Writing, sleeping, mindstuff

I didn't write a blog entry last week. I was feeling a bit tired and sluggish the whole week for some reason and I couldn't gather my thoughts enough to write about anything in particular.

I still don't quite know what to write, but I do know that there's a number of themes I'd like to explore somehow in the future.

Oh, there's a vaguely interesting thing I've noticed in my early morning meditation that could write about today.

I meditate between 06:00 and approximately 07:00 or 07:15 every morning (on weekends I might go back to sleep after sitting), and I have found that this is a good way of making my meditation part of the morning routine (which is important, otherwise it wouldn't happen).

I get up, out of bed, and I walk over to my meditation place in the next room. I dedicate the practice, meditate for an hour or so, and recite a simple refuge verse after having transferred the merits of the practice. The practice I do varies from day to day with my mood and the weather. It's the mindfulness of breathing (a simplified form of the anapanasati practice), the metta bhavana, or just sitting.

Something that I've noticed is that my mind is full of stuff. It's not as if there are well-formed thoughts or ideas floating around as there might be if I'm sitting during the day. No, this is just stuff that my mind is trying to wade though, like objects in a fog or in a dark room, mindstuff that is left over from the dreams I've probably had, dream leftovers. I can feel my mind trying to get hold of it, slipping from shape to shape, like over wet stones in a ford, but without getting hold of anything that I can label. It's like failing to pick up peas from a plate with a fork. It takes about 10-15 minutes for this to clear, which is why I usually just sit with myself without doing anything in particular (apart from possibly engaging in body awareness exercises) for the first part of the sit.

It's likely that the fluff that lives in my mind after waking up is just itself trying to get into gear for the day.

When the morning mists of my mind has cleared, I pick the practice that comes to me naturally, or I pick the practice I haven't done for a while, or I default to the metta bhavana.

That's all for today. Take care.


[Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net]