This is a sketch called "You eyeballing ME, boy?" and is taken from the April 26th 2009 post to a blog at http://smiftlarsen.wordpress.com. I did a quick search on Google Images for a graphic to accompany the theme of my post and this is what caught my eye (so to speak). The joint authors, Smift and Larsen, are graphic design students in Oslo and there is other interesting material on their blog-site. Have a look at it.
Why the theme of eyeballing? Well, I had a particularly deep and satisfying meditation session one morning, a couple of days ago, just before heading out to do some shopping with my wife Desy who is visiting from Jakarta. As Desy perused the garments on display in one clothing shop, I noticed that a guy was giving us a right good looking over and I blurted out "what are you looking at?" before I could catch myself. Needless to say, Desy was quick to rebuke me and just as suddenly, I averted my eyes and looked at the floor in embarrassment. I hadn't said what I'd said loudly and the guy had no understanding of what I'd actually said although he could have guessed from my tone of voice and body language.
After my outburst, I felt quite annoyed with myself, most of all because I should have been more alert. This sort of thing has happened before after a "successful" meditation session. Normally being eyeballed doesn't bother me and even if it does, I'll simply think "you eyeballing ME, boy?" and not say anything. In this case, the guy's eyeballing was quite overt and directed at both of us, doubtless because I'm a Westerner and Desy is Indonesian, an unusual combination in Shanghai.
So what's going on here? Why am I more apt to blurt something out after a satisfying meditation session that should predispose me to being serene and accepting of life's little vexations? I sort of know the answer but it's useful to attempt an explanation as a way of clarifying my own thoughts on the matter. When I meditate, I find that there are two "areas" to disengage from: one I call The Boiler Room and other I call Headquarters.
The Boiler Room, so-called perhaps because things can get pretty hot down there, is located in "my guts", an area behind the umbilicus, and is associated with how I'm feeling. Any tenseness, sadness, anxiety etc. will be felt here. In the past my identification with this "room" was almost total: I was in the room, I was the room. The trick in meditation is simply to back out of the room if already in it. A sense of "distance" has to be created and I find that locating my awareness in the area of the solar plexus is helpful in achieving this. It's important that the feeling is not pushed away or suppressed. Simple observation of the feeling is enough to trigger this disengagement which is always sudden and very apparent.
Once this disengagement has been achieved it is time to deal with Headquarters, a reference to the restless mind that is more or less located between and behind the eyes. Disengagement from The Boiler Room can throw the mind into a bit of a frenzy because the two work seamlessly together. If I'm having "a poor me" episode in The Boiler Room, the mind will generate an endless stream of thoughts that reinforce this negative feeling.
Once the connection is disrupted, the mind will often flip frantically between past and future, throwing up images of what has been and what might be in an attempt not to be pinned down in the present. Images from the past with strong emotional content will vie with unsettling images of imagined futures. To follow any of these is to be drawn into Headquarters where objectivity is lost and identification with mind is complete.
This will happen repeatedly but each time awareness needs to returned to the solar plexus area. After a while, the oscillations between past and future subside and less weighty thoughts begin to appear, centering around movies I have recently seen or books that I have recently read. This is a good sign and before too long I'll experience a sort of jolt when my mind realises that it's been thought-free for a brief period of time. This is the start of disengagement from the mind whereby thoughts still arise but just as quickly pass away because I'm not longer holding on to them.
There follows a period of internal equilibrium because there has been a more or less successful disengagement from both The Boiler Room and Headquarters. Awareness is centred firmly in the area of the solar plexus and quickly returns there if the attention wanders. An equilibrium also exists between what's inside my body and what's outside of it. Normally there is an inner pressure that wants to burst out into the world or sometimes the world seems to be pressing in. During a successful meditation session however, this imbalance is absent and instead I feel almost transparent. Outside sounds flow right through me. I don't react to them.
Getting back to my outburst, it's clear that during meditation the door to The Boiler Room is open and I can peer in and "feel" what's going on. Headquarters has powered down and only random, intermittent and light-weight thoughts are being generated. What seems to happen after meditation is that I remain closer than normal to The Boiler Room, the door is pretty much still open because I've recently been peering in. An external stimulus triggers an emotional reaction that I'm not quick enough to suppress because I've recently been careful to avoid suppression. Headquarters has also not been subject to any sort of control either, only observation, and so the reaction triggers a thought that finds vocal expression before the normal inhibitory mechanisms can intervene. I think it works something like that.
Of course, the term Boiler Room has business connotations where it's defined as follows (source):
A boiler room is an operation often associated with fraudulent activities, where salespeople cold call high net worth individuals in hopes of getting them to invest in thinly traded stocks. The phone reps have very little information on the securities and focus more on selling the client on the idea of making fast money. The name boiler room originated from the fact it is a high-pressure environment where phone reps are expected to close no matter what.
My own "inner" boiler rooms operates in much the same way. It is a "high-pressure environment" where I'm continually being tricked into investing in "thinly traded stocks" (my feelings) because I've been convinced that is what is best for me. At least that's the way it used to be. I'd be excited about some future possibility and "invest" in that feeling of excitement and anticipation. If the possibility disappeared I'd "invest" in the feeling of disappointment that followed. There was no distance between me and The Boiler Room and I couldn't see the fraudulent activity that was going on. I still get caught up in it but not as much as I used to.
For me, the key to a successful meditation is to sink into my body and become aware of any tension in it. This sensation of sinking into the body is quite palpable and it can be elusive when either Headquarters or The Boiler Room are in turmoil, but without it proper meditation is impossible. Nowadays this happens fairly quickly. I'm sure that my somatic "technique" as a preparation for meditation is quite crude at the moment but I'm deliberately keeping it experiential and not reading anything that will fill my head with "ideas" that my mind can seize upon during meditation.
