I took a work holiday yesterday, and did whatever I wanted. Everything I wanted to do made my woman love me more.
* Got my dose of mental stimulation and discourse by following up on my favorite blogs and forums.
* Practiced the guitar, focusing on finger picking patterns on chords, picking out melodies by ear, and discovering melodies from random experimentation. Tried to jam along to some Indonesian pop songs.
* Spent a little time at the piano keyboard, improvising through simple chord progressions, and learning basic major and minor chords.
* Got more friendly with my boxers double end bag. A few weeks ago it was difficult to hit it square on, now I can can throw combinations at it. Learned some basic footwork with the heavy bag.
* Shot at a line up of tin cans on the bar with my air pistol from my bed. It’s not an actual gun, but those plastic pellets can still tear in and out of a line of five tin cans. And it’s the perception of the metal gun replica that matters – it intimidates the woman.
* Got a mild buzz on and fucked the hell out of my little woman. She came and came until she was exhausted, and promptly passed out.
But something was missing. My day wasn’t complete.
Where was my relationship to silence?
Rather than do full out shamata vipassana meditation, I lay down and zonked in to the feelings in my body, and remembered an old kinesthetic practice I’d long forgotten. A good friend of a practice. A practice with roots hundreds if not thousands of years old.
The ancient Chinese secret practice – the inner smile.
I sometimes carry around in my forehead an inner crankyness. My brow is furrowed, and I have some concern over something or other. It helps with mental focus and ambition and getting the job done and imposing my will on the world. A David Ramsey forehead.
But now was time to focus on my heart and let it have an inner smile.
If you do this often, this excersise will familiarize yourself with creating an emotion as if you were flexing a muscle. With your will and focus, you create an inner warmth and glow, and feel contentment.
This contentment is the basis of my relationship with my woman.
Random Xpat Rantings 
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The inner smile is great. I think it and the six healing sounds are superb ways for anyone to sort out their basic emotional problems. For a guy starting out to learn game it should almost be complusory.
How long do you think it takes to be able to do this, for someone who does not seclude himself for days? Can it be done by people who don’t have much time?
Many practices can be done as you go about your day – while you’re driving, waiting in checkout lines, watching a movie, and so on. But deeper progress happens faster if you take some time out to give full attention to them.
They also work well in conjunction with general mindfulness. But general mindfulness is somewhat of a taxing burden for most of us. But it’s like sports – while at first we are lazy and unmotivated, later we find enjoyment in the effort, and wonder why ever let ourselves get out of shape. The discipline becomes a habit, and the heightened awareness can be life enhancing.
I slide in and out of working on mindfulness myself. It’s embarrassing how loose I get with my mind, compared to the times when I had a much more heightened awareness. But I’ve seen that happen again and again to other people too – maintaining a mindfulness discipline over decades takes a discipline. It’s so easy to just forget, and then drift away to a place where you forget why you were so into it. Until you notice your general awareness is a small fraction of what it used to be.
Oh, that reminds me – being “in the flow” and having flow moments is an outcome of mindfulness training. I plan to do a post on it some day. There is a style of seduction that relies on the guy being very present, and very into the girl. As if watching her face is a flow moment, where nothing else in the world is more interesting to him than her.
Many of the basic meditation and chi-kung practices help with being comfortable and in control and feeling good and powerful in the present moment – and being subtly aware of cues and able to give subtle cues.
For guys for whom it’s too big a burden to do the Zazen sitting still not doing anything style of meditation, some other practices are more engaging. I like chi-kung when I’m not in the mood for shamata-vipassana. But other in the body activities that promote a flow moment can be helpful – anything you can do with mindfulness.
Even just taking time out from daydreams as you fall asleep by focusing intently on the sound of the fan in your room will give a little more space between thoughts the next day. Some of us get really into building up awareness, find a community of like minded people, and go all out – full core hard bore full out with mindfulness training. I used to be as hard core as I could be – months in solitary meditation in forests, meditation centers, meeting teachers, monasteries, the works. There were times it really seemed I was going somewhere magical with my mind – and times when I did – when it wasn’t just on the meditation cushion, but throughout the day and my dreams where my awareness was dramatically altered. But instead of being a stepping off point to a new mental organization, it wound up that those were peak experiences, that eventually faded into the background. With occasional brief returns.
I don’t know what consistency of focus I’d have needed to maintain and build on those past gains. For some of us we seem to need monastic intensity of focus, and for most even that is not nearly enough. For others they can maintain strong progress while being engaged in many other pursuits – so I hear.
I’m glad I no longer believe in a Buddhist after life. It’s not that important to get enlightened anymore. I just work on the practices because they enhance the quality of my life, all around and in many specific ways. So I’ve made my peace with having a loose and sloppy mind much of the time.
How would your recommend someone start to be more mindful and present? Someone with no background or interest in Buddhism or knowledge of eastern practices. Suppose you are driving or working. Is it just focusing on nothing but a certain detail or something. I remember reading somewhere about someone who hated doing dishes, but once noticed that they got very zen about it as they focused on it and after a while, it wasn’t even about washing dishes, they just enjoyed the process of it.
I do daydream a lot and often even talk to myself, just playing out various scenarios in my head. Kind of weird. Also with all the thinking and daydreaming of what ifs and what could happen, it causes a lot of unnecessary worry and anxiety.
I haven’t read him, but many people turn to Eckhart Tole for inspiration and guidance regarding mindfulness practices. As far as I know he doesn’t use any Buddhist language.
Personally I find that unless I take some time out every day to focus on a mindfulness practice, then doing it throughout the day is less likely and less strong. The meditation and post-meditation experience inform and strengthen each other.
When doing the Zen style of sitting still, beginners often find it a struggle to shut the fuck up and relax, and that struggle can be irritating and feel like work. It can take years of regular practice or at least some long periods of many hours a day of focus to get to the point where you are just relaxed and hanging out, awake and aware without drifting off to sleep or scrambling after the next thought.
During periods when I want to avoid that initial struggle altogether, I often prefer to do chi-kung. It has more structure than Zazen. With Zazen you cultivate insight – you just let thoughts come and go (which takes a lot of regular practice) , but with chi-kung you focus your attention in specific ways and places. It can be a matter of focusing on the perineum while driving, then five minutes later shifting the focus up to the next chakra, and so on. I find such a focus much easier than the wider non-focused focus of insight meditation.
This is a similar reason why some people start meditation with mantra practice. It gives you something to do and focus on.
Generally meditation progress follows that pattern. Shamatha, or mindfulness and focus first, followed by relaxing into a generalized spacial awareness – non focused but also non distracted. A flow moment where the colors are brighter and you don’t need to do anything about anything.
hey i like this “inner smile” concept. had never really thought about it that way.
I think the easiest is to start with a short qigong routine to do every morning. Something where you move slowly. You will most likely feel benefits from that faster and find it less difficult because you don`t have to still your mind completely while doing it. Eventually the effects of that practice will have helped you still your mind pretty good or at least made it a lot easier. Then you start sitting meditation.
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