Lillooet, B. C. December 14, 2021
Dear Readers, here is another set of meditation after reflections. It must be born in mind that just as when descending a mountain, the tiniest degree of change in direction translates into a very large difference down at the base. The benefits of meditation are like this and I do not intend my letters to give a false impression that huge buckets of instant beneficial change will shower the practitioner. Rather, I do want to spread the true simple message that if you can heal by even the slightest amount the way you perceive and think and calm the frightened horse in your mind; you will certainly see real big change for the better in your life going forward and in a way that grows exponentially. In stillness you will adjust your course. In motion you will have already arrived on a happier road.
Reflections on Guided Meditations or Bobcat Logic for Meditation Hesitancy (2)
Dec. 2, 2021
On the path to change, where can you be more gentle with yourself?
I can apply my focus more to my intent and less to deconstructing my actions. This, if done in a gentle way as a wise parent or a good teacher would do, should improve the quality of my actions by purifying the source of those actions.
Dec. 3, 2021
Where do you ignore your limits?
How might you honour them today?
In reading but I am changing this slowly the last few years by allowing more time to digest the books. In working. I will traditionally push myself past exhaustion and injury but I am learning not to do this over the past few years as well. In writing, recording and creative pursuits but I have noticed a change for the better since practising with Calm and taking an SRI. To sum up, I have never recognized any limits in almost anything until age, injury and lots of personal growth added together to finally make me see more clearly and erase much childhood trauma in the form of physical abuse, shaming and instability. I was trained by my father to take beatings without crying. I would be told to wait in the nude and contemplate “what I had done wrong.” As I was only three years old when this began, I learned to create my own indictments on demand of my father so the session could begin. That is the genesis for my lack of regard for my own comfort. I am very much better and working now to re-write all those circuits. The work started long ago and it is to me a sign of real progress to be receptive to Calm mindfulness. I stopped chopping my firewood today to eat lunch. Before, I would not have allowed myself.
Dec. 4, 2021
Which self-care practices do you find nurturing?
Guided meditations with instructive content that leads one to discover how to tame and balance the mind. Breathing. Physical work. Walking. Lying still. Writing my experiences and sharing them. Constantly and gently remembering that in reality I am content with the blessings I have been given and allowing myself to feel the gratitude. I spent the past several years with the two wolves and studied their natures and purpose. I can best describe my process as one of merging that black and that white wolf into one grey wolf. A non-dualistic whole composed of both, denying neither. Able, (with the grace and wisdom granted by diligent aging) to fill the necessary roles of either separate wolf in a better way than either could accomplish alone. In a nut-shell, I find learning and sharing what I learn to be the ultimate purpose of human life and thus, the most nurturing two activities.
Dec. 6, 2021
How do you benefit from making time to be still?
I rest my body and digest all the input of the day. Then I am able to draw meaningful lessons from everything while retaining my own dynamically evolving theories and model of reality. I require less resources when I am still.
Dec. 7,2021
Which small signs of positive change can you appreciate within yourself?
I notice now what my mind is doing. I am able to observe it without being swept along (as much as) I was before. I am open to each new teaching like this one today without resisting the lesson because of a drive to excel. These small things are the tread on my boots as I transcend. Humble in of themselves but making possible greater peace of existence. Thanks for this teaching.
Dec. 9, 2021
What simple pleasures comfort you?
How do you make time for them?
Petting my kitty, Dusty Bones, Esq. and baby talking to him in tongues. Eating Windmill cookies. Sleeping out of doors on nice days for naps. Reading. Walking in wilderness. Hot shower or bath. Talking to random folks when strolling in cities. Sometimes picking my guitar. Studying and researching things of my own choosing. Chopping firewood. Listening to music. Making things with my hands. Writing and creating digital art to post online. Telling stories. Contemplation, cogitation and pondering. Ice skating backwards in an empty rink. I shrink a year cycle as small as I need to, so I can have my vacation once or twice a day.
Dec. 11,2021
Describe a time when you have felt the benefits of silence.
Every time I need tuition to solve a problem. I find that the quality of my own thoughts after a period of silence is very much better, so rather than one instance, I will say that all time spent quiet benefits me with better cognition. I will say that speaking or writing to a human and listening to or reading their reply, combine into one whole thing that manifests as better cognition in my experience.
Dec. 12, 2021
Where in life do you experience anger?
What lies beneath it?
“Anger.....don’t get me started.” (That is what I would have said not too many tears ago) When I sense male domination, aggression or manipulation. My deceased father lies mouldering beneath it, in the fear patterns he expertly caused to be formed in my very young, keen, developing mind, via a program of making me wait naked and humiliated in my room to concoct my own indictments, so he could administer severe beatings. I got very good at inventing wrong doings from simple childhood activities and offering them up as justification for the whippings. I was taught to condemn myself, take a beating and not to cry out. This began at age three. The female part of this situation left an anger generated by the practice of some women (like my young mother at the time) of pretending that nothing is wrong. The smell of fresh baked cookies brought to me after one of my first beatings still clogs my mental/emotional nostrils at times. Under my anger is the fear of that child, that no one is going to come and help. One of my sisters was sexually abused from early childhood by my father (her step-father) and although I didn’t know of this until the age of twenty, I sensed something very unwholesome and secret. My anger as a young newly married man grew to unimaginable heights and depths. Out of not being told earlier, out of the feelings of protectiveness a normal male has for women and girls. I wanted to kill him with my hands. He committed suicide and thus, I silently condemned myself for wishing him dead and set about punishing myself for many more years as he had taught me. That poor elder half sister was (through no fault of her own) placed by my father into a position of total authority over me as a child growing up. This poisoned our sibling relationship. As my only way to fight back, I adopted a policy as a very young child to never boss my baby sister and when I grew big enough, to never to be bossed by any man. Much of this I have worked through but I hope to heal even more with the techniques and guidance provided by this meditation program. I have been shown all along that help does come (but not from where you expect it) and it did and continues to flow to me. This current meditation practise is a necessary step at this juncture of my development, to furnish me with the tools to re-write the erroneous self destructive circuits laid down by circumstances that I am simply tired of entertaining any longer. Body life is too short on this side of the curtain. May these entries be copper glimmers on the pewter chop of the human sea.
Dec. 14, 2021
What subtle shifts have you noticed since you started meditating?
I am kinder to myself and I extend kindness more to other people than I did before, usually in the form of greater patience. I have a greater (than before) ability to recognize negative thought patterns that were implanted into and grafted onto me as a small child by parents or by different institutions. I find it easier to recognize them now and unhook myself from them. I can see now that forgiveness by itself, without doing mental hygiene practise is not enough. I strongly feel that sharing my experiences with this meditation practise and the subsequent positive changes that it produces in me over time can be a very valuable resource for other people to gain insight and encouragement as they struggle and work with their own processes just as I am.
far from fin