Crossing the Grey Plateau

How does your body-mind feel first thing in the morning?

Learn to feel that rather than just thinking, ‘I don’t feel so good. I don’t feel very much awake. I feel I could use a stiff cup of coffee or stay a few more hours in bed.’

That’s what happens when we think about suffering: we think of the antidotes to it; so of course if we don’t get them, this suffering becomes worse and worse, doesn’t it? We continually limit ourselves.

But how does it actually feel? Are we prepared to go through the experience of waking up, the feeling of dullness, the feeling of hunger, the feeling of tiredness? What do they actually feel like?

In meditation, how much do the unloved, grey, empty areas of your life come up for you? …we’re keeping to a routine, and we may come to a point when the interest, the stimulation, the sense of doing something new, of being somewhere else, of finding things, of becoming this and that, is all waning, fading away.

We get to a kind of grey area, a plateau, and to cross it is a great stage in spiritual development.

This reflection by Ajahn Sucitto is from the book, The Most Precious Gift, (pdf) p. 61.