Awareness Tidbits: Removing Ideas of Good or Bad

In Japan in the monastery I used to go out into the kyudo area behind the Hondo on the free days before the 6pm mandatory dinner. I wanted to take some time to address what was happening inside of me in an unstructured way. Try to allow it to sort out if I gave it some space.

I’d glimpsed it enough to know that If I was curious and honest enough, my sense of self would meld with everything around me. I had caught a fever and needed time to process it. I would walk around in the dirt with the broken roof tiles and smell of the straw targets and try to penetrate what it was that was standing there. How to allow my body to open up to everything around it.

It was like, most of the time, even in the monastery, I was waiting to be able to give up any idea of how to be in my body. How to be in space. I was waiting for that moment to have the opportunity to completely let go. I craved it. Even in the zendo there were rules of posture. Rules of movement. I longed for some time without rules to explore. Where I could question everything. It was a time for me to remove my ideas of good and bad, and see what emerged.

And that is when my awareness really took off. I’d step into the unknown there, feeling the air around me beckoning me to join it, to meld with it. My practice became my own. I stopped looking outside for guidance. I began to have great faith in a process emerging through me. That process bled into all aspects of my experience. Something bigger than me or even any realization. Touching the source, there is no turning back.

So, that’s my hope for my classes. That the participants catch a fever, discover a process moving through them, and allow it to transform them.