Masks of Mine

Today I woke depressed. My meditation was shot full of holes of thought demanding my attention louder and with strength such that the silence in my core was adulterated by worries and wonders. Each morning of four months now, I've sat with my's elf in the company of my breath, and maybe a friend or two - ipod & Mindfold. We go looking for the deepest recesses, or at least they seem deep as are covered by the thickest wafts of thought taking often a hundred words, images or feelings (its so hard to distinguish things nowadays) to run their course so that I can glimpse the more lasting self who always is pleased at my return and does very little to 'help' me plan or try to entertain me during my stay. There is very little I can say about myself at this point as my's elves are so often chattering about their's elves as to make heads or tails out of silence.

Layer after layer. Peel enough away and you will either find truth or nothing - can't be ever too suspectful as to know what lies behind the junctions next face - or fear. We all are defined somehows. And here I am, more real than the storyful descriptions I cast about as my shadows falling through the worlds of these pages as if my inverting into my's elf could create some personalized black hole with which to recondense all these intrusions into the fabric of matter we all share and wrap my's elf tight ever tighter into a singularized coccoon to demand of existence the expansive birth that the cosmos at large purveyed into every one of our souls all at the same before time and with each of us in mind such that the whole of me could be the same as the parts of the surroundings that each of me might mistake as some thing or some other.

And here I am still feeling insaner in this life where I have no real desire other than what comes floating past me as the deitrus of surprise or the mangled dreams that I have seen fit to carry with me thus far but without the continuing, or true, desire to unfurl for all the world. Often I can be in honesty by saying that I care not for this life or world and my dreams are to not have been born in the first place or to have the sweetness of death give my soul release from this damnable body I must look after and feel at all angles and all hours. The surges in my chest are wonders: does God not wish, at any time(lessness), to have thought twice about this infinite eternity of being around one's self posing as others?

in response to Phreelosophy's comment on Practice

*bows deep*
only a truly enlightened being could see how awesome i am (without wearing a Mindfold)

But for the real practice, it fell into me more than I into it. This recent trend certainly grew deep roots in the bloody mess of my broken heart - my ex-wife suggested taking a class again when I called her crying one morning during our Separating. As it turns out heartblood spilt is a verdant compost for growing Qi. The moment I tasted it I was home.

So when I was on the road without a space of my own and needed a way to center that did not involve possessions, a routine (such as shower or shave because those were not always available) or a bedroom, etc. this found its place in my mo(u)rning.

Of course, I have been fostering an image of non-conformity for years so doing weird spirit-summoning gestations or whatever it might look like to the uninformed only really helps to paint a picture of my's elf that keeps me malleable within others' eyeballs. So there's no hesitation on how i am perceived that might get in the way of a practice.
And verily, I say unto you, when you are doing crazy headstands because you have put a year of Chi into your centre, well, the practice suddenly becomes real.

But even that is not the payoff. The real thing that keeps me motivated to do this every day is the more in my body I am. Now as I connect that subtle movement to a sitting, breathing meditation...the mind and the body are aligning that the soul may more fully incarnate.

Practice

So I have been doing my Qi Kung practice for over a year now. Every morning for 15 minutes. This is the longest and best devotion i have given to a practice yet; and the rewards are overwhelming and obvious and completely worth the effort of the routine. And the kicker, is that I don't even know the whole cycle yet.
The particular set of exercises I am working with is called the 18 Lohan Hands. I learned 8 of them before leaving Gainesville, from the best sifu I've yet worked with, Anthony. I was sorry to have to leave in the middle of the set, but it hasn't stopped me from gaining a benefit; although I am now feeling somewhat lopsided or not well-rounded so I am thinking it is time to find a way to learn the rest of the set.

A couple of weeks ago I added a simple meditation to my routine in the mornings, shooting for 15 minutes of motionless. I experimented with different postures - doing the Qi Kung Tree posture, relaxed standing, chair sitting, etc. - but ended up back at the sitting zazen pose on two pillows. After feeling ease in the posture for 15 I started experimenting with the most suspension of motionlessness I could find, even to the point of not blinking, but that proved to be too much twitching motion. So I settled into closed eyes or half-open resting lids with relaxed blinking. The ease of settling into no-moving comes quickly for me as I relax into a Chi-breathing state of mind so that my breath is the bellows for all movement in my fleshbag.

From that I have proceeded to grow the sitting meditation into a full half hour. Thus far my favorite way of monitoring the time (since I have decided to not have a clock in my bedroom) is to listen to Fahrenheit Fair Enough, by Telephone Tel Aviv. I listen to it 4 times plus one verse to get to 30. Its a beautiful, melodic instrumental that also sounds as if it is reorganizing something mechanical, or squarish, in the background; perfect cleaning routine for the Mindlab.