Conversations with G

New Year resolutions are about changing and improving my-self, about creating another, a better version of my-self. But do I really know who I am. How much of this “I” is a posture, a programme that has been created to make me functional in the society and culture I live in. This posture is only a small fragment of me, a useful construction. I admit that I have attached myself to this small fragment because I mistook it for the real stuff. Nevertheless I am not going to work on it and try to improve it. I am going to question the notion of “I”. I am going to look for real me, much bigger and grander than the small ego. And to find the answer I am not going to ask my intelligent thinking mind either. It hasn’t been able to give me the answer for decades so I will look somewhere else. I sit down, close my eyes and connect to my energy system – I feel my body, I am present. And now I can heed what is here. My thoughts - I observe them, their flow and change. I can detach myself from them, I am not them. And then I have a look at sensations and feelings in my body. I sense them, they are not all me. Neither are my emotions. If I can look at them “something” bigger is looking. There is this background of awareness there and I observe it too, so I can go even beyond it. Who is there/here? Who AM I? I know that I don’t need to improve and change this I, it is already perfect, complete and magnificent (using words of my friend Barbara) and changeless. It is everything and nothing. It is not two. “It is not this and not that; it is not both and not either.” And it is I. My teacher GP Walsh calls it “light at the center” and it is with me, always present. I can’t explain it with words. I and you – we can only experience it.

Timeline Photos

I am back in Spain and I am going to continue mindfulness classes. Have a look at the poster; maybe it is something for you.

Meditation is about being present. It sounds very simple. But there is a part of me which doesn’t like what is in the present. The critical/thinking mind is never satisfied with what’s here. It wants: more, better, different; it always has a wish of improving, changing and going to what was in the past or reaching for what can be in the future. Luckily the critical mind is not all me. It is only an aspect of me, actually a programme which has to explain in words and language what is happening in my life; it is like a graphomaniac film critique whose task is to rate and review films and most of the time the verdict is: “not good enough”. If I am able to turn my attention away from that critical mind I can easily get into space of meditation, into the here and now. The thinking mind is spoilt. I was trained to trust it and admire it. I was told that I don’t exist if I don’t think. The truth is that It stops existing when I don’t pay any attention to it. And it got so much used to a role of an authoritarian ruler that it will not surrender easily. It uses any trick to stay in this false position of power. So I retrain my ability to heed. I start by directing my attention towards sensing impulses and sensations in my body. I detach from thinking. This shift is essential: no verbalizing, no telling stories or judging; only feeling. My attention is as close to my body as possible, I turn it inside. I am safe in the here and now. I meditate and I find peace in the present.

Mindfulness Class