January 7 – Getting less pushed and pulled

Dear Friends,

In the next recording, Jill brings in reflections on feeling tone, vedana.

Feeling tone arises when a sense organ makes contact with an object. Light waves bouncing off an object meet the eye – and sight arises – and also a flavour to that contact – pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant or unpleasant (simplified as neutral). Seeing the flower blossom on my holiday cactus – pleasant. Seeing the dishes waiting to be washed by the sink – unpleasant. Seeing the walls behind the computer monitor – pretty neutral.

The feeling tones happen automatically. Where mindfulness can help is with what happens next.

If we’re not mindful, our habit patterns kick in.

• Flower – pleasant – I should buy more plants, I wonder if they are on sale, and maybe get a plant stand so I have more space by the window.
  Pulling toward, wanting more – conditioning a pattern toward craving and greed.
• Dishes – unpleasant – I hate doing dishes, I should get a dishwasher but there’s no room for a dishwasher in this stuplid old house, or I could just stop being a lazy slob, …
  Pushing away, resisting – conditioning a pattern toward aversion and ill-will.
• Walls – neutral – hmm, what? There must be something else is there to do.
  Zoning out, ignoring – conditioning a pattern toward delusion.

If we can insert mindfulness into the process, then pleasant can simply be pleasant, and unpleasant just unpleasant. We don’t have to add all the story and reactivity that can drive us to one-click purchases that we later regret.

In the recording, Jill offers a practice the participants did in pairs – one listener and one speaker – where the speaker would note out loud things that were unpleasant, then neutral, then pleasant. I have also participated in social meditation practices of noting pleasant and unpleasant. What I find neat about doing this type of activity aloud is it slows things down just enough that I can feel the leaning into or the pulling back from an experience – and also how hard it can be to even tune into so many other things that are happening in the body.

When I took MBSR, in one week, we kept a “pleasant events journal” – and in another week an “unpleasant events journal”. The effect here was similar – waking up some interest in what was going on, how it felt in the body, and how I responded in terms of emotions or thoughts.

We can also practice with this in meditation. Here’s one from Jozen Tamori Gibson – the guided meditation follows about 10 minutes of some comments and instructions.
https://www.dharmaseed.org/talks/62388/

I invite you to be curious and to play with this!

With good wishes,
Andrea