Day of Feeling 7

The end of the first week of feeling.

So far, I have merely blogged. I have naturally done things good for inspiring me to focus on my feelings: visiting my therapist; going to yoga; hiking (on Sunday); visiting my friend Abby; and, of course, zazen. Which has gone pretty well.

I am tired and a little unfocused, so this will be a vignette entry.

I woke up feeling really, really good. This is something rare for me. I woke up at 6:45 and felt nice and lay in bed a while. I ended up falling asleep again and waking up with my alarm at 7:30. I did not feel quite as good at that point.

Zazen was particularly focused.

Work was focused, was good.

After work I went to Bingo with Sarah and Lizz. It was a good time. Again, I felt a little awkward about being silent, never being sure if I would be a flowing well of interesting, fun things to say. Being a little bit down on myself for not being "fun," but, I think, being generally ok.

I caught myself being gloomy, but there did not seem to be much to do. I can't just tell myself: "stop focusing on negative things." It's a pattern, it's a way of being. I focus on negative things, on my shortcomings, because I want to focus on negative things. Can I tell myself: "Stop wanting to do that"?

I came home a little distracted, desperately needing to find something. What was it? I did not remember to reflect on the possibility that what I was looking for was expanded consciousness. So I still don't know if that works. But I'm reviewing it right now, so maybe I'm one step closer to remembering.

In fact, this last paragraph makes this whole blog entry worthwhile. What am I looking for? Remember to ask myself, What am I looking for? Is the solution perhaps outside of the parameters I'm clinging to?

The little devil's advocate inside me is saying, "Well, what if I don't really care what I get? What if I just want to be looking?" I believe the first part of that, not the second. Yes, so what if I'm looking - does the fact that I am desperately searching for something mean that I really, truly want to find what I'm looking for, or care if I get any result at all? I think that's an assumption I just can't back up. The phenomenon of desperately searching seems to be an end in itself. Which means that snapping out of it is not a carrot I can dangle in front of myself while I'm caught in it: snapping out of it needs to be an end in itself, too.

If you replace one goal with another, deep down I think I recognize that you can exchange that goal for something else. The end-in-itself route seems like the most solid one, to me. And the most foreign.

This was supposedly the big insight I came back with after my zen stay last year: there never needs to be an answer to a question. Constantly searching for answers, you will never stop. Perhaps I don't really need to stop. Maybe walking to the horizon is a good thing, the best thing. But I do not need answers to keep going, and this is what I do. I ask a question and sit in the road, waiting for the answer. I need to pursue it. You are always a little off balance, a little out of control, when you are doing things right. You are stepping on your own toes. You are asking the next question before you've gotten an answer to the first one. This off-balance is what real peace, real stillness feels like, because you are alive in it, swimming in it, not fighting it, not expecting things to go as you planned.

So the one big insight: there is no reason to do anything.

I will stop for now.

Good night.