Clarity of thought

An event occurred yesterday with my husband; something that was intended to be uplifting and positive but unfortunately did not have a positive ending. Intuitively, I knew to remain very quiet all day. I am certain that no-one had the vaguest idea that anything might be wrong with me. They were busy doing their thing and I was busy keeping myself busy. In fact, I was quite productive throughout the day and intent on not being upset, if that makes sense.

I'm not so good at this ethereal/philosophical/Buddhist/spiritual thing that I can repair the event in my mind and end up with an immediate 'everything is as it should be' sort of outcome, but at the same time I didn't say a word about it, to anyone, and nor did I write anything. I recognized that I needed time to process what had happened before I could even think of taking any action, or making any comment, or even just thinking about it in any sort of clear way.

The mind is as the mind is, and thus I had running through it all sorts of thoughts. I've come to a place where I completely understand and accept that we are not our thoughts - that thoughts and emotions come and go, and that we are the awareness behind all of that. In my flawed human way I noticed the thoughts, the tendency to see this event as catastrophic, but I simply noticed that. I had that quiet curiosity about the thoughts, of these invasions of my peace of mind. In other words, turbulent feelings, emotions and thoughts remained but I had a reasonable handle on them.

While I was on the retreat I got into several quite deep and meaningful conversations with a woman we shall call Rachel. She told me her life story and it's one of the most fascinating explanations I have ever heard of the reasons behind a person becoming a psychiatrist. I got to like her, a lot, and respected her as someone who had way more experience than me in these matters. 'I'm tired of Tolle,' she declared to me one day. I thought about it. 'Well Eckhart is a good place to start,' I suggested. I actually don't think Eckhart Tolle ever gets old and he helped me a lot yesterday. Here's what I read:

‘Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender…
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This stage is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms tend to improve greatly.’
- Eckart Tolle, The Power of Now.

This passage was a poignant reminder to me that we must not resist our emotions. I was...upset. When I am not sure how I am feeling about something, maybe angry, maybe sad, maybe disheartened, I tend to use the word 'upset'. My mind and my body are upset, not at peace. This, for me, is good enough of a description. This was the truth and undeniable.

The passage reminded me too that I hold myself to high standards. I don't want to be 'upset' and it's upsetting when I am upset. I'm mad with myself. Why can't I get a grip so that I don't experience upset? But Tolle's wise words reminded me that I experience what I experience and that's okay.

It's the next bit of the statement that is really profound - that the moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace is transmuted into peace. This worked on two levels:

When I read this I sat with my non-peace state. I breathed into it, focused on my breathing pattern and within that simple process I could feel my non-peace state to turn into a more peaceful state - a recognition that I would not always be in peace, that it was unrealistic to expect it to be so, but that at my disposal was enough wisdom to see that the non-peace was fleeting...that in my humanness and he in his humanness, we had ended up with an outcome that was...upsetting.

It wasn't the end of the world, or the product of a failed relationship, but simply the product of a failure to communicate. It wasn't as complex a problem as it seemed, but rather a quite simple one. No, we were not ideally suited to one another from a sexuality perspective, but neither were we as far apart as it seemed in the moment. Some skills needed to be honed, for sure, and we needed to devise a way for me to express what was happening to me in a heavy bondage scene, but all of that was surmountable. It didn't all spell the doom and gloom that some of the uninvited thoughts suggested.

Some day when the time is right I will share the three elements required for a successful life, as presented to us at the retreat. I am still reflecting on them myself. But, I think the first is now very obvious to me. To have a successful life one must have clarity of thought. Meditation is a bit like various experiences within a power exchange relationship. I can't really explain those experiences, although I do try on these pages. One learns about them within the experience. Meditation is like this. Alone with one's mind on a regular basis, clarity of thought begins to rule one's life. A still and calm mind speaks it's own language.

BDSM and a peaceful mind

Spiritual leaders will tell you that 'more' is our challenge. If we are poor, we want more. If we are rich, we want more. We work towards something, achieve it, feel a sense of pride that very soon flickers out. Shouldn't we be moving onto something else, we ask?

I am profoundly guilty of this state of mind. My mind is such that is always in search for the next thing to do, or achieve. I can feel the restlessness, the confused mind; the trying to put things in their rightful place. Don't I have an appointment card at the bottom of a handbag? Now, which handbag was that? Maybe, I have double booked myself. How can I know when I haven't written all the dates in my diary, I ask myself, berating myself as I go. I don't really need anyone else to come down hard on me, since I do an excellent job of flogging myself. If only I was perfect. If only I was more motivated, more organised, more...

Sometimes, I ask, 'What have you actually achieved today? Anything??' That's delusional thinking of course since I can't sit still much at all, nor really ever feel satisfied with my output. I'm usually confident that, if more efficient, I could have achieved so much more.

There is no question, from anybodies perspective, that I could, indeed, achieve more. Time is spent on tumblr. Time is spent reading articles on Buddhism, or talking to friends, or trying to  settle my mind as to what on earth it is that I really should be doing before the day comes to an end. I am a disorganized, organized sort of person. I get there in the end, but I have to push myself to get there. Seriously, quite honestly, I'd rather not think, and that's nothing new. I have been aware of this fact always. I'm dreamy. It is what it is.

Doing my writing course worked from the point of view that there were outside forces insisting that I do my work. Of course, nobody insists that you get Distinctions and High Distinctions. This is self enforced and comes from egoic thought, but there it is. If I was putting my name to it, it had be of high quality.

In the process of assisting my son make a film I chatted with a wonderful psychologist who, whilst waiting for the lighting to be 'perfect' (Oh gosh yes, I passed on these genes...) told me many stories about past patients (all anonymous, of course). He told me he had one woman submit a paper for her post graduate degree that barely passed with a push. Under no circumstances was she to submit a paper that earned more than a P. She had got it into her head, he explained, that she was a failure in  spite of all that she had achieved. She was a failure if she didn't get a HD, and if her baby cried in the night, well, more evidence that she was a failure at parenthood too. So, he nipped it in the bud by taking her as close to failure as he dared and showing her that she would survive the 'ordeal'.

The story was terribly, painfully close to home, although I never let on. Of course. But, it did occur to me that if I were ever to put my trust in psychology again (highly unlikely), this was my man. It helped that he had a brilliant sense of humor and that the irony was that he was as uptight about his own son's VCE year (final year of school) as any of his clients. He said to me that "we have so much to do over the holidays", and then we shared a knowing look. Yep. He was a perfectionist, anal retentive too. Over-achievers are painstakingly boring and predictable, and there are so many of them around! (It takes one to know one.)


I've mentioned before that I meditate in a group, though Tuesday was my first group meditation in two months, far too long between cushion time for me. My meditation leader is a fabulous woman who has become a good friend. I'm suffering jealousy right now because she is in New Zealand at a retreat that I dearly wish I was at, but I chose Japan with my husband instead, and that was the right decision. Still. It's hard right now. I wish I was there.

Anyway, as spiritually evolved as she is, she gets tense. She worries. So, I asked her what to do in those situations. What does she do in those situations?

'You must go to your cushion,' she says. 'It is the best place for you. The feelings will pass. Clarity will come once you sit and let go.'

I have had many fleeting thoughts, not always 'caught', about BDSM,  about dominance, being similar to a spiritual life. The Top, as I have experienced it, insists, absolutely insists on control, and with that categorical control, provides the sort of space where thoughts can be let go. Whether that it is through pain, or pleasure, or some of both, he empties the head of obsessive thoughts and worries and provides a space where the submissive can surrender to life; find the true essence of oneself, free of concerns about what to achieve in the material world.

Eckhart Tolle, whom I recommend to you as an easily understood spiritual leader, said in a short UTube clip that "every moment offers you the choice between conditioned reactions or conscious Presence". The goal is to bring some space into the stream of thought, and that is what happens when beaten, when bound, when contained, when reduced.

Once, in the very early days of my investigations into domination I read of a man who had a big chair in the corner of a room and when his girl was fraught, over anxious or overwhelmed, he told her to sit there and not to dare to move unless he gave her permission. She would sit there, angry, smoke rising through her nostrils and up into the air, but as time went by the negative energy began to dissipate and she began to think clearly. Then, they could talk it through, calmly and with clarity.

I've had better meditations than last Tuesday but none more still and pain free. I sit with my knees folded under me and, maybe it was all the walking we did in Japan, but it was perfectly comfortable to do this for the entire hour. My meditation leader once said to us that sometimes it pays to go to the pain, not hide from it. She counsels people with cancer and it is a strategy they use, not to fear the pain but to consciously experience it and come to the resolution that it is a do-able pain. I did this and discovered that I was more or less pain-free. I maintained my focus in my body very well indeed, stayed with my breath, returned to my body when thoughts came; refused to give in to the thinking mind; banished it. It takes practice. The words 'coming home to the body' resonate with me now.

This is part of the whole understanding that in meditation we 'come home to the body'. Focus is put on the breath, or perhaps the feet. Focus is taken away from the thoughts, or at least we acknowledge the awareness that thought has happened, again, and now we return to the body, to the open spaced Consciousness where we just exist; that space between thoughts. One way to achieve this is to focus on the process of breathing, not to engage in it but to watch it. The body will inhale when it is ready; will exhale when it is ready. And, in between the inhalation and the exhalation there is a space. It's thrillingly quiet and calm in that space.

In some ways, the smarter you are, the more challenging life can be. Why sit in the car and chill when you could put on a CD and learn another language? Don't think for half an hour? Are you mad? Some super brainy surgeons feel this way. But, I need to submit for more reasons than one. I need a strong dominant because I need to feel that authority to achieve what I can't achieve on my own. If you read some of the forums on Fetlife about 'Mental BDSM' you'll see that I am not at all alone. Streams of people want very much to engage in non-thought activities because instinctively they know that this is what is good for them; that endless worry and thought isn't getting them where they want to go in life; in their lives inside their heads where we all reside.

Of course, in the 'Real' material world we all engage in activities and pursuits. We all have a purpose of some kind. At the same time, Tolle reminds us that as well as this we share a life purpose - to find that which is our essence, that which has no form. Nothing really is more important than that, especially given that there is really only one Consciousness of which we are all a part. The more people at peace, the better, for our material world is a mirror image of what our inside world looks like. It is much too noisy. I think we can agree on that.