| | I realized that I nearly never talk about my practice here directly, which is interesting and another topic of discussion altogether, but I thought I would give a brief practice update, just in case anyone is curious. It is in extreme summary form.
I spent some 10 months or so dealing almost exclusively with something that coalessed into a black sphere of sorts about 2 inches across that settled into the area of my xyphoid, just sort of between the 3rd and 4th chakras. I could both see it at times and feel it. It began to feel like a bomb of uneasy energy that might go off, and so a very large number of hours were spent trying to figure out what it was, why it was there and what would happen if it went off. It is hard to describe in reasonable form all the places this odd journey into dark things went, but it involved wands, tarot cards, a lot of metta practice, jhana practice, energetic manipulation, waking up with a ghost sitting on my bed (this in my little apartment in Tupelo, MS: nice-seeming black man probably in mid 20's dressed in work clothes of a style that couldn't have been newer than the 1930's) and all sorts of other complex sorts of things. I literally thought about taking a trip out to the SouthWest to find a nice desolate desert to meditate in until it exploded in safety. Finally, after what felt like an absurdly long project all realted to one single strange object, a few months ago, in the middle of the night, I woke up and the thing suddenly blasted out in all directions in a rapid burst of stark white light reminiscent of the petronus charm that Harry Potter cast while down by a lake that felt like it tore through my chest, abdomen, head, neck and organs in a truly unpleasant but seemingly healing way, sort of like when you rip through old scar tissue and then gain mobility, except that it felt sort of global. It hasn't returned, and I felt lighter and easier for the whole thing.
Then, within a few days, things moved down, and my left psoas muscle went into spasm again, as it did last year, but this time it locked up and stayed that way most of the time for months, bending my body forward a bit and to the left, such that I literally couldn't fully straighten my body, and it caused all sorts of odd back pain that also involves my left lats and even intracostal muscles on the left lateral side, as well as subdaphragmatic pain just to the left of my xyphoid a few inches. As with last year, I poured meditative things into it: careful energetic, chakral, emotional, etc. investigation with resolutions to cause it to release with extremely dedicated and careful somatic, proprioceptive and emotional attention using all sorts of focuses and emphases from radical acceptance to bruit force. Whereas last year I got it to release in a few hours of this, this time it took a few months. Slowly, slowly, it began to relax.
I am summarizing again a long, involved process that consumed many, may hours of attention all during the day and night as well. I felt like I totally reworked my whole relationship of my legs to my body, of my lower body to everything, and for a while I literally couldn't figure out how to walk normally, as if my balance, leg position, posture, foot position, weight distribution, and the combination of muscles that contributed to that couldn't find any configuration that was normal or correct, like everything about walking was entirely foreign and unnatural, but the spasm was getting slowly better.
I got so that I could feel when it was about to try to lock up again and catch it just as it was starting and it would chill out, only to try it again a few seconds later, and I would catch it again, and it would chill out, repeating and repeating and repeating, day after day, week after week. I tried yoga, stretching, various relaxation poses, such as Constructive Rest, deep tissue massages, and many other things.
Finally, one night on the way home, when my body by the end of my shift was bent in the oddes of ways, I stopped by the little, strange-smelling, 24-hour gym that I have a membership to, and it was deserted, just as I hoped it would be. It was about 3am, and I turned on the sauna and went into their aerobics room and began to dance like a crazy person to my favorite iphone dance mix. At first, the middle of my body refused to respond well, feeling locked, tight, stuck, frozen, particularly lower back and into my pelvic area, but, determined to get something to unblock, I pushed through the tension and pain and finally, slowly, after about 20 minutes, things finally loosened up and then really loosened up, and then I went and stretched out in the hot sauna and the thing finally seemed nearly done. Yeah! I repeated the same thing the next night and that seems to have largely done it. I can now walk normally and even run normally, something that was basically impossible for a few months. What any of this has to do with anything, I have no idea.
It should be noted for those who might try to get all mappy that regular practice cycles have continued in the standard cycling way without seemingly having anything to do with the above two phases: seem generally unrelated, so far as I can tell. Jhanas, ñanas, fruitions, none of it seemed to deal with the black sphere or the back thing at all.
Then I got sick and have been dealing with some unfortunate viral thing for about 6 days: first few days of gastroentestinal upset, now just diffuse muscle aches, sore throat, and general heavy-duty fatigue. That I have worked about 80 very hard and intense hours in the last 8 days hasn't helped at all. If it keeps going for a few more days I will get tested for mono...
That's the news from New Market, Alabama. Hope you all are well,
Daniel |