More insight
Today I found myself getting frenzied in the other direction, the one we usually nurture and chase. High energy, high focus, high drive. It's a state that can move mountains but I usually only need to wash dishes and floors! What's more, it comes with a lot of stream-talking and haste. I noticed the animals weren't comfortable with me in that state first. Then I realized with a shock that I didn't need to be in a frenzy to have access to this lovely energy today. Whatever mix of diet and hormones were working together, it wasn't any wiser to be intense happy than it was to be intense unhappy! I realized that this happy version crashed all too easily into unhappy if enough roadblocks or distractions came up. So I did my "take five" bit. I plugged my ears with my thumbs and covered my eyelids with my fingers for better concentration and started imagining. It was harder this time but I forced it, that's the mental discipline part, although choosing to try is certainly also an exercise in mental discipline. Instead of trying to picture some calm peaceful place I knew I needed a more dynamic happy moment. My system is trying to dance, run, fly, and jump! I did not think that forcing my brain to think we sat in a damn glade would cut it, LOL. Glades are awesome when you're scared, sad, or even mad, but when you're just high energy you need a lively dream!
So onto my bike I went. I didn't need to picture where I was riding, only the road blur and the bike and the feel of the whole thing. I pictured the way the bike wobbles and how my body shifts to level it and smooth it out. That's when I got pulled in, really felt the bike under me, started hearing it too. I lifted my arms and face and felt the wind of my passing and it was glorious. The bike wobbled a bit but I brought it back and then put my hands on the bars and came back to the table.
Awesome.
I guess maybe the fact that I've always been able to imagine this deeply is one reason that traditional meditation instruction fails so badly. For me, going straight there as though I were there is quite familiar and natural. It can take effort sometimes if there's a lot around me to distract and I'm out of habit compared to childhood, but this should only take a month and a half to fix. Buddha said 40 days! It's also recognizing the physical signs of increasing tension. It's part of focusing. The longer I focus on one thing, the more intensely I focus unless I constantly monitor and pull back. It's a balancing act really. So then in those moments I must also now remember to inject imaginary pauses to daydream again! I don't know how it fitted in to my childhood. I don't know what I was doing when I was "daydreaming" because I recall it as thinking deeply about a subject. It could be I was looking ouut at the blue sky "daydreaming" and actually thinking on the recent science lesson about why the sky is blue! That being said, there was some part of it that involved myself being a scientist discovering such things or teaching others. Still, in retrospect, I was one who should have been privately tutored. No amount of social immersion taught me social skills and the public school atmosphere stunted my intellectual ability terribly. If I'd been privately tutored I could have been guided over my hurdles instead of mercilessly teased for them, and those things at which I excelled could have been accellerated to match my interest and abilities.
I'm sure I could have been in university by puberty with the right support system but instead I had immigrant parents with PTSD from the nastiest war yet seen. To this day I still see the exhortation to play humble as some sort of charade of dismissal. Instead of having to rudely dismiss me, I'd dismiss myself with sham humility. It's not like if I played humble I'd eventually have someone turn to me and insist I can do the things I can do. Who'd ever think I could? It's not in the cultural lexicon. I'm female and poor and annoying. Ergo, I'm default useless. So they tell me I'm not humble enough and humiliate me. Not because I'm unable to meet my claims of ability, but because they don't want me to. To me, we should all be damn proud, happy to announce our virtues, and quick to recognize the value of others as our equal, not our superior. If I look to you as an equal, that is very high praise, don't you see? Because I think well of myself!
Unfortunately, if you do not think well of me, then you take it as insult. You say I should act as thoughh you were above me because in your mind, you are. Now who really is the arrogant one? Me for saying "I'm fantastic and you are also amazing! Aren't we wonderful?" Or is it you who says "You mustn't presume to be on my level until I have tested and judged you so."
The reason one cannot judge others isn't just that you only know a thin slice of the truth, but also because everyone's got something. We all have baggage. We all have skills. We all have something. If you could put a value on each little thing and run a calculation on them, which you can't, I would think it would come out, on the whole, pretty even across the board. We're all 5s. No 10s. No 1s. No 3s dressed as 9s. Just 5 dressed as something else usually.
So onto my bike I went. I didn't need to picture where I was riding, only the road blur and the bike and the feel of the whole thing. I pictured the way the bike wobbles and how my body shifts to level it and smooth it out. That's when I got pulled in, really felt the bike under me, started hearing it too. I lifted my arms and face and felt the wind of my passing and it was glorious. The bike wobbled a bit but I brought it back and then put my hands on the bars and came back to the table.
Awesome.
I guess maybe the fact that I've always been able to imagine this deeply is one reason that traditional meditation instruction fails so badly. For me, going straight there as though I were there is quite familiar and natural. It can take effort sometimes if there's a lot around me to distract and I'm out of habit compared to childhood, but this should only take a month and a half to fix. Buddha said 40 days! It's also recognizing the physical signs of increasing tension. It's part of focusing. The longer I focus on one thing, the more intensely I focus unless I constantly monitor and pull back. It's a balancing act really. So then in those moments I must also now remember to inject imaginary pauses to daydream again! I don't know how it fitted in to my childhood. I don't know what I was doing when I was "daydreaming" because I recall it as thinking deeply about a subject. It could be I was looking ouut at the blue sky "daydreaming" and actually thinking on the recent science lesson about why the sky is blue! That being said, there was some part of it that involved myself being a scientist discovering such things or teaching others. Still, in retrospect, I was one who should have been privately tutored. No amount of social immersion taught me social skills and the public school atmosphere stunted my intellectual ability terribly. If I'd been privately tutored I could have been guided over my hurdles instead of mercilessly teased for them, and those things at which I excelled could have been accellerated to match my interest and abilities.
I'm sure I could have been in university by puberty with the right support system but instead I had immigrant parents with PTSD from the nastiest war yet seen. To this day I still see the exhortation to play humble as some sort of charade of dismissal. Instead of having to rudely dismiss me, I'd dismiss myself with sham humility. It's not like if I played humble I'd eventually have someone turn to me and insist I can do the things I can do. Who'd ever think I could? It's not in the cultural lexicon. I'm female and poor and annoying. Ergo, I'm default useless. So they tell me I'm not humble enough and humiliate me. Not because I'm unable to meet my claims of ability, but because they don't want me to. To me, we should all be damn proud, happy to announce our virtues, and quick to recognize the value of others as our equal, not our superior. If I look to you as an equal, that is very high praise, don't you see? Because I think well of myself!
Unfortunately, if you do not think well of me, then you take it as insult. You say I should act as thoughh you were above me because in your mind, you are. Now who really is the arrogant one? Me for saying "I'm fantastic and you are also amazing! Aren't we wonderful?" Or is it you who says "You mustn't presume to be on my level until I have tested and judged you so."
The reason one cannot judge others isn't just that you only know a thin slice of the truth, but also because everyone's got something. We all have baggage. We all have skills. We all have something. If you could put a value on each little thing and run a calculation on them, which you can't, I would think it would come out, on the whole, pretty even across the board. We're all 5s. No 10s. No 1s. No 3s dressed as 9s. Just 5 dressed as something else usually.