Restlessness

Shams suggests I work on restlessness hinderance. He suggests I devote some meditations to exploring it, understanding it, conquering it. 

I'm going to listen to Joseph Goldstein: Working with Thought and Emotion:

He says you don't stop thinking, you investigate the quality of the thing, is it something you want to encourage or is it something you don't want to act on? Notice the judgements around the thinking and the desire to silence or stop the kind of thinking.

Goldstein: Overcoming Restlessness: Analysis of the practice might contribute, just do it. Reflect positively on sila. You can zoom out, and see it as one thing in the container of mindfulness. Or zoom in, what is the restlessness? One time a teacher told him to be more mindful, and he felt it was kind of silly, but he tried it, and there was some gain. He has a variety of "powerful teachings" like letting go of trying too hard with various witty teachings. Great Poem

LIVE, YOU SAY, IN THE PRESENT by Fernando Pessoa

Live, you say, in the present;

Live only in the present.

But I do not want the present, I want the reality;

I want the things that exist, not the time that measures them.

What is the present?

It is a thing about the past and the future.

It is something that exists because other things exist.

I just want reality, things without a present.

I do not want to include time in my schema.

I do not want to think of things as gifts; I want to think of them as things.

I do not want to separate them from themselves, treating them as gifts.

I should not even treat them as real.

I should not treat them as anything.

I should see them, just watch them;

To see them until I can not think of them,

See them without time, or space,

Seeing can dispense with anything but what you see.

This is the seeing science, but she is no science.

Shams sent these

Insight Hour Podcast

Tara Brach

Shams suggests reduce input. "Get friends with boredom."

To me that means don't watch TV, read more. Stop drinking coffee, or cut down.

For Shams that means drinking calming teas, and get rid of girlfriend.

I realized the other day that I get into flow meditating, just like the flow of running and my thoughts seem better than they actually are, they're a challenge to calm down and redirect to my breath. I've never really felt like I can stop my thinking but there are times in deep meditation when I can nearly stop my thoughts, and the ones who do peak over the wall are easy to ignore. 

My restlessness is about energy welling up.

My restlessness is about guilt and shame for past misdeeds. 

My restlessness is about wanting sense pleasure. In fact I think all the hindrances are sense pleasure. I indulge in doubt or anger or sensual thinking or thinking, or tiredness. Tiredness is unique in that it's a sense pleasure I want to avoid, I think doubt and anger are more pleasurable. 

I like the aura the camera puts around me, I like that they notice, and that it gives me a kind of specialness. It's OK to have narcissism, everyone has it. I read a wonderful book about personality disorders, which tried to normalize it. In Buddhism it's a mental state you don't want to encourage, but it's also something you don't want to pretend you don't have or disown. Meditation to me is about gathering all of yourself up together, and you really begin to sort yourself out, work on developing a vision of moving forward and gathering all your resources. 

11/12/24. There's a power outage in Mashhad (city name changed to protect anonymity) and I go on line anyway just in case someone shows up. People have threatened to come, but haven't and some people could show up if the power goes on.

And indeed Shams shows up, and then after 8 minutes power comes back on. I've meditated 15 minutes, 8 minutes, and ... chaotic meditation, but I love meditating with others. Others are messy but bring on the mess, the bodhisattva says.

I notice some mania when I summon rapture. Can I summon non-mania rapture, is it it inherent. I have sexual images, and the desire for stimulation. "Stillness, simplicity and contentment." is my mantra. I drank less coffee yesterday, but did not control input.  

11/13, I read about blackouts to conserve energy in Iran International.