First of all, ok, so some bits of the dreaded are interesting - shock and horror, there's an admission that reality and context might just matter!! But, OMG, some of it is truly the dullest stuff I have ever read in my whole life. In contrast, football really is magic and mystery and my real loves (animals and art and theatre and literature and the natural world and people in the present-ness) are unbelievable triumphs of glory.
Anyway, further reflections on poisedness, because there is a right-hemi/left-hemi thing going on, I think.
The left-hemi is great at really focused laser attention (that piece of grain among the grit is what I want), while the right has this generalised vigilant awareness of what is present and in flux all around.
In meditation - and in boxing - what one is trying to do is put the laser on everything that is present and in flux. And, what's more, to do that without hooking on to what interests you or getting carried away by predictions (which don't allow for the changingness of things).
This takes incredible energy - as well as a lot of practice.
I doubt that boxers - or footballers, who face a similar unpredictability - are aware of the mental effort.... and bear in mind that they, unlike the meditator are simultaneously trying to screw up the predictions of their opponents and create hooks for their opponents. Both sides will inevitably not be perfectly able to resist hooks or predictions.
The purpose of the breath meditation is to give you a thing to take the place of the hooks (which might be thoughts or sounds or whatever) but you can just as well focus on the whole experience. I feel like there is a point of focus that I am stretching out like pizza dough to take up all of my awareness.
My hooks tend to be planning or thinking about meditating. In boxing, I think about what I'm doing or how tired I am. But here's the thing, when you get so tired, the left-hemi gives up and the right allows you to just be in it.
Utterly exhausted, you reach peak performance - completely unhooked.
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