Candlelight

Tuesday
The photie is from last night in the hut. I should be going to meditate with the nun on Mondays, but I prefer the hut since you can do the vase breathing there. Also, it doesn't cost anything. It's dark now by half seven at night.

Wrote a wee letter to Teresa down at the Samye Ling today to keep in touch. Was sober and straight last night and I'd like to be like that for the rest of my life. It's just hard to imagine enjoying the company of flatheids without getting out of your face. Well, it would be quite nice for half an hour!!! Then they might start telling you their problems and that's unfortunate since their problems are because they're flatheids and too dumb to meditate!!

At least, flatheids are useful if you need anything done. The kiddo's boyfriend is going to try and sort the computer in my room today. Most folk who can fix computers won't even tell you about it and are totally useless. Thank god for young people!!

The Heat

Monday
I took the photie last night while sitting in the hut. Just when it's getting dark is a very good time to meditate. Just posting since things have moved on again with the meditations and there is now a lot of warmth coming into the aftereffects of the vase breathing. There have been false dawns before, but I suspect we are really starting to motor now!

Hallelujah!

Saturday 10:10 p.m.
Whilst doing the bliss whilst listening to a scratch Handel's Messiah at the Usher Hall, the fact that the day has been a bit lousy didn't matter. The bliss that arose was fabulous. Sometimes I was imagining the face on the Turin Shroud. Brilliant! I am a Christian of course. Hallelujah!

Bye Bye!

Thursday 9:35 p.m.
The kiddo was on the train. The martians looked on. I was wearied today from running last night. The old, toothless one wants to jog for seventy minutes on Sunday. Have the defibrillator at hand, Jack!

Good and Bad Feelings

Tuesday 8:25 p.m.
I wakened up three times in a row at the weekend feeling happy. This is not usual, especially after three or four bottles of home brew the night before. You wake up with a kind of wee smile on your face. It can't be right, Jack. Definitely a bit odd.

Last night I lay in bed for a long time without going to sleep. Three hours maybe. But such was the depth of bliss and relaxation and general thoughtlessness that I didn't mind. Yoga nidra. It wasn't one of those anxious, can't get to sleep, tossing and turning routines. I think it's a wee touch of bliss coming through as I'm wakening up that's making me feel happy first thing.

Of course, once I got to the jobbie ... the Tuesday didn't feel all that different from what the Monday usually feels like. I'm going to do a wee bit on the re-write now. Got an incentive today, so I did!!

The photie was taken at the start of my meditations in the hut this evening.

Autumn Now!

Monday 7:15 p.m.
I've done enough diggings to stop the council sending us nippy letters about the state of the allotment. The grass edges have been trimmed. So the work's really done for this year. Tomorrow I'll change my summer jacket for the winter one and go back to my jobbie for the first time since last Monday. Tuesday, then Wednesday morning and then I'm off again. Hurrah!

I've started the re-write for sure now and have a first chapter. Since my secret agent hasn't contacted me to tell me otherwise, I assume he's still trying to sell the McCoy book. It's a year since he started trying to sell it so I guess it's not going to sell now. So I've started re-writing another one.

With the Cyclists book, and the travel book, and theBlissBook, I was trying to develope a personal writing style. Where storylines might be said to follow linear pattern like on a graph, I was trying to write something more like a layered cake. Threads interlinking, weaving and ultimately not being at all successful. So I'm going to re-write xxBomber as a crime book. I worked out the plotline in 1979. I've decided to give the main character in it now the back story of the guy from the Revenge of the Traffic Wardens, so I can use the character again if I get the first one published. Which I most probably won't. But I'll enjoy thinking about it and re-writing it.

I'm allowed to retire in a couple of years. I'd absolutely love not to have to go to work. If I could get a book published in the next two years ....dream on!

I went the five hills run tonight. Slow, but I enjoyed it. Forty minutes. Dearie me! For the last month or so I've been going out running twice a week with the toothless, old one. So this summer I've gotten back into running. Hurrah! Let's hope I get back down to eleven stone before Christmas.

Back Home!

Friday 4:35 p.m.
While the staffordshire bull terriers in the cages in the back garden of them next door who've neither worked nor wanted yapped and whined, the auld maw was telling me about how the son of Mr W. had "bottled" the son of Mr L.. Three of Mr L's other sons went round to the house of Mr W. and stabbed him and his two sons, but only Mr W. required hospital treatment. It's useful sometimes to come from a big family, so it is.

Having lost practically all of yesterday to flatheids (Oh, my wonderful Thursday!), I was a bit crabbit today, but that didn't matter. When we were listening to the lama on a CD, great oddles of the bliss were arising and some heat. Despite moi, progress is still going on!!

The flatheid told me that if you could get the bliss, rapture and ecstasy by taking a pill, he'd take it. If you had to do something like meditate, he wouldn't bother. The grief, sorrow, lamentations ... delusions, disappointments and despair .. suffering in this life is what he thinks existence is about. Of course, he does take heavy duty anti-depressants already.

What can I do about flatheids, Jack? Get a gun, Hotboy. Either that or beg the Alien Creatures from Outer Space to take you back to your own planet, the one where there are no flatheids and the women all show great enthusiasm, and don't complain about the mess!

Vase Breathing 24 years on!

Wednesday 1:50 p.m.
Vase breathing is used in the great juju of jujus to raise inner heat, the foundation practise of the Six Yogas of Naropa.

Quite a few folk arrive on my blogs searching for stuff on vase breathing and they probably meditate, so hurrah for you if you meditate and are interested in vase breathing. Unfortunately, I'm not a reliable source for information on this or anything else, but you may be stuck with joes like me because the folk who know about it probably aren't going to blog about it.

Anagorika Govinda wrote that to raise heat the meditator concentrated on the symbol in the navel chakra and moved that up when that grew hot. Heat should follow the mind in this instance.

These folk can concentrate, Jack! This is a real feat of concentration and I don't think you could get near that without showing fantastic self discipline or being in a closed retreat where you were doing bugger all else.

Tsongkhapa in the Book of the Three Inspirations says you will go to hell if you start raising heat without having the symbols and channels clearly envisioned. If you can look inward and see these things as if they were really there, then you probably are in the same boat as the boy who can raise heat just by making the navel chakra symbol hot.

When I started trying to concentrate on just the navel chakra symbol, I was a little disturbed by the increase in libido and switched to moving up the chakras by using vase breathing. If like me you don't have personal instructions from your guru, you have to try and use your commons sense. I do both these days i.e. concentrate on the navel symbol and sometimes raise the awareness.

The whole technique is described in The Bliss Of Inner Fire, which is a google book and can be read online.

For me the bliss increases the further up the chakras you go. The bliss at the mid-brain chakra is mind blowing. Even if your mind is not particularly calm and your concentration crap, if you can go through this process of raising the awareness using vase breathing then the world has got to be a better place for you. There is an amazing amount of bliss to be checked into and I can honestly say this from my personal experience even although I can't do the technique properly!!

I've been practising moving the awareness back down (even although my visualisations are still crap!) till you're into the perineum and along to the base then the jewel tip chakra. The amount of bliss at the last one has been another wonderful surprise. I hope before I die I can do this properly.

In any case, sometimes when you're moving the awareness upwards, the whole caboodle seems to be wide open and totally blissful. This might be where you're supposed to be heading for anyway. The main thing about vase breathing is that it boosts the bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!!

What about the flatheids who can't see the point in meditating, Hotboy? Well, Jack, the flatheids are completely funged. Totally, completely funged!! People who meditate are few and far between and are really the most fortunate of fortunate creatures.

Half two on a Wednesday. I've digested the soap and now for the hut!!

Let the Meditations Commence!

Tuesday 10:25 p.m.
I found the diary entry going on about the start of meditating. Here it is.

Sunday 24th September, 1985 - 5:45 p.m. approx.
I've been transcending, man! I've been interested in meditation for a while, but wouldn't pay the £50 for the cosmic word. But I got a book by a TM acolyte and it told you to go to the centre and pay £50. Anyway, I decided Susquehanna was a good word and started trying to meditate last weekend. I'm sure the first time I got off on something, maybe just sitting there for twenty minutes with your eyes shut will do your head in, but I enjoyed it....
... Maybe by auto-suggestion, I was quickly feeling more calm. Hopeful about it, I was. Trying to do it at work, etc. But it's been less joyful over the past few days. But I'll stick with it.

Whilst looking for that, I found this.

Thursday June 4th, 1987 - 9.p.m.
... Saw P. on Saturday and the Lou was stronger than I expected, so I didn't sleep on Saturday night, and not much on Sunday night. Monday I finished it off at work. Robert and his fiance Jane was here when I got home from work with two dirty books under my arm. Robert was here on Friday for a couple of hours with D.. Weird. Robert told us about his cancer operation. Had a saliva gland cut out two years ago, and some nerves. So he speaks slightly oddly because the sensation has gone from the side of his tongue and mouth. Fortunately, it's not enough to notice. Anyway, Robert is lecturing in computers at Glasgow University and doing well.

I recall speaking to Robert and hearing about this cancer on the phone, so we met up because obviously the clock was ticking. I remember telling D. about meditation and how brilliant it was. He seemed depressed and I'd never seen him looking depressed before. I think his jobbie was doing his head in. He said he couldn't see the point of meditating. That was the last time I saw D. Two years later Robert sent me a letter when I was in Australia saying he'd died of lung cancer. I remember him trying to give up the fags when he stayed in Watson Crescent in 1973. Dearie, dearie me!!

Anyway, it looks like I started meditating 24 years ago!!

The diaries around this time point to quite an exciting life!! All this talk about getting stuff published and the BBC giving me money, etc. Like snow off a dyke, Jack. Snow off a dyke.

Sunny day

Sunday 11:20 a.m.
Glorious sunny day yesterday with brilliant meditations up the allotment. The picture with the joe in it was taken in Skye, which seems an awful long time ago.

10:40 p.m.
My meditations have been going very well; much progress. Between the meditations has been less well done due to the nicotine dragon once more stepping onto the stage. But there has been no nicotine consumed today. And I will get better. I'd like to thank everyone who looks at this blog from time to time. I will at some point be able to raise inner heat the way you should. I will get the four blisses, the blazing and dripping, the works. My mood has been a little off-centre recently, not helped by the volume of grief, sorrow, and lamentations being visited on the folk I've been encountering, but my mood is just my mood. May all sentient beings be happy!!!

Diaries!

Thursday 11.52 a.m.
I spoke to a nun at the jobbie once and told her about the bliss, hoping that being a nun and praying a lot and whatnot she'd know about the bliss, or at least know someone else who was doing the bliss. She said she thought I was a very unusual person.

I am a very ordinary average joe. I thought maybe if I broadcast a bit about the bliss, then some folk would think that this was a good thing to go for. You'd think that getting some bliss into your life would be ... anyway, it seems I'm forever doomed to be surrounded by the big, hairless monkeys, the too dumb to meditate, the flatheids. So this blogging is actually just another addictive stupid waste of time.

I got the diaries out because there's nothing left to blog about. I might start blogging old diary entries. I'd like to find out when I started meditating. Anyway, if you'd like to pick a date, I'll go and look for it. They run from about 1968 till the present, but only intermittently.

What's the point of telling yous about the bliss? This morning I'm a wee bit crabbit since I've been smoking joints since Sunday and have to give that up today.

I'm going to see our friend who's in hospital with the MS today. Tomorrow, Bellshill. Saturday, flatheids maybe coming for dinner. Let's hope I get Sunday!!!

Blogs

Wednesday 10:10 p.m.
What happens to blogs? I was writing my diary up in the hut today and I don't do that so much these days. This is partly because nothing much is happening because it's against my religion to do anything to agitate your mind. The story of my life recently has just been about the loads of bliss. But I enjoyed writing in this journal today and when I've filled it, I'll put it in a big case with a lot of other diaries and never look at it again. But I'll know where it is. So what happens to blogs then? Do they fall finally into the abyss over the edge of the blogosphere?

No jobbie till Monday. What a great time I'm going to have! Succumbing to the bliss. Awash in the bliss. Oh ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Trepidations

Monday 10:20 p.m.
September's raspberries are bigger, more succulent, but not as sweet. The earlier ones were a disaster this year, but not the September ones. Red in tooth and claw, so it is.

Whatever it is, kundalini or whatnot, it's getting a lot stronger. You're expecting more heat and you get more ... force. It almost feels as if it's running through you sometimes, but going nowhere; expanding, arising. It makes me feel like meditating an awful lot of the time. Can't begin to tell you how great all this is. It just is. Fabulous feelings. Excitement. You never expect it to become the way it becomes. It constantly surprises. It's wonderful and as weird as hell.

I think I must be a nutter.

Sunday Update!

Sunday 9:20 p.m.
Due to believing in lying basturn thoughts, I gave up giving up last night and had two bottles of home brew while watching Scotland actually beat someone at the footie. Then I bought fags tonight to have a few joints before going back to the jobbie tomorrow. Just a wee holiday, Jack. I'm not eating soapbar tonight and I will resume giving everything up again tomorrow.

"Three wheels on my wagon, but I'm still rolling along ... "

I did fifty of Mr Iyengar's yogic jumpings tonight, but the bliss came on so strongly in the bath that I got out to resume the sitting meditations. So I'm here to report to the spam robots and the Alien Creatures from Outer Space that the two weeks of comparative purifications have indeed produced the goods! Such bliss!! Feels terrific sitting here and closing my eyes occasionally. The whole thing has moved on. What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!

Cue the Heavenly Visions!

Friday 11:25 p.m.
I've been staring at the candle for most of the evening. Then they came home and I had to come out. Folk don't find staring at candles to be a useful task and try as hard as they can to stop you doing it when they come home. Like, shove the door you're sitting against and shout: Hoy, you! I mean, I was trying to emanate, so I was. So I have to sit here at the computery thing with the noise blockers on. This is me being sociable.

The only problem is that the world looks just the same to me as it does to you. I never did wholly like that view. It's kind of cold. The view generally gets much better when you take drugs. But if you take drugs, you lose out on the bliss when you meditate. The drugs agitate your mind and are a handicap. So if you stop taking the drugs, you get more of the bliss. But you're stuck with the view you didn't like in the first place.

I think it's time the cue the heavenly visions. Everything is going fabulously well with the meditations, I must say. Also, since I'm eating soapbar every night, I never get to that view, the cold one. I go straight from the bliss into being stoned without the nasty little gap in the middle. I'm always sorry at first that I took it in the first place when it starts to break up the meditation, but then I start to enjoy the chaos.

You're going to have to stop eating the soapbar, Hotboy. I know that, Jack. I have to straighten up to get more out of my face. Oh well, I suppose someone has to do it.

The Grand Ennui!

Thursday 10:50 a.m.
Remorselessly, the rain falls. I'm sure we didn't used to have days like this.

A plumber has arrived on my wonderful Thursday to fit the washing machine. But the Domestic Bliss will be out all evening and the kiddos are no bother. I can hide.

There will be more bliss today than ever before. I may get some heat. I am so extremely fortunate to be able to practise this juju. To be able to take a breath and fill your body with bliss! Who would have believed that this was possible? It is indeed a shame that the world is full of folk who do not practise the great vajrayana, the juju of jujus! This is the bliss! This is the bliss! This is the bliss!

10:00 p.m.
Subtleties may be involved, no doubt; little shadings here and there may make a difference. Taking twenty odd pints of good German beer (Achtung! Achtung!) out of the mindstream is bound to have an effect. Mental calming. Don't do stuff to agitate the mind. Equanimity is supposed to be the name of the game at the end of the day. Slaying the Nicotine Dragon once more is most satisfying in all kinds of ways. But you have to sometimes lie down and read a book. Like some sad basturn! It's not the meditations that are the problem; it's the rest of the time when you're not allowed to have fun; it's the onset of the grand ennui. No doubt if one waited long enough the happiness would come through ... longueurs is a good word. I wish I knew what it meant.

I do not have a problem with the above because I've been eating a big bit of soapbar of an evening. Something screams out that total abstinence is not my tao. I'm really not comfortable there for very long. Up to about nine o clock at night does me.

I didn't go out today. It's still raining. I stared at a candle for about four hours today. You get more bliss by keeping your eyes closed. Right into self mortification me. Then I did ten minutes skipping, twenty of Mr Iyengar's yogic jumpings,and three three minute rounds of shadow boxing.

The bath is a highlight more and more. Tonight the bath bliss was significantly different somehow. Then the bob hope came on and this new bliss was now the zonkeroony bliss, which is a falling away from the path, but what the hell! I haven't been eating much soapbar this year due to the jolly joints and the infrequency of supply, but I do love it. It suits me. It's my big sweetie at the end of the day.

I started on the re-write today. Be a completely different book. I'm going back to it's original title, Remote Control. Different characterisations and mucho humpings. Dismantelings and reassemblings. This will take years and years! I'm not sure that I shouldn't just stick with investigating the bliss, but I've had a year off. If I can stay off the beer, anything is possible!

Happy Days!

Tuesday.
No wonder the progeny of the evil bourgeois grow up so funged up and neurotic! You don't get any peace in these wee families. Folk are always on your case.

Living in a flat with three other people, I have much more peace to be with myself than I would with only one. You've got to talk to the one a lot. I was brought up in a house with eight other folk in it and I probably hardly said a word to any of them. You pass by. You say hullo. Maybe you don't.

Right now, the flatheids can keep each other company and I don't have to worry bout leaving somebody on their own. So I spent some wonderful times over the weekend in my room with the curtains drawn, staring at candlelight. This is great.

When I got home last night, I felt knackered from the jobbie and a bit crabbit, as I often am at that time of night. Since I couldn't doze off on the couch, I went to my room and lay on the bed. Savasana in a bliss coccoon. This is a bit special and is a wonderful by-product from the meditations. Then I got up and went to the hut.

I was going to do some digging, but the rain came on. After an hour and a half in the hut I came home and had a cannybliss yogurt and then did some skipping and shadow boxing.

What can I say about lanquishing in the bath except that such an experience is something a flatheid will never have. This is a shame.

At half ten I got out of the bath after an hour and a half and then went to bed.

This was the best Monday for ages!! This is the bliss! This is the bliss! This is the bliss!

Needless to say, I haven't started work on the re-writer of xxxBomber yet!!