as she slowly worked to recover walking, talking, reading, writing, logical thinking, detailed memory, she began to face the tradeoffs between the logical and intuitive functions. For example, as she began to recover, the critical and scolding part of her brain began to recover and she didn’t like it. She reports making a choice about how much dominance to allow it. Here is how she put it:

When my brain runs loops that feel harshly judgmental, counter-productive, or out of control, I wait for 90 seconds for the emotional/physiological response to dissipate and then I speak to my brain as though it is a group of children. I say with sincerity,
“I appreciate your ability to think thoughts and feel emotions, but I am really not interested in thinking these thoughts or feeling these emotions anymore. Please stop bringing this stuff up.”

Sounds an awful lot like the “without judgment or evaluation” part of awareness, doesn’t it? Maybe what we do in praticing awareness is letting the functions Jill describes as the right side of her brain have a chance to manifest. All we need is to turn down the volume a bit on the left side.

Here is another sample from her first day in the hospital:

“… my perception of my physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air. I felt like a genie liberated from its bottle. The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria. Finer that the finest of pleasures we can experience as physical beings, this absence of physical boundary was one of glorious bliss. As my consciousness dwelled in a flow of sweet tranquility, it was obvious to me that I would never be able to squeeze the enormousness of my spirit back inside this tiny cellular matrix.”

Sound familiar? Pick any mystic.

I recommend this book as a graphic personal example of courage and observation. I have no idea whether it’s as simple as the physiology of right and left side; I kind of doubt it. But her experience rings true. It casts a new light on my meditation practice.

You can watch a remarkable video of Jill’s talk to TED. Don’t miss it.