Today I awake to a new low weight! It feels really good to see progress, even if it’s slower than I’d like. I’m encouraged by this sudden drop after a single Plant Paradox phase 1 cleanse day. Let’s see how things progress over the next several days. In today’s journal entry, I’m going to explore Tonglen meditation.
Zero+; Single ; M: 102 ; C: 65 ; P/U: 50 ; W : 8 mi
Health R.O.S.
- Weight: 213.1
- BMI: 28.8
- Fat %: 22.1
Tonglen Meditation Practice
For my morning meditation I choose a Tonglen guided practice. This guided meditation took me through the process of visualizing my pain, problems, and challenges as a gray cloud. The idea is to visualize a dark cloud rising up out of your pain or source(s) of suffering. You inhale this gray cloud and watch as it evaporates in the warm light of your heart. Finally, you exhale this dissipated cloud as a beam of healing light.
This can be a little intimidating at first, but I quickly grew comfortable with the concept.
For the practice, I chose to visualize a 12 pack of IPA (Lagunitas IPA to be specific – one of my all time favorite beers). Then I imagined a black cloud rises up out of it and gathering above it. I inhaled this cloud as deeply as I could and held my breath for a few seconds. I witnessed it being consumed and transformed in the warm light of my heart. When I exhaled the light, I, myself, became lighter. A weight lifted off of me. The more I repeated this process, the lighter and freer I felt. I felt the beer’s grip on my loosening with each exhalation.
But it’s important to understand that Tonglen is about more than healing your own troubles. It’s really a practice of selflessness and generosity. So, the guided meditation pivoted from me focusing on my own hangups to taking in and dissipating the suffering of others.
The first person I visualized was my aunt, who is suffering from breast cancer. I imagined a black cloud rising up from her cancer and evaporating in my heart. Then I breathed the healing light my heart produced back into her.
I followed my aunt with my neighbor who is a recovering alcoholic. I pictured him sitting at his laptop attending a virtual AA meeting on one of his ‘hard days’ as he calls them. Again, I employed the Tonglen techniques and saw his alcoholism leaving his body in the form of a black cloud which I inhaled deeply, converted to a healing light, and breathed that light back into him. Soon I was onto to a good friend who suffers from a botched back surgery. Then to those who are hungry or homeless or ravaged by disease at a global scale.
The Tonglen guided meditation only took about 20 minutes to complete, but at the end of it, I felt very light and unburdened. A bright blue healing light emanated from the center of my chest. It radiated love in all directions. I wondered if others, including the ones I visualized, could feel it.
Tonglen is yet another reminder of how powerful daily meditation practice is. Just when I think I’ve gone as deep as I’ll go, another door opens.
One way to tell if your true self is emerging is that you feel an increasing desire for life to go well for more and more people.
Charlotte Joko Beck – Ordinary Wonder, Zen Life & Practice
