Day 20

People often say that it's essential to have a to-do system of some sort. If you don't, you're bound to remember that letter you have to mail from the office when you're at home in bed. Or remember that you need to take out the bedroom garbage when you're at work. With a to-do system, you can relax with those things, knowing they're covered & written down somewhere. You can stay present rather than obsess on them.

All of which is to say that the mind has a way of picking the least opportune moments to go down certain pathways. Today I was present in my meditation for periods of time, but I also got carried off by creative ideas for my musical. Good creative ideas. Creative ideas I was sort of unhappy to let go of and come back to the present. Creative ideas I wanted to get up and write down so I wouldn't forget.

I guess the trade off with meditation is that I am training my mind to remain present to whatever it is doing. So that when it is time to be creative, I will stay in that zone, instead of thinking about hot fudge sundaes or erotic photographs.

And for the record, the best creative idea my mind got distracted by was putting a song called "Day Job" back into the show with an earlier edition of the lyrics, and having the dancers do polyrhythmic percussive choreo that's somewhere halfway between "Stomp" and Tom Waits' pipe-clanging hijinks on "Sixteen Shells". I didn't forget.

Day 17

That post a few days ago where I said I get carried away more by career fantasies than by sex fantasies? I may need to re-think that...

Day 15

I missed meditating yesterday. I suppose that 90 sits in 90 days means I can double up and do two meditations in one day some time soon. I look at this as yet another way to keep coming back. When distracted, notice and re-commit to the breath. When distracted, notice and re-commit to daily sits.

It would be easy to say "See - you couldn't do it." Very easy. That would get me off the hook of continuing to try. Self-denigration is apparently a particularly western way of copping out.

Today's was a peaceful sit. Some moments of good presence, some moments of distraction. I may be running a bit of a fever. Went on a lovely trip in my mind to a place where I owned a cabaret on Denman St. and flew in my weirdo friends from around the world to perform. Put together a budget. An excel file in your imagination is no more exciting than an exvel file in real life. And yet some part of me prefers it to noticing exactly what is before my eyes.

What nutty beings we are...

Day 12

Today was a run-of-the-mill sit. Periods of presence and focus alternating with periods of discursiveness. I find it interesting the fantasies that take me away for the longest periods of time. Most people report sexual fantasies as being the most compelling, followed by food fantasies.

Mine seem to center around career. I imagine my musical becoming successful, with critical accolades pouring in. The wealth of a hit coming my way is a minor detail in this dream. Conspicuously absent form my fantasy of success are images of joyous, entertained and possibly mind-broadened audiences exiting the theater in great smiling droves. In meditation you get to face yourself, without filters.

Knowing what hooks me the most often on the cushion helps me keep aware of my obsessions & sensitive areas & blind spots off the cushion. It's easier to say "Ah... this email makes me angry because it threatens my desire for praise and good reputation." or "Am I prone to trust this guy too much because he's promising me exactly what I desire?"

I suppose it's also a good barometer of where my abundance lies, too. I'm fortunate to have lots of love and sex and good food around me, so my mind doesn't go searching for it obsessively when it travels away from the breath.

Day 11

It is very difficult to sit in meditation when you know that right after you finish you will go to a fetish party where people wearing next to nothing will flog other people wearing next to nothing. In cages.

Day 10

Another sit. I notice that what often takes me away is a piece of music. An earworm. These are more persistent for me than any sort of story-based thought. Yet they quickly become the soundtrack for mental images - music-video style. And once the images come, the stories begin, and I'm off to Japan in my mind.

In fact, my earworms are SO persistent that the effort of re-focusing away from them towards breath can become a once-every-three-seconds activity. Which can often seem similar to pushing away, choking off etc. Which is not helpful to the intention of peacefully abiding with the breath.

I wonder if this phenomenon is more pronounced in musicians?

Day 9

I missed posting yesterday, but not sitting. The last two sits have been similar in that my mental discursiveness has been fairly consistent. I do not seem to be gaining much discipline in terms of being able to focus on my breathing for progressively longer periods.

I do, however find I notice more quickly in my day-to-day life when I have become lost in thought when my attention should be present: conversing with a boring person, trying to find an elusive song lyric, riding a bicycle in heavy traffic etc. This has immediate tangible benefits.

And finally, I find I am less attached to the idea of progress when it comes to the meditation practice. It has been documented over and over that one's practice will fluctuate in terms of focus and discipline. To expect a linear progression is to add something extra to the sitting-with-what-is. Someone said of meditation that we are all always beginners. So the lesson is to keep coming back. Which will sound familiar to anyone who has done the other '90 in 90'.