Surprising sales!

          Started work on the book again after a lay off over the holidays. Always takes a wee while to get into it, but I'll be there after this evening.

          Thought I'd post that five books were sold last week from the kindle site. Someone even bought a copy of Stumblebumming despite the two terrible reviews it's picked up so far. The best you might say about that is that it is aimed at a very niche market, really those more than interested in Tibetan Buddhism and meditating. Anyway, who knows why some books were sold last week. Weird stuff this internety thing.

Three Day Fast.

       

            I stopped eating on Sunday night and didn't start again till this morning, so that's me done another  three day fast. I might have done two before, but I definitely did one. Maybe you always remember the first time! I'm quite pleased to get through the three days because usually when I start fasting I don't make it past breakfast time.

          Any purification seems to affect the meditations very much. I don't know why this is, but fasting definitely counts as some kind of purification and I hoped when I started this fast that it would boost what was happening with the vase breathing, etc., the heat and all that kind of thing. Well, I meditated for the first time after eating about an hour ago, and the after effects of the vase breathing have just went right out of the park. God knows what the hell is going on! I'm nowhere near standing on one leg half way up the Himalayas in my simmit, but I think I might be slowly creeping onto that ball park.

          I was fortunate enough to get a meeting with Lama Rinchen Palmo last Friday. She can't tell me what's going to happen. Everyone, it seems, is different.

          She was most helpful on the visualisations. For some time, I lost confidence in  the deity visualisations because they are almost impossible to do. I'm sure you'd have to be in retreat for some time to get anywhere near that. So the technique seemed to be to have a steady visualisations of the symbols and move the heat up from chakra to chakra, but if you cannot visualise the channels and whatnot, then I don't see how you can systematically move it up.

           But, despite the crap visualisations, I am getting heat. It's more like a full body heat (at least in the upper torso) and is not centred on the navel chakra.

            I respect this juju. I'm sure it could be dangerous. It would be nice if someone could give me a roadmap for this, but since that is not going to happen, I'll just have to soldier on. Be great to give up drinking this year. If I have a drink this weekend, I'll try to give it up on Monday. There's always Mondays. Tell me why I don't like Mondays.

New Year Prospects

                    The photies were taken at Newbattle Abbey College yesterday. Really nice place to go for a weekend walk especially yesterday when the light was clear and bright and beautiful.

                    I've been here, there and everywhere recently, but today is really the start of the new year for me and a good time to think about what I'm hoping for or going to do this year.

                    One of my deep, dear friends has been handed a provisional black spot. This makes you think about mortality a little more closely than you might otherwise. If I was give the black spot soon, I think I'd be annoyed about all the time I lost drinking and drug taking when I could have been aiming for nirvana, or at least developing the stuff that makes me happy. I'm trying to ride two horses at the one time at the moment, having a normal life over the weekend and trying to get my equilibrium back. Everything would work so much better if I was able to stop drinking completely. I would also have more time for writing.

                     I saw Lama Rinchen Palmo on Friday, on her way to the Holy Isle. I'm very lucky to have a connection with her. After seeing her, I signed up for four nights down at the Samye near the end of February for the Makhala prayers. I also signed up for the last three weeks of the retreat on the Holy Isle. I wasn't entirely confident that Heather would acquiesce with this, but she was okay. She's got a boyfriend with a strange hobby.

                    I was telling Lama Rinchen about feeling unsettled because I'm never home for any length of time these days, sleeping in different beds all the time. She said someone in Belgium has built her a meditation box for the Holy Isle, Brussels and Beaumont. So she might not be sleeping lying down, at least sometimes. I have such a long way to go.

                     This has to be a great year for the meditations. On Friday, the last time I was on my own, the meditations were amazing. I don't know where it's all going, but it seems to be developing brilliantly at the moment.

                      I will enjoy writing the thriller this year. I haven't been writing much, but I can dip in and out of it, so it's always there for me now. I was pleased that Heather had a go at Jock Tamson's last week and found it very funny. It won't be produced, but I knew that twenty years ago. Glad it's been done now though.

                       Everything in my life is good at the moment. I have no health or money or relationship worries.