If you are contemplating the exploration of human consciousness: be warned. Indeed, turning the light inwards opens up a fascinating and revealing scenery. But it is also a very complicated and slippery path and very confusing at times, I feel. You will enter a different game, and need to stop the game that you have been trained to play until now. To complicate it further: most others around you will just continue playing the old game and treat as if you are still playing that game too
Thoughts on happiness and fear
I quite often notice rushes of happiness though. They come and go. When I am riding my bicycle to the morning meditation for example. I cross bridges and ride along side canals, the sun is rising, the city is still quiet and the water is like glass. I feel love or joy coming up. It is really as if a bubble comes up from deep down, and is rising upwards, at one point crossing the borders of my consciousness and entering my body, spreading a warm feeling from my lower belly upwards. I sigh and smile. It is a feeling similar to looking into beautiful loving eyes.
Another morning in the zendo
Being on a zen retreat is weird. It is not that it feels like you become unstable but it feels like being stirred up. That is how I feel. Did I feel so quiet last night and bloodthirstily angry yesterday afternoon, this morning I feel a lump of sadness that I cannot really explain. Or better: that I can’t explain at all.
I woke up this morning from something very close to a nightmare. I was in a situation were I felt very betrayed and disheartened by somebody dear to me and the people who seemed to be kind to me and wanted to help me ‘get over it’ were people who betrayed me in the past. To be sad in the proximity of people who hurt me before felt unsafe and to find out that they tried to help me was confusing. I wanted to believe they had good intentions but I knew I should be careful.