Month 15 Discussion

[Anonymous]

Hi, Steve.

I think a lot of this can be understood in terms of the changes we’re making to our brain’s through our various practices. There’s a very good book that’s made think more about this called “Buddha’s Brain” by Rick Hanson that discusses many of these things. Even though he’s a Buddhist, this is an interesting and useful book. I think the answer to your questions is pretty simple: it just takes time to build these things into our brains. I’ve been working with the stuff for years and for me it’s a process of slowly getting clearer, like veils being removed one by one. Then the new awareness becomes your new bassline and you start again.

So don’t get discouraged. Just practice. My first meditation teacher used to answer almost every questions with: “fix the method and do the practice.”

Good luck,
Matthew

[Anonymous]

Thanks Matthew.
There are many things that Bruce has commented on something like “you’re going to want to be able to do this, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually” most have been hard for me to stabilize as I’ve moved on to the next lesson. I do feel overall gains are happening, but having a simultaneously stable feeling sense of the liver, spleen, kidneys, subtle emotions, etc, will take much more work for me! For example ‘ve noticed I’ve lost a bit of my belly breathing awareness as we’ve focused more on midriff and back breathing for months, and we’ve been doing belly focus for over a year.
I remind myself everyday that its all in the service of greater awareness. Discouragement and laundry lists of meditation tasks certainly don’t serve.
Its also amazing to me the amount of stuff that pops up into awareness when I take breaks.
I joined the tao te ching group, but I think I’ll save those lessons for later and double back to month 5 for another trip through these lessons first.

I’m curious why there has been no mention of the tan tien since month 5….. I wonder how I can tie in the organs and full diaphragm awareness into the tan tien. That would seem like an eventual goal.
I think you hit the nail on the head with patient practice being the answer to most of these issues.
Thanks again!

Good practicing!
Steve

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