January 2021

In January, I continued with the formal practice from prior months, including the refuge, qigong & trul khor movements, chanting, prayers, guru yoga, breath focus, tummo, thigle breathing & dedication (a 1.5 hours sequence).  I continued to notice the range of experiences & sensations that arise within the tummo practice day over day, with less overall amplitude when physical energy is higher (cardio capacity) & also a steadily increasing comfort with the edge of retention over time.  Additionally, I continued to find the right balance between image & tactile sensation (real & imagined) in creating the experience of the fire.  Related to this, I started to feel that my potential with the practice would hit a ceiling due to lack of concentration ability.  

There were some modifications I made to my formal practice sequence throughout the month.  I stopped doing the horse stance/qigong & savasana after realizing those techniques did not directly relate to my practice goals.  I also reduced the repetition from 3 to 2 for a variety of techniques, further shortening the sequence.  I tried adding in some Yantra Yoga movements from the book by ChNN but quickly removed them, leaving me with a ~55 minute routine.  I keep practicing things intensely off cushion for a while, then condensing that effort into 2 - 3 min on cushion just to keep some thread of continuity.  Then eventually even those condensed versions fall away when I feel I’ve sufficiently internalized the thing.

 

In other notes on formal practice, I moved the white thigle in thigle breathing from the heart up to the throat chakra to keep that exploration fresh.  I also started to more consistently add certain movements & mudras designed to circulate the bliss at the end.  As mentioned on one of the retreats, I noticed that swallowing at the edge of retention-comfort allowed for a bit more relaxation & extension.  I started to notice more “juice” behind the brahma viharas, the confession (sense of admitting a secret, lightening the load) & offering (the freedom one feels from having less possessions).  This effect continued in future months.  Lastly, I pondered continuing on with other parts of the 6 yogas, mostly due to a lack of clear direction in practice.

 

Off-cushion, I did a lot of “pure perception” style practice: seeing self & others as buddhas, world as pure land, etc.  This practice had previously always made me manic & agitated, but this time I was able to overcome that.  I also spent some time appreciating each individual healthy habit (continuing from last month).  I started to notice that while the basic structure or momentum of many of my human foibles have remained, none of them are debilitating any more.  This began to reduce motivation to fix them, perhaps for the first time.  I also continued with the lust circulation “trigger practice” from prior months.  I tried not doing it (for fear of repression), but ultimately kept on since it relates to the development of the energy body overall.

 

In the area of study, I took another online tummo retreat, connected with a previous online retreat I had attended.  As mentioned above, I started to read & practice ChNN’s Yantra Yoga book, having seen how well the 5 basic tsa lung movements had worked for me, but then decided it didn’t fit in time-wise.  All of the various studies of the 6 yogas reinforced the conclusion that the entire earlier path leads to the point of being able to absorb the lung into the central channel, which also stops it from perpetuating karma.  Relatedly, I learned how siddhis are, in fact, the process of controlling the lung which is responsible for projecting intersubjective experience & how non-physical beings (hell, hungry ghost, bardo, deva) are mind born & emit their own light (don’t see physical light of sun) despite being ‘based’ in our same physical universe.  

 

In other study notes, I continued reading The Listening Society, which I had heard about through the Hanzi interview on the Emerge podcast.  I found its optimistic vision of the possibility of collective progress & transformation into metamodernism empowering.  I also met with my spiritual friend & we discussed the intersection of physical health, the energy body & the spiritual path: how, over the long term, tsa/lung/thigle purification via formal practice can intersect with diet/supplementation to influence a causal chain that can eventually lead to rainbow body.  Notably, this view is not commonly found in the available translated texts that I know of, yet it makes intuitive sense to me.  Also, how building up a greater supply of ojas (white thigle) will increase one’s overall stability & thus allow for more leeway with habits (i.e. functioning on less sleep).  This dynamic can be characterized as a “dirty purity” - the process of becoming more rooted/baser while also becoming cleaner/lighter.  

 

In other news, I had a short, private interview with a high-ranking Buddhist teacher connected to the local, traditional dharma center.  I asked about the difference between sutra & tantra in terms of the level of decision-making practiced by the student & had my understanding confirmed.  The interview was a good chance to overcome my general fear of ‘asking for things’/’taking people’s time’ as well as a specific fear of having my pragmatic ideas rejected by more traditional teachers.  On a related note, I had a lot of ‘micro-shifts’ around people: they aren’t ‘problems’ to be solved; it’s safe to feel close to them; allowing space for feelings of aggression to self liberate; allowing vulnerability with regards to libido; seeing confidence as a type of firewall that protects against the negative but not needing to be consciously maintained.  All of these epiphanies have continued as baseline improvements as of this writing 2 months later.  In January they helped spur me into getting into contact with old friends/family, a healthy habit that I had been wanting to do for years but was too shy/contracted to initiate.  I also contemplated how activism/altruism could be more fun/automatically ingrained.  I thought about how to further ‘clean up my act’ without having to take drastic measures ala the “hardcore ethics” approach (move to a commune/monastery).  I got to the point of 6 weeks straight of healthy habits (including new ones), with the support of the new supplements.