I had some difficulty getting into the emptiness/stillness today and I think it was because I was worried about something but didn't know what it was - this happens to me sometimes. The smiling does help and becoming absorbed in the movements and the sensory experience of them also helps. Sometimes I notice this thought forming: 'yes I think that I am truly in the emptiness now'. Then I realise that that thought in itself means that I'm not at that moment in the emptiness but that I was in the moments before it. How long the moments before it might have been is not really a question that can be answered because I suspect that awareness of time is suspended when are in the emptiness and you only notice time again when you come out. I am reminded of the experience of waking up early, say at 4 am, and feeling that you have never really been back to sleep until you have to get up at 7 am, even though you know that you could not really have been awake for 3 hours. Consciously you recall the times when you wake up and your irritation at being awake again but ignore the times when you were asleep because you were not conscious of them. In a similar way I think our consciousness and perhaps irritaion at not being in the emptiness attracts our atention more than the time we spend in the emptiness.
Did that make sense to anyone else I wonder?!
Love,
Kev
