I am often in awe of how the world is pretty much an entirely different place for me depending on mood. I suppose having so many different perspectives is useful for learning what is actually there. I'm not under the illusion that one way of looking at things is accurate. At least on a meta level. However, no matter how aware I am, at any given moment I'm still looking through a perspective. Buddhism is making more and more sense to me.

I was expressing to Patri last night how I really do feel that being in the now is a form of death. Its the new great thing that everyone is striving toward, and that I seem to be striving toward in my actions, but I'm totally terrified of it.

In talking with Patri last night, I realize that I don't understand it. My vision of the now is being so present in one moment that there is no recollection in the next. My interpretation of what Patri said is that one does observe when being in the now, and that you collect information that can later be analyzed, but don't move into words while being in the now.

I realize that my issue here is that I'm overly identified with my analytic mind, and that it is not really me. Its just an aspect of me.

And, I also realize that it is in control, or at least right now it really thinks it is, and I as the self believe it.

So, I finally caved and asked Patri for his Power of Now audio. If I can get over my irrational* dislike of the guy, these CDs should be interesting and expansive of my world.

* the dislike makes perfect sense in the context of really not wanting to believe what he has to say.

I see CTI's Process Coaching and dualistic voices in Big Mind as very similar. Which is not surprising since both are geared toward the path of enlightenment.

The way I see them both, in the way that I use them, is a method of untying knots. There are these places where there are balls of fear or sadness or other places within us where we don't go. We spend a lot of energy skirting around these things.

With Process Coaching, you delve into these scary places and see what's really there. In doing so, you create more blood flow and less that you need to tip toe around, helping you to integrate more of yourself and become stronger and more robust.

Today I had some important pieces click into place for me.

One very helpful piece was practicing Process with some other coaches. The coaches that I was working with weren't fans of Process, and therefore weren't going very deeply into it. It was an interesting vantage point to see them put a toe in and then pull it out repeatedly.

If you stay on the surface, the only place you ever go is the surface. Until outside forces intervene. I want to swim.

The best I can describe what it is that clicked, is that several times today I've been moving more deeply into my experience without actively putting myself there. And when I've noticed that I was in deeper, I've been able to reinforce it.

This practice is definitely going to change my life. Even if I don't go to any more workshops, I got enough to chew on from this one to keep me busy for many years. I highly recommend checking it out:

www.genpo.org

Despite not needing to, I do think it would speed up the process to go to more workshops, and I hope to make another workshop when I can. Maybe I'll go for a week during the month long extravaganza next year.

I'll let you all know when the dvd I was in comes out. In addition to learning from it, you can watch me make a total ass of myself ;)

I've had another day of trying really hard to stop trying. I suspect given much more of this I will get there by sheer exhaustion.

Some things to work on for me, in addition to not working, are:

Getting control of my Controller, or rather, taking ownership of my Controller so that it can be directly in control rather than covertly.

Taking ownership of several other aspects.

Realizing that there is no self.

Owning meaninglessness, as opposed to now, where I say I believe in meaninglessness but keep looking for meaning.

Realizing that I am meaningful, and important. That I matter.

I'm really looking forward to seeing these dvds. Right now it feels like things are happening so fast that I don't have time to get it. Of course, there is the paradox of trying to know things that can't be known, and that my trying to understand them won't get me anywhere. But maybe it will. After all, we are all here trying to figure something out. That something largely being how to not figure out something. Ah well.

One amusing point today was when I channeled my inner five year old. "If we're all perfect the way we are, why are we here? Why don't we all just walk out?" I spent a whole break bouncing these questions off of people, and ended up in tears, of what, I'm not sure.

My roommate mentioned people getting broken down during this process. I'm definitely feeling there today.

I've been embracing the role of ignorant beginner today. I figure its an important role to be played in this work, and, well, it is authentically where I'm at. My Fool feels very validated. And allows me wisdom :)

A piece that I just owned is my courage. A lot of people complimented me on my courage for putting myself in the spotlight yesterday by saying I wasn't getting to the Big Mind place.

I brushed it off, as is my habit, by saying that once I made that initial step of raising my hand, I was just going with the flow. This is the essence of what I have said about all adventurous things I do. The bravery was only in the first bit, and I negate that bit.

But in listening to the admiration from a fellow student, I realized that this wasn't true. That I did repeatedly and courageously make the choice to stick my neck out.

A Zen Master and my Saboteur had a prolonged one on one battle today. The Zen Master and my Self won.

I really hope this bit of footage makes the final cut, it was awesome.

I am incredibly grateful for this extraordinarily unique and rich experience.

I have a great appreciation, which I know barely touches, the generations upon generations of people devoting their entire lives leading up to where this master now stands, who has just been focusing that energy onto me.

I question that has been stirring around in my head, and that a friend specifically asked me lately, is, what is the point of meditation? As of tonight I have an answer.

Meditation is a tool I use to step out of the rat race of reactivity.⁽¹⁾ Much of the time my thought patterns are dominated by indecision and reasoning: I am hooked by the voices in my head, and by the emotion that goes with them.^{(2), (3)}

The way meditation practices that I follow work as a tool, is to focus on bodily sensations, such as the breath moving in and out. These sensations are a place of non-judgment. There is little evaluation to make when just observing my breath going in and out. Focusing on the breath is a way of moving out of a reactive space. Aka, it is useful for taking a step back and relaxing. Having practice at this makes it much easier to do in daily life. ^{(4), (5), (6)}




( I strongly recommend reading the entry above in its entirety before reading the footnotes. The footnotes are tangents, each worthy of their own journal entry and therefore very distracting from the body, which I consider to be most fundamental. )

I asked Patri what he loves about me, and one thing he listed off is that I am accepting. I found this interesting in light of my latest therapy homework.

He's right. I'm very accepting of life on its own merit. I'm willing to consider anything.

Where I'm running up against a wall is letting go of duality. I realized on this vacation that this is one of the big obstacles I have with Patri. I'm competitive with him. It makes it hard to appreciate him when constantly comparing him to myself. No matter how the stacks add up, when I'm being competitive about it, I lose. As does Patri. To be clearer, if I end up on top in my evaluation, then I feel superior and unsatisfied with our relationship. If he ends up on top them I feel inferior and unsatisfied with our relationship.

This is of course only one aspect of our relationship, overall Patri and I are a happy couple. And Patri does not seem to play this game in his head with me very much, which softens both of us up. My interpretation was that he was very into the one upping earlier on in our relationship, and his model has changed but mine hasn't.* I've gone the other direction and have been even more entrenched in a defensive/offensive position.

Until now. I'm aware now and I am changing this.

Its interesting, the personal development scale that Gayle is fond of talks about how the conventional stages are dualistic and the post conventional move beyond that. Gayle has noted that I'm an odd case, in that I have been seeing and can easily communicate at a post conventional level but have been living in a conventional dualistic level.

Everything is there, I can put the pieces together as I relax into them. I'm going to meditate more.

*_{Patri disagrees and says that he never has been dualistic but that I misinterpreted his argumentativeness as dualism, and it is his argumentativeness with me that has subsided.}

Its been awhile since I've been meditating regularly. I was pretty into it for a few months, and then I felt like I wasn't getting anything out of it and gave it up.

Lamictal has changed my life. Since I've gotten stabilized from getting off of other medications, I haven't been depressed! That is huge.

Prior to this I've been pretty consistently dysphoric, mildly depressed, for as long as I can remember. That's why I was really surprised at a diagnosis of bipolar. Other than a couple of short incidents, I've been neither manic nor major depressive, just generally gloomy.

So, since I've gotten that straightened out, about a month ago, I've been almost a different person. The change is both subtle and huge.

Its been a really big upward spiral, because in addition to not being depressed, all of the self work I've been doing, that has pretty much bounced up until this point, is sinking in.

Meditation is one of these types of things. I've actually had the *urge* to meditate these past couple of weeks. I have *space.* I'm able to take a step back from the narrow consuming vision I've always had. So, now that I have more space, from time to time when I feel like the chatter is getting to high I sit and give myself a clearing for a little bit.

One important change in my meditation comes from listening to a whole lot of Pema Chodron CDs. In one of them she went into a lot of detail about how meditation is not getting rid of thoughts, it is about returning to one's breath. My take is that violence against thoughts is violence toward self.

Hence, I've been consciously being more gentle regarding thoughts, and instead of trying to get rid of them, just trying to maintain focus on my breathing. Tonight was both constant chatter and a lot of return to breath. I'll mediate again in the morning. I'm trying to do as much clearing as possible before engaging in the inner battle.

I'm already running late for the gym, as part of my coaching training, I've hired my own personal coach, and our appointment ran way over.

But quickly while this is still fresh:

I just spent an hour describing how I identify with ego as self and how I'm very resistant to giving that up.

It took me awhile to realize what was going on, but I'm very amused to be giving a precise argument against the philosophy I most identifying with.

Perhaps working on my personal psychology can make me happier after all ;)

I've been going to group Shambhala meditation practice once or twice/week for a few months. Lately I've been feeling like it doesn't do much and wondering why I'm doing it. Patri says that there are studies showing that meditating helps calm anxiety and help people feel better able to deal with the day and be less reactive. I've also stopped doing morning pages, after several months.

I think I'm just feeling frustrated with the lack of visible results, and the lack of certainty that there are any results at all. My therapist has brought up the notion of relaxation therapy, maybe I'll try that. And Patri suggested meditating for a half hour four days/week instead of an hour 2 days/week, which sounds like a potential, especially since I'd be saving a lot of time by doing it myself instead of driving over to join the group.

Another issue is how much time I'm spending exercising. I'm spending over two hours at the gym 3 days/week, plus about an hour three more days/week. Plus tracking and logging calories, diet managing, and taking supplements 3 times/day, and meds in the evening. That's a lot of self work.

Its hard for me to decide what to give up and what to stick to.

As Patri pointed out, its not like any of these decisions are permanent. I can always pick up with meditation or morning pages again.

I think what I'm going to do is try to reign in my focus. I'm seeing a personal trainer and a therapist. If I just focus on what they recommend that's a lot, and its probably plenty for now. I'll try the therapist's relaxation techniques and drop the shambhala for now.

Zeitgeist is a handy term that I picked up in my abnormal psych class. It means "spirit of the times." Its something I've been feeling very strongly. So many of the different cultures I've been coming across and hearing about seem to be pointing in the same direction. Buddhism, nvc, therapy, coaching school, the improv classes Patri tells me about, even Avenue Q seemed to hold some of this spirit.

When I brought it up with elphie we mused about how this may make sense in the scheme of things. My abnormal psych prof described zeitgeist as a circle, with society picking up and repeating the same patterns. I noted that it seems like there is a real change going, and Elena noted that its like a spiral. At first I didn't like this analogy, because I picture a spiral like a funnel, but elphie and I were able to agree on it feeling like a spiral more like a slinky. I picture it as something like a slinky with ebbs and flows of enlarging and shrinking spirals.

In any event, there is good argument for progression. As elphie said, we have moved from tribal our huge sprawl in an incredibly short period of time relative to evolution. It makes sense for a wave of spiritual change to follow his vacuum. Cultures are assimilated and dissipate, atheism is popping up everywhere, there are human needs that are not being filled.

I was listening to a Michael Meade CD, and he talked about how the united nations tried to boil down the problems of the world. When they took the problems of nations down to one word, as polled from all the country in the world, the word was "meaningless." That was taken from four other categorical words, all ending in "less," one of which was "hopeless."

I feel completely in the throws of this zeitgeist. Hopelessness and meaninglessness abound in my life. I'm doing so much self work, and yet, I'm just not breaking out of these. I feel like I'm on the edge, but they are pervasive. And, I do feel like the lightness I am trying to join is working its will, and I do have some hope through my hopelessness that I just may get somewhere. I'm on an edge, and its my fear that is holding me back. I'm scared that if I start crying, if I really let myself go and get wrapped up in it, that I might never come back. Then again, what am I if I am holding back from living my life. This edge will not last forever, and my life slips away the longer I am on it.

I guess its safe to say that I am terrified.

Okay, the rage seems to have passed, maybe I'd just needed to acknowledge it.

Acknowledging is a big part of Shambhala Buddhism, and, of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, not coincidentally. I've been deeply amused by how much significant overlap I've been finding between Tibetan Buddhism and modern pop psychology. It really does seem like we're reinventing the wheel, although certainly better reinventing than not using.

I see strengths to both approaches. Modern psych is certainly finer tuned to western culture and modern studies. Buddhism is a lot cheaper. There are Shambhala or similar centers all across the country that one can use for free or close to. Even though there are not modern studies, Buddhism has been around, and fine tuned, over the course of hundreds maybe thousands of years. Buddhism includes a focus on love that modern psych is not yet comfortable with. Buddhism is much more comfortable in its own skin. Able to approach more holistically, because it doesn't feel the need to prove every piece from scratch. Humanity is too complicated for us to be able to prove the value of love and such in any near future. But of course, an intuitive approach to maximizing joy like Buddhism could certainly be wrong, in small and/or large ways.

I was listening to Patri's dad and sis talk math the other day, so derivatives have been on my mind.

In my relationship with Patri, and I believe, in a lot, quite likely most, relationships, derivatives cause the most problem relative to primary emotions.

In other words, its not that you were angry that is so damaging, its that you were upset with your lover or self for being angry.

In one scenario that Patri and I talked through today, it turns out that it was actually the third derivative where I thought he could start to increase happiness. Unfortunately I can't recall exactly what the situation was, but it was fascinating. It was something like that he fears(3) getting upset(2) the when we fight and get angry at each other(1) in the future.