Let me tell you all about what happened while meditating last week:

9 March, 2015

It is Monday morning, but I am not working for money today. Taxes aren’t done. I’ve been working on them and working to avoid them all weekend. I’ve gotten more out of sorts, until last night I found myself being sharp with the kids and Mrs. BarelyAware. I wanted to be alone, but when I was alone, I was prone to distraction.

Last night I sat with it. This morning I sat with it. Let me tell you all about it. I felt darkness, contraction, anger, despair, sadness, and dissatisfaction. It was centered in my pelvis. It didn’t feel like “me.” Maybe I have invited an imp or spirit into my experience? My first insight came – it doesn’t matter. Watch the “Not self” of those negative objects, and see clearly that they aren’t me or mine. I don’t have to own them or hang on to them. So I just watch, noting “unpleasant, unpleasant.”

“Be a lamp unto yourself” is the title of our class. I have many ways of lighting that lamp, and I went through some of my options: generate Metta, breathe, Tong-Len practice. After a bit of pondering and quiet attention, more insight came – I needed to let those techniques be. My lesson here and now is not to “make it better.” I could light a lamp and send the imp scurrying away. I would feel better, but what really is my highest purpose? What I needed then was to not to feel immediately better, and not to temporarily banish the problem. I needed to watch, to look deeply into my experience. Noticing thinking, asking for help, then just watching. As concentration deepens, noticing more pain, more darkness, more negativity. This negative experience, although constantly changing, is now consistently strong enough that it remains the predominant object most of the time. Relax, breathe. Shoulders are tense, which had gone previously unnoticed. Concentration and tension are now linked, and they temporarily eclipse the pelvic darkness. Noticing tension, tension. Shoulder contraction finally releases, and with release comes some calm and peace. As that particular tension changes and dissolves, more darkness, anger, and frustration get noticed. The darkness is changing, now more space around it. Concentration feels lighter, more buoyant, with less tension. Fear, anger. Now I feel the radiance associated with it. Darkness is radiating outward, which is lighter and more pliable than before.

By now, I feel the help that was asked for in force. They (me?) aren’t sending the imp away, they are aiding me in realizing a higher goal. Concentration is stable and strong, aided by a strong predominant object. Mindfulness is strong also. Awareness is watching and penetrating into the heart of the experience from moment to moment. Holding and polishing (vitakka and vihara) are present also. Equanimity has a different character to it. Watching had a tinge of indifference or resignation earlier. Now I can let the darkness and pain simply be. With that, the heart begins to open. Watching now is about watching with the open heart, with compassion for my dissatisfaction.

At some point, the darkness released. My energy body felt open, clean, radiant. Equanimity was strong – just watch that also. The entire process took 90 minutes, and it wasn’t easy.

Reflecting on my experience afterwards, I felt like I had a small breakthrough. My goal, formulated and refined only during the sitting, was finally achieved. I was able to “just watch” and thereby penetrate into the essential nature of the negativity. Awareness of the three characteristics were strong. Objects were temporary (anicca), arising into experience, changing constantly, then dissolving. Objects also weren’t me or mine (anattaa), but they also weren’t separate from me. If I wasn’t able to relax into these truths, then dissatisfaction (dukka) would inevitably arise. Once I stopped trying to light “my” lamp and just let my experience be, the light of awareness yielded both insight into my experience and freedom from negativity.

I have a last comment on my teacher, the Imp. Was my experience of negativity the simple result of my own bad mood, or was it augmented or modified by a negative external entity, a dark spirit? Conversely, when I asked for help, and help came, was that just me drawing on my own untapped and unconscious reserves; or was it the intervention of a positively polarized light being, a divine angel or angels? From the Karaniya Metta Sutta:

By not holding to fixed views
The pure hearted one, having clarity of vision
Being freed of all sense desires
Is not born again into this world.

Both the internal “psychological” and external “demonic” explanations are true. Both help me to understand my experience, and give me a context to understand and act appropriately should a similar situation arise again. Yet both explanations are also false. Calling the Imp either wholly self or wholly other distorts the full reality of the experience and only enhances the separation and isolation of the self.

If instead I can allow the “Not self” of the Imp to remain fluid, intuitive, and empirical, not fixed and rooted in a particular system of beliefs, I will become free. Specifically, I will have the freedom to see clearly and to keep new karma from being “born again into this world.”

Thank you, little Imp.