Poised

Back to p and not-p.

I have been thinking about boxing. Well, about one particular type of training, when Ali does the whack-a-mole thing. He dodges around and I have to hit the pad where he puts it - no sequences, just surprises. He also threw in a few 'attacks', where he stepped toward me and I had to glide back.

As I was remembering this I realised that, just as with the tweety birds, I had to let go of the expectation of one thing or the other. There wasn't time to do the prediction and have the prediction proved false by reality, as it were. I had to be open to what took place. I had to be poised to react in whatever way was appropriate, given the stimulus.

One thing you are swiftly aware of in this situation is a heightened adrenaline flow - which can 'feel' like panic, but which you have to accept as energy, focus, swifter reaction times and so on. That involves an alteration of an internal perspective so that you can maximise the benefits of the hormone.

Then you become aware of a battle between the speed of the happening and the relative slowness of thinking. It's like you have to 'take in' the thoughts swiftly and let them go because otherwise you are behind the action.... You can't close off the thoughts because that also has adverse consequences: firstly because 'pure' reaction that loses its connection to conscious action gets messy and secondly because the effort of shutting down takes attention away from what you are trying to do and besides, some thoughts are useful so you need to be alert to them, just in case.

So you are poised between two ways of being: the instinctive and the reflective. You are balancing on the knife-edge of your attention.

This is exactly what focused attention in meditation is like. You can't 'grasp on' and you can't fully 'let go'. You have to hold like you'd hold a butterfly, without damaging its wings.

My meditation sessions tend to be better after coffee - and that, I know see, makes sense. I have the energy for it. If I'm falling asleep, by brain waves go all over the place, I have no control. If I'm too rigid, the effort overwhelms the process.

Poised. It feels like this is the ideal state of being. Ready and focused, full of energy and alert and yet able to conserve all effort so that it is used precisely as and where it is required.

When the world delivers, you become p or not-p, just like that.