It’s been a while since you did 20; what are the symptoms that cause you discomfort?
It’s been a while since you did 20; what are the symptoms that cause you discomfort?
I don't know, I deduce the discomfort itself only from forgetting to meditate and a certain reluctance to start. I also keep thinking it's been ten minutes when it's only been five, more often than I did earlier, I think. It could be nothing significant.
As Charliedog pointed out, the ‘why’ is important.
A way I use to consciously cultivate desire is to see myself already there. At times during the day, I just take a moment and focus in a direction that is something more that I currently am. Then I just let go and continue with whatever I was doing.
Most of the time, this spiritual unfolding is carried by its own momentum. But when not, this ‘trick’ creates a shift within. A simple tool to have more clarity of vision, when it is clouded by inner obstructions. When the destination is seen on the horizon, desire to the get there naturally comes from within.
So, if the root of the issue is lack of desire, perhaps it’s just that a clearer direction is needed. And when the desire is there, I’m sure you’ll find your way to cultivate that.
P.S. If the discomfort is practice-related, you can always engage in other aspects of yoga, such as service to others. Your guru within knows the way.
HI Jourdain
From experience, the dampening down of bhakty can be related to overload. It’s a protection mechanism I have noticed at times. Something inside says “cool off or you blow up”.
I’m not saying that this is necessarily what is happening here, but if you have reasons to believe you are oversensitive to practices, check out Lesson 367 - Suggestions for Over-Sensitive Meditators
Hey Jourdain,
Sometimes, I get insights and post stuff, then 2 days later I realize I’m full of crap. This is one of those times.
How you open can be very different than others. What seems to be very wrong can be very right.
Even if you do the exact same practices as someone else, you will not open like them. You can ask for advice, but it may not be helpful.
How things move or open is what is called for even if seems terrible at first.
You don’t have to self-pace when things become uncomfortable. When heart opens, it’s open to all emotions. Some are not what you think they should be. It’s uncomfortable for some, and that’s cool.
Anyway, Take care. Don’t listen to me!
Lori
Week 14
Changes: none
Current practice: 10 minutes deep meditation
Reading: https://www.aypsite.org/23.html
Thanks to Charliedog (sorry I overlooked your earlier comment), Dogboy, BlueRaincoat, Uniath, and lalow33 for your comments and support. Things went much better this week, with just one missed session, and I think I’ve emerged from the trough of the previous two weeks. My guess is that I just hadn’t been doing much in daily life, owing to my seasonal underemployment. And that has changed in the past week, perhaps lending better context to my practice.
Several of you mentioned bhakti, and its role remains an active mystery to me. I’ve misplaced the page-long list of ideals I compiled a few weeks ago, which perhaps suggests that it’s just as well if I don’t spend too much time analyzing them or–as I had been half-seriously contemplating–organizing them in a hierarchy according to a 64-place tournament bracket. I am planning to at least dig the list out again, though. As Uniath pointed out, it’s great to think of some of these things now and then, to remind ourselves why we’re doing this.
Jourdain, you are a delight ! 
Sey 
It takes one to know one, Sey!
(Still can’t find my bhakti bracket. Argh…)
Week 15
Changes: none
Current practice: 10 minutes deep meditation
Reading: https://www.aypsite.org/24.html
No missed sessions, though several late ones, in a week during which I traveled to my mother’s house in the interior and returned with her to the coast. My mother and I have spent most of the summer together and are getting on one another’s nerves. I feel a lack of clarity in my own life and a need for it. I don’t know whether noticing these problems is a sign of growth–it could be. But I feel an intense frustration with myself–some of which, I know, I have projected onto my mother–and a determination to take effective control of my own life as opposed to drifting and letting others set the pace.
I should have mentioned earlier that I am doing meditation a little differently in the last two months or so. I posted around that time about a longstanding confusion I had had about what it meant to “lose the mantra” and what to do then. Further reading led me to Lesson 195, “Mantra, Thoughts, and Attention”, which I’d forgotten, and which emphasizes placing attention on the mantra as the difference between meditating and not.
So now, instead of going back to repeating the mantra when I realize that I have stopped paying attention to it–with the attendant dilemma of whether to start the mantra over or not–I am learning to go back to repeating the mantra with attention when I realize that I have stopped paying attention to it. This resolves the dilemma, as, even if I’ve been repeating the mantra without attention, I can start paying attention to it again without starting it over.
I didn’t think it would make much difference, but there has been a protracted “clunky phase” that suggests it’s really a different practice. Which, in turn, suggests that I’m not really an experienced AYPer at all. It also gives me further reason not to add any more practices until the “new” meditation is stabilized and working well.
Experience or not, you are AYP. 
You’re walking along, you drop your keys, you pick them up and keep walking. That is the attitude towards the mantra I take into my sitting.
Am I really Well, then AYP is about to go on vacation. 
I leave Friday morning for two weeks camping in the Southwest USA. It’ll be interesting to see how well this all integrates.
Nice!
Am I really Well, then AYP is about to go on vacation. I leave Friday morning for two weeks camping in the Southwest USA. It’ll be interesting to see how well this all integrates.
Nice!
Camping for 2 weeks! Awesome! Have a blast, Lori