I got up. I could have stayed in bed, but I decided to get up. It took me half an hour to decide that that was what I would do, and another ten minutes to actually do it, but I did it. I am up and sitting at my computer, I have meditated and made myself a cup of coffee, and the six o’clock alarm still hasn’t gone off.
I haven’t meditated in the mornings for a while, mostly I have lain in bed and tried to grab as much sleep as possible, which normally means lying in bed awake and brooding for a couple of hours and then getting up late, or falling back to sleep and either sleeping in (if I don’t have to get up for work) and getting up late, or dozing off and struggling with the alarm and getting up late.
So today I got up.
Last night I was late getting off to sleep, which is unusual, mostly I have no trouble falling asleep when I go to bed, it’s when I wake up in the early hours that the problems start. But last night I was still awake around midnight, still looking at the clock at quarter to one, and then awake again at half past four. I know I swore I wouldn’t blog about insomnia any more, but I just thought I’d mention it this once.
I got up, and of course it was dark. I put the coffee on and set up the mat and blocks. I found the mp3 player last night, it’s been missing for about a week, but it was only down the side of the arm chair.
Oh, the alarm has gone off. Six o’clock. I left it to play. It will go off again in another ten minutes. ‘Still, you are free/No one tells the wind which way to go/Wake up in the morning to yourself open your eyes and start to be you/Listen, we think we can see you/Baby there’s no price upon your head/sing it, shout it/Now the angry words have all been said/Do it, don’t doubt it’.
I found the first track of the preparation for the metta bhavana. ‘This is an opportunity to explore your emotional life without judgment. Being receptive to however you are. Getting in touch with how you’re feeling. Identifying and acknowledging any feelings or absence of feelings in how you’re being right now.
Lonely and scared. That’s how I’m being right now.
I lit the incense and then the candle. The candle went out. Fished a new candle out of the box and lit that. Settled myself down on the blocks in front of the radiator. Opened my eyes briefly and realised that the second candle had gone out. Put the light on again and looked at it. The wick had burnt right down but the wax hadn’t even started, sometimes that happens with them, I don’t know why, but it’s not going to burn now.
So what do you do? Get another one out of the box and try again.
‘In the first stage of the metta bhavana, cultivating an attitude of well wishing and friendliness towards yourself, using the method or methods you chose earlier, using phrases, memory, imagination or awareness of bodily sensations’. I always go for the phrases: ‘May I be happy, may I be well…’ etc, I’ve never really worked out how the others work. Imagine yourself to be happy? No, I can’t quite get there, it has to be the words, otherwise other words will push them out.
I sat through the whole thing, which is about half an hour, I think, if you add up all the stages. I opened my eyes half way through and saw L’Empire des Lumieres, and the shadow of the cheese plant leaf in the candle light. First the shadow on the wall next to the picture, then the leaf itself. The bottom half, the dark half of the picture was dark behind the leaf, the details obscured, the light caught the blue light sky, the tree standing in silhouette, and next to it on the wall, the shadow of the leaf.
The candle goes out. What do you do? Light another one.