Week 25 Day 7

[Written earlier before golf]

Medi object choiceless awareness

Intention to remain alert and observe raw sensations

Morning all! Today 5 mins metta and 40 mins noting with a bit of metta at the end.

Today I prepared for golf and ate breakfast before practice. I felt a bit stiff in my lower back so stretched a little before sitting.

The metta was irritatingly mixed with thoughts which I duly moved to the periphery which is why I did some more metta practice at the end. Will need to switch interval bells to put metta at the end properly.

Today the main meditation object was the ringing in my ears where I noticed at the start the sounds pulsing in time with my heartbeat. After a while this faded. The room was quiet so every little sensation was an interesting focus. There were noises from upstairs but they stopped after a few seconds. The interesting thing was what was NOT present, no heating sounds, no whirring. The iron did its usual ping after being on (the rare time I had to iron! )

Time moved quickly for the first 15 mins. I then started to observe that I was in thought after thought. My breathing had disappeared from my periphery which meant I had momentarily gone into a thought daze. I renewed intention to remain alert. I noted that on returning to full alertness, focus was on the warmth of my knees and the postion of my hands was strangely detached from my body. I then observed that the fuzziness seemed to want to return and I realised that boredom has set in. I pondered why this boredom had arisen. It could be that my alertness had dropped off and that I was about to doze off but I didn't feel tired. Perhaps I had become to used to the sounds in the room and needed to examine them in more detail. The sense of boredom was not unpleasant but one of familiarity, like when you drive down a road a thousand times and go into autopilot. I recall that a few years ago whenever I drove the short journey home from work - only 15 mins - as soon as I hit the motorway I started to feel sleepy so I had to wind down the window, sing ...anything to keep me awake. Yet I could drive for miles and miles on an unfamiliar road.

Anyway the sense of boredom did dissipate as I noticed some unusual swirls in front of my eyes for a while, the neighbours are up properly now.

I did a few minutes of metta at the end and felt strong feelings towards the objects.

Ok now I have to be physically super focused and get myself down to the golf club and keep my handicap down! It's about to go up so I need to play to it to hang on to it! (I could explain how handicaps could go up and down if you want it...it's pretty akin to equanimity...but later)

25/7