Irony of the day: I have so much to say on the subject of framing, I've been having trouble getting started (choosing a frame of reference)!

Perfect, right?

The plot thickened and deepened with the etymology of "frame," discussed in the previous post, and how it carries that positively oriented baggage of advantage/benefit. Round and round my thoughts have gone.

Then, too, this blog is a frame, but I also need to carefully frame this blog. Like pictures looking back at you from their frames, this business of providing, defining, refining context can be a two-way street.

Today is about fasting and dreaming.

I've been posting so much of late about creating chosen habits, crowding out habits that don't serve, cultivating practices to enable this, raising our awareness of what we do on autopilot and how to ensure that the "autopilot" habits are the ones that make us who we want to be.

I hope it's clear that I'm making no claim to have it all figured out. I write in a sincere spirit of sharing, my part in a dialogue, my endeavor to help put out the message that we can take steps to influence our own thought patterns.

Here, I take a step further into the unknown, looking at how fasting--largely a physical mechanism --affects the unconscious, as experienced through dreaming.

This past weekend I was on retreat with the Sufis, with beloved teacher Aqdas. It is amazing how much of a teacher's energy comes through in the context of a retreat that rings with silence. It is astonishing how much silence comes through the Sufi practices, many of which involve the vocal cords, repeating prayers and phrases, embodied with physical movements.

On Sunday evening at the end of the retreat, I stood in the courtyard (the edge of cold now gone from the days here) with Aqdas and two others, and she initiated me into the Sufi order. The two witnesses were the regional representative for the Sufi Order, and the gentleman who has agreed to be my guide.

So, within the cycling beginning-ing of the days of my Gong and life, here is another beginning. That's what "initiation" means. What else does it mean?

I sure wrote a lot about the concept of the 100-day Gong back in November and December. But I've been pretty silent on the subject since starting my Gong on the winter solstice.

I've been more focused on doing/being/embodying the Gong than on writing about it, although the preponderance of posts in the "Mindfulness" category should attest both to the nature of my Gong and to how much it's in the front of my mind and experience.

Today, though, is day 30, and it's time for an update. 30 is a good number for this Gong's subdivisions: not quite a third of 100, it's also at the three-and-a-third point in my own nine-day-cycle subdivision, so that when my third "nundina" ended on Friday, I was already looking toward this 30-day review point. 

WIth this "buddy system for days," it's fascinating to see how much more comfortable I can be setting goals in the face of the unknown. If one day doesn't bring it, there are days around it to tauten the focus.

Since we've just been talking about monkey minds and about attention span related to sentence length, it's only natural that the word of the week should be 

attention

If we take a look at what we're saying when we use that word, it'll come clear that really there can be no such thing as attention deficit; it's all a matter of quality.

Sit in a quiet place, cue all the environmental messages to put yourself in a meditative state, and try not to think about monkeys.

Don't think about cartoon monkeys, or sock monkeys, or plush monkeys.

Don't think about monkey puzzle trees, or monkey nuts, if that's what peanuts are called where you live. Don't think about monkey bars.

If you're reading this on your computer, you probably have fifteen other tabs open in your browser window, and maybe several other browser windows in the background. One or other of them may chime or sing or yell random phrases at any moment.

If you're reading this on your phone or tablet, as an ever-increasing percentage of you are, this post will have all that browser competition plus apps, phone, and text.

If you've even clicked on "continue reading," you've probably already scrolled ahead, or looked at the size of the scroll bar, to see how long of a read you're in for, whether you can settle in for long enough to see the post through, how many  times you'll need to click away to refresh your attention.

Please click "continue reading" now, and do as I just described. I promise I won't keep you long.