3h00 pm
25 minutes seated

The past month has been interesting and challenging and I have my next phone call one week from today? It feels like I'm behind and it feels like I've hardly gotten into this month at all.

I was so exhausted from being up for two-ish days that by the time I got to the yoga studio I kind of broke down and Don took my class for me. Holla for awesome coworkers. Then we talked after and it was like sitting in Frank's TT all over again. I really really really needed that refresher. And I also really need to keep telling myself that if people can show me that much kindness and compassion then I really do need to be more kind and compassionate to myself!

So I read - really really read - exercise 15 in the Satipatana (love meditation) before I sat today since I've noticed a lot of anger (towards myself) surfacing. It seems I am able to recognize the suffering of others, but have difficulty recognizing it in myself, and I'm wondering if that's what leads to me not being able to sleep at night. Yesterday when I was pretty upset, I was asked to go deeper into where I was hurting and I noticed I completely resisted to doing it until I was told to do it again. And it sucked. Really sucked. And made me cry harder. But then I noticed that even though I felt soooooooooo horrible at that moment, the moments I observed after that seemed easier and lighter. And then last night I slept for almost 8 hours. Which is the first time in eight weeks I've slept for longer than four.

Anyway, so I decided to focus on sending love to myself and observing my feelings on how I have been suffering, and how I make my own suffering worse through not calming my mental formations. I think that's why I wanted to turn my insomnia, or my tendency to panic once the lights go off, into a bell of mindfulness because really, I do think that the really hard shit is probably what I can benefit from going through the most. I still felt myself alternate between being present and nodding off, but it's a start.