I was sitting on the bus and I was falling asleep.

My head started to nod forward, the bus

swerved and I hit my head on the seat in

front of me. I was furious, but something

had changed after Arnayon, and I let myself

be really angry, but I watched it too. My

anger was, on very close inspection, made

up of lots of different angers:

I was self-conscious about what my fellow

passengers might think, as if the bus had

somehow humiliated me, and I was angry at

myself for feeling this. I was angry about

having to go to work when I did not want to.

I was amazed to recognise that this feeling

was exactly the same as when I was at school.

school then, work now . . .it was the same

moody, sulky anger. As I "looked" at it, many

more angers came out from . . . . . . . . from . . . . .

from . . . . ."underneath" !

( underneath what ? )

I don't know - just underneath.

Some of these angers were impossible to

describe. They felt very . . . . . . young.

 

This was how Constancy started.

From a simple observation that feelings

have deeper feelings "underneath" them.

Then noticing, that I could not hold

and keep a feeling that I was watching.

If I watched it too long, it became like a

fossil, it became a memory, or,

I was only thinking about it, not feeling

it anymore. . . . . . . . I knew then that I

had to watch the feelings all the time. I could

not hold a feeling to watch it, I had to just

watch them come and go.

 

 

Watching feelings . . . . . . . . . this phrase

does not really imply the true scope and

difficulty of Constancy.

Constancy means bringing the fullest

possible attention to being aware of

your feelings, and doing this for every

second of every minute of every hour

for ever and ever . . . . . . . .

how is this possible ?