sitting monkey is place where
A year to live
my plan for 2010 is to visualize that i’m dying, and that i have only one year left to live. this is a contemplative exercise, and an opportunity for me to work with fear more directly.
i may journal on this blog from time to time about it.
i’m not really dying. don’t worry. this is just an exercise, which i described first here:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/onecity/2010/01/a-year-to-live.html
i’ll take care of myself in this process, and only engage with it insofar as it feels like a spiritual practice and growth process. if you’d like to be involved in this with me though please let me know. i’m inviting you to involve yourself if you’d like; if you think it would be valuable to you too. we could make it a group practice and compare notes, or i can just tell you more about how it unfolds.
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8. January 2010 at 4:31 am :
But Dave, you actually *are* dying. For real, just like everyone else. And what’s worse, you don’t even know when…
Surely an exercise like this will take you *way* outside your comfort zone? I doubt that truly looking death in the face will feel much like a ‘growth process’… Is it wise to decide in advance to stop when things get shitty?
8. January 2010 at 11:06 am :
Thanks for the comment, Duncan.
Re: dying. I don’t disagree. But chances are I’ll live for much longer than a year, just statistically. So it’s more of an exercise than an actuality. But I don’t disagree, I could be gone tomorrow.
Re: growth process. In general I feel like growth or insight occurs best when I’m in a certain amount of challenge, or stretch, but not too much. If I’m stressed all the way to crisis, then there’s no growth. If I’m not stretched at all, also no growth. So there’s something to having enough but not too much stretch. This seems to apply both to physical conditioning and also to contemplation for me. I’m taking that tact in this process as well. No need to push too hard, just worthwhile to push into the area of stretch.
So perhaps that means I won’t really be looking death in the face, in 2010. I’m really interested in getting into fear in detail this year though, down to a very subtle level or to the point of pre-fear and more subtle emotional/energetic states that it arises from. I’m guessing these contemplations will evoke those subtle states of mind and provide something to rest in and explore with greater self-reflective awareness. That’s exciting to me. But I suspect exploring more subtle states of mind require relaxation and a sense of being safe as well, or that right amount of stretch. Otherwise the mind gets swept away (in Buddhist technical parlance from the 6th through 10th Nidanas) without much opportunity for insight into the early stages. That’s my guess at least.
Thanks again for the question and comment, I really appreciate it.