I was a “guest” — a male — at a woman’s retreat at Dhamma Dena. On Thanksgiving day, Ruth had us going through an excercise of attention to the skeleton. The bones, their connecting points and their movement. She placed a skeleton on the alter. A quarter sized plastic one. We were to look at the skeleton and notice what bone we saw, then go in the body and feel the sensations relating to that bone.

Fun!

I met my skeleton last winter. I was walking and noticed that I was a kind of walking machine. Like in a science fiction movie. The movements of the bones were not graceful. They were cobbled together in a way that worked. Worked beautifully to move the bag of water we are around.

My skeleton anounced itself while placing the heel on the ground while walking. In that instant, I saw and sensed the bone planting itself on the ground. In that moment the whole skeleton lit up! I was shocked. I knew there were bones in there, but I’d never felt them as the primary structure of the body. Felt the sensations in the bones. Sensed the whole machinary moving with such precision as it ambled left, right, left, right, left, right. Never a straight line… Then I noticed that while walking that the balancing was from triangle to triangle.

The heel touches the ground and as it rolls forward the ball of the foot and the bone by the small toe land creating the first triangle. Then as the big toe hits the ground one point of the triangle extends from the ball to the big toe. As the weight is transferred to the other foot the weight moves forward to the triangle of the big toe, ball and small toe ball. I was amazed! I was a Transformer marching along. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. A bit more grace, but not much.

Since this time the skeleton has been quite present. I can go internally and feel the bones. So we were sitting and doing the skeleton on the alter to body exercise. The whole skeleton lit up. I was skeleton sitting. While breating I sensed the wave motion of the skeleton. While swallowing there’s a different wave motion of the whole body. I felt, sensed, the rest of the body mass hanging from the bones. The brain held in a gentle basin of the skull. The lungs, heart, etc. hanging from the spine and ribs. All in a perfect dance with gravity.

Then we got up to walk and feel the skeleton walking. I was back to my precious triangles! Something about that really thrills me consciousness.
A while later Ruth asked what we’d seen? What did we discover? What did we understand that was new?

I related the observations above of what I saw while sitting. The skeleton sitting. The wave motions. The body hanging from the skeleton.

She said, “I asked what you saw or learned while walking. Not sitting.” I said, “Well, same things.” She wasn’t listening to me anymore. She was on to someone else.
There was this huge wave of unplesantness. I’d been slighted!

Now, here’s what was different. I had no urge to go to the story. No need to explain the feeling. I just opened to it and felt the whole thing. It was a like standing in the ocean and planting your feet to be rooted but be moved by the waves. The unpleasantness was a wave. It came, got stronger, got weaker, stronger and disapated. Gone.

I thought, “Wow! That’s different.” I haven’t had the old Critical Mother button pushed in a long time. In fact, not since this new Mind appeared. I know where that button was created. I know how it feels. I know the stories about her and about me that were in that little knot of energy. I no longer believe any of it, so it wasn’t called into action.