Life is good

Photo by Braxton Stuntz on Unsplash

"Try to be mindful.  And let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings -- Like a clear forest pool." ~ Ajahn Chah

Life Is Good. 

I feel very calm and contented this morning. Like a still forest pool, as the man said.

The mind is such a funny thing.  I noticed my mind casting about today, looking for something to be agitated by.  The mind is sometimes like a canoe, on a lake, that wants to be a waverunner. After several weeks of crazy busy schedule, things are finally settling back down to normal. At least for a week or two. 

I have a full time "day job" that is wonderful.  A great company, and a great wise livelihood career, which keeps me busy all day.  But of course I also teach the dharma and lead meditations in many different communities, plus pursue my own dharma education, study, and practice in the evenings and on weekends. These feed me in all the moments I'm not spending with family or work, so that I can show up and do my best for both of those. The last few weeks has been busy in all of these areas.

I had a ton of wonderful opportunities the last several weeks to lead other Sangha's, lead mediations for other groups and projects, do guest blogs, and even a fun interview with an author/photographer for a book.  These things were all exciting and fun, and created big waves in my calm lake, so to speak.

My canoe-mind could be forgiven, then, for getting accustomed to them and thinking that it's normal. It happens so fast, that change.  The mind gets a taste of new and exciting things and next thing you know it's trying to live its best life as a waverunner.

But now that things have settled down, I was relaxing with a cup of coffee, just enjoying the morning weather on my front porch, when I noticed a different tone or flavor of my mind than I would have expected. Or, I guess I should say, I noticed that my lake was calm but my canoe-mind was looking for the next big wave, and the tiny ripples of it's disappointment in finding only calm pleasant waters was the subtle tone I picked up on.

I've been offering the "Right Now, It's Like This" phrase a lot with some meditations lately and perhaps with it so fresh on my mind I noticed this Canoe/Waverunner thing a little easier today, and let it settle on its own.  I found myself smiling at the mind with the same smile I had for the mischeivous squirrels eating the birds seed from our feeder, and being equally contented with the internal mischief as I was with the yard shenanigans. Feeling very grateful for both wild waves and calm waters this morning.

Guest Blog Post - The Unusual Buddha

I'm so pleased that I got to write about some of my favorite passions in a guest post for The Unusual Buddha!  Here's a link if you'd like to read (just a few of my many) thoughts on the intersection of technology and spirituality!

There it is.

 There's an experience one can have when meditating where, as best as I can describe it, you sort of drop into the body.  This sounds a bit strange because obviously you ARE in your body, right?  Well if you've experienced this you already know what I'm talking about and if you haven't yet, and you meditate with regularity, you likely will. 

I think everyone tends to experience it differently, and different practitioners will likely try to tell you what they think it is and which practice it is a part of, or a step within.  I'll leave that to you to determine (you're really the only one who can!).  But for me I experience this shortly after the beginning of most of my meditations, when I've already settled in to my posture, spent some time with an anchor point (I use the tip of the nose), and followed my breathing for a bit. At some point I experience this "dropping in" or what I would call embodiment. There's a rush of energy through the body from top to bottom, which if it were accompanied by a sound, would sound like "WHOOOMP!".  And the peaceful feeling "There it is."

Whoop There It Is Yr GIFfrom Whoop There It Is GIFs

Suddenly I find myself truly in my body.  Not a bunch of slightly uncomfortable individual parts and experiences but one big whole experience together with no discernible boundaries, and then I notice a small round bright spot in the center of my closed-eye field of vision.  Before this moment, that would be a sort of liquid movement of dark shades of blue and black like when your eyes are just closed but you still see amorphous shapes of different shades of dark.  That spot stays in the center and steady and is bright instead of dark. Again, this is my experience and yours may differ. But I would suggest that the "embodiment" feeling, regardless of the specifics, is roughly similar.

I experience it as a sense of joyful homecoming.

Now...the reason for today's post is that I've now been back on the Mindful Eating and Mindful Living path that brought me to Buddhism for about 17 days (the exercise portion has been sporadic until recently) and today feels like that moment in meditation I described above, but with regard to the EvolVR implementation of my M.E.A.L.S. program.  What I mean by that is that I've been getting more and more excited about it with each day I've been back at it. Today, at day 17, I suddenly no longer feel like this is a thing that might happen...I feel like I've dropped in ("WHOOOMP!") and it's here and happening now and there's no boundaries between the ideas and parts and people involved, but rather one big unified community in it together. "There it is."

I don't have a clue if anyone else in the community we're building feels it or will just think this is super weird, but this is where I am with it today and it feels great.  I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but I figured I'd chronicle it here.

As always, if anyone has questions or comments hit me up.

Timing Is Everything

As anyone who's been here before knows...I lost 110 pounds in 2010 and managed to keep all of that off for years.  After a while I gained about half back and have been there for years.  Manytimes over those years, I have tried to get back to "Full Savor" as a regular routine. By "Full Savor" I mean back to the routine of activities that enabled that loss and maintenance. With the benefit of hindsight it is crystal clear what worked, what didn't, and what must be done.

What worked:

• Tracking calories with the LoseIt! app.
• Mindful Eating
• Mindful Living (exercise)
• Consistency (all the ways in which I supported routine maintenance of the above)

What didn't work:

• Any combination of the above that wasn't all of the above.

When I lost weight, it was because of applying the "what worked" section above consistently for 11 months.  

When I kept the weight off for several years it was also due to consistently applying the above. 

When I gained weight back a tiny bit after several years it was because I stopped tracking calories. I gained a little bit, I stabilized, and I was totally ok with that. I was having to eat less and exercise more than I felt suited my life.  The weight I was at wasn't my goal weight but it was a great weight.  I was happy, felt great, and all was well.

When I later gained more weight it was because my exercise routine at the time involved driving to a park where I walked, but my vehicle broke down and was totaled.  It took a long time, perhaps a year, to get another vehicle.  During that time I wasn't able to reliably maintain my normal routine.  It became sporadic. It wasn't the park, but the time of day that made that work so well for me.  Eventually I was working twice as hard to get half the exercise, and weight started coming on.  Over time I got another vehicle, but had lost the diligent routine of "Full Savor" mode.

For several years now I could have gotten back in the routine but I stabilized once again at around half the weight I originally lost.  What I mean by "stabilized" is that my current healthy eating and no exercise landed me at about the halfway point and leveled off. So I got comfortable with that.  Big, but not so big that I felt unhealthy.  Don't get me wrong...I'm definitely not healthy, but I'm still significantly more healthy than I was in 2010.

Over the years I've tried to reboot the "Savor" life, that helped me so much, many times. And I've been chagrined at the lack of easy success I enjoyed the first time around.  WHY?  This is the question. As I said at the beginning, it's crystal clear now.  For the seemingly easy weight loss and maintenance that I enjoyed to occur all of the items in my "What worked" list must be present.

The thing that's not on that list is the invaluable, intangible joy and cold fusion style fuel that comes from those things all firing in sync with one another.  When that routine is in motion, a sense of pride and joy that feeds back in to that list and makes the "Consistency" part happen. And it becomes a sort of perpetual motion machine.  

But it is oh so fragile.  A delicate machine that will run in perpetuity so long as that balance is in place.  When one of those things gets a little out of whack and (this is the key) stays that way for too long, the whole things grinds to a halt.  And it is exceedingly difficult to get it running again. This doesn't mean you can't falter...it means that timing is everything.  You have to be mindful not only of your food and exercise, but of your routine.  If that routine is interrupted, you have to be mindful to get it back in order ASAP.

I've tried and failed many times over the last few years to rekindle that perpetual motion machine.  Typically it runs for a week or three, and then rambles to a halt.  I've also noticed that the time you can allow it to be down is longer the longer it's been in motion but it's still a matter of days.  For me.  Three days seems to be the norm, but when I was at my peak I could survive two weeks of interruption and still dive back in and keep it running.  Your experience might differ, but this has been mine.

So remember that it's not "Mindful Eating, Mindful Walking"...it's "Mindful Eating, Mindful LIVING". All of life.  

Meal Time!

Many years ago, I came up with a program I called Mindful Eating And Living Sangha (M.E.A.L.S.) based on the success I had with the book "Savor" in 2010. I envisioned a network of small groups who would routinely get together and practice the following:

• Recite the Five Contemplations
• Share a Mindful Eating experience
• Read and discuss the book "Savor"
• Practice Mindful Movement

The idea was that I would start the first group -- at that time I was overextended -- and lead it for a year. Enough time, based on my own experience, to embody the process and experience "successful" attainment of one's goals. Once that year was done, the people in that group (from my larger local area) would go off and start another year long course which they would lead, and so on and so on.

My hope was that this year-long grassroots-group exploration will deepen my own practice further, help others establish mindfulness as a way of healthy living, and - hopefully - encourage them to go out and spread the practice through starting similar groups.  If successful, it could see a viral growth since those who complete the year, may hopefully create groups of their own and repeat the process, again and again.

The first MEALS group was wonderful and fairly successful.  No one in the group experienced the dramatic transformation I did, but they all got various benefits from it, and if there was even a small improvement to one's life, I would call that a success.  But alas, no one carried the group forward and MEALS went into hibernation.

Well, it has been stirring for the last year, and it seems to be waking up now!

I've been teaching the Dharma in Virtual Reality (a story for another day) for the last couple of years, or since the pandemic started,  and it's just wonderful.  The possibilities are limitless! Back in July of last year I started thinking I could bring MEALS into VR, but was stumped as to how. 

Mindful movement is somewhat doable, meditation is for sure, but how about food?  I tucked the idea in the back of my head and began mentioning it here and there.  There was a little interest but nothing ever woke the beast. Finally, one friend in the community approached me about the book that had helped me, and the seed was planted.  He started reading, experienced immediate, noticeable benefit and water and sunlight hit the seed and it started to grow!

All of this to say...MEALS v2 is in the early stages of coming into being at last, thanks to RickRolled (his tag in VR).  He asked me for a meeting with a few people, I agreed.  Next we discussed how to go about getting together and it blossomed into a full blow open to the public event with nearly 20 people attending from within and beyond the community of EvolVR. 

The session was beautiful, informative, heartfelt, moving, and productive! We are getting the people interested together via the EvolVR Discord Server and will be scheduling another meeting soon.  I'm extremely excited about it.

As a final note, perhaps due to the coming of the aforementioned meeting, I woke up on Monday of last week suddenly extremely motivated to rekindle my full "Savor" practice and I've been hitting it all this week and loving it.  I also, unrelated, have been practicing Lojong for another Buddhist practice training I'm involved in and it has helped and complimented my practices greatly! More on all of these things to come!