Am I going backwards?! (Day 113)

We'll pause here for a moment to take a broader look at what doing this daily practice and steadily burning down your candle can feel like. Sometimes it might seem as if you're going backwards! This is normal and to be expected.

Once you've been practicing for a while, you'll go through periods where things are humming along rather smoothly. It might be that you feel quite mentally focused and/or emotionally even, and that you have some subtle awareness of your breath and body sensations. These are the times when you're burning-off layers of yourself, eventually exposing a buried reaction. It might not feel like you're excavating, but the gradual increase in the subtly of your self-awareness (primarily of body sensations) is evidence of you getting deeper.

But, when you eventually hit paydirt (a previously hidden reaction), everything will feel different! It can feel like you've lost all of the gains you've made. You'll be back in the energy of that reaction – the very feelings that you've been expending so much energy to avoid. Your concentration and emotional balance might suffer, and you might find that your breath has become shallow and your body rigid, for example.

This is a good sign! The only way to work through any reaction is to expose it to your awareness and acceptance, which can only happen when it's up on the surface being experienced. This is progress!