Being: A Balancing Pose of Bones & Breath

Lately I've been balancing in an open space, where ego defines the self and awareness enables no self. It has been hard to rationalize writing in this blog, as though I hold some kernel or seed, acting to share its potential and growth by posting in cyberspace. This tends to lean a little too far towards ego and I lose my balance. Yet I seek experience in my body -- the practice of yoga, the making and eating of meals -- to validate an existence that is totally normal and real and designed around accommodating ego. Then I meditate and sometimes lean a little far into no self, finding a vastness continues to open that is still unfamiliar and surprising.

The temptation to meditate is leading me towards compassionate action as well as withdrawal from the senses. Walking, teaching, studying, interacting, I can operate from vital energies emerging from that vast open space. But I remain an individual ego - opinionated, full of feeling, clutching at experiences and reveling in reactions.

In these days of lengthening darkness, I cherish those boundary moments when deep awareness saturates, and there is no understanding at all of a defined named sort. Dawn and dusk seem to embody this sensation even as the brightness of day and the layered shadows of night thrill me. I continue to revisit the moment in the hospital when my father and I mutually arrived at the boundary between his living and his dying. It was wide, vast, endless and precise. Universal and personal. Everything was present - fear, love, unknown and known, hope, grief, but the deepest sense was vastness and utter connectedness.

So I've neglected the blog. This has also been clarifying since I let go of defining it. I have been keeping a journal of notes that speak in words - telling of experience or observation or feeling or idea. Journal perhaps acting the role of non-judgmental, all-accepting intelligent parent. Journal as wise, kind, compassionate teacher. Journal as interested and disinterested, informed companion. Not much influence on what arises, the blank or scribbled open page.

A Sense of Humor

When in doubt, smile. Did I just miss my stop?

Let the laughter come. What made me think that I could do more than this today? Funny hopeful me. How lovely this day has been, taking me all day instead of 3 hours! This just opens the possibilities for tomorrow.

Taking out those stitches for the third time... grinning ... amazed at how thoroughly I can explore ALL the possible ways to do this incorrectly! And nodding at my bravery to try it one more time, not knowing if I will recognize the correct pattern I seek to knit, having discovered so many others ...

No, its not embarrassing to fall on my ass in a yoga class! It is my human nature expressing itself and making me laugh! It is my heart that reaches up towards the ceiling through my feet. Maybe by the time I'm 60 I'll be able to move away from the wall... or not.

Checking the level of personal investment, in the opinion, in the judgment, in the appearance or the action, by the self or an other. Can there be humor towards the effort, in the process of being present? It's a trap too easy to catch one's self in. Is there something good about feeling bad about one's self? Learning to see truth, we can separate from the judgment and live more fully.

I can think of so many times my children got something done to their own satisfaction, having left out important elements, or mistaken one thing for another. The effort was still good, the effect sweet if incomplete or "incorrect." Let the compassionate heart smile, even if perhaps we watch a heart break apart; we can know that it is love and kindness that will find the way back to wholeness, not judgment or emotional dissection.

Meditation: Find a comfortable seat and center physically, or can be done walking or laying down. Allow the space behind your eyes to soften. Fill that space with warmth and gently smile in just the corners of your eyes (yes, even closed). Feel your cheeks begin to lighten. Allow the warmth of this smile to find the corners of your mouth (loosen your jaw). Breathing, softening, feel this smile seep around your lungs, your heart, your hips, your knees. Smile softly at your toes. (Even just the idea of toes!) Staying here in the warmth of your own compassionate acceptance, friendly, kind and open to whatever you find. When your mind wanders, return to the softness behind your eyes and once again slip into a smile.

Smiling at our own attachments to sorrow or pain, we can see our path and find freedom.

Sugar Candy: A Beautiful Practice

When someone compliments me, I know they are making judgments, but it is deeply sweet. Just like sugar candy, we so easily learn to crave that sweetness. Beauty is in the mind, a way of appreciating or noticing some thing or attribute, and that has this sweetness too. Like watching a dancer move through a choreography suited to their nature or the musical score, or when the light at 4pm strikes the tree tops just so, or when the breath carries me through Surya Namasakar (sun salutation) from the inside. It is grace made visible.

When I go to different studios, sometimes teachers come up and actually say to me, "You have a beautiful practice."

The first time it happened it was like the candy, a little shock at the sweetness, and that warm melting feeling that comes with pride and ego growing. Then, like steam dissipating, the little sweet droplets began separating on my tongue and I wondered what does this mean?

It happened again today. Not saying it happens all the time, but I am beginning to find that it is not unusual. And I am finding that I can see the candy as the confection it is, without having to eat it.

My practice is simply me, connecting to the energy that the breath brings me, and trying to hear what the teacher is offering me. I can feel clumsy, funny, and smooth. I can find all kinds of things interesting along the path that another teacher is offering me. Sometimes I rebel against a tone or a sequence or an attitude, but when that happens it becomes my practice too. The practice of watching myself judge myself as somehow mismatched to the moment. That is, of course, impossible, since there is nothing else but that moment and obviously I'm right in it! So it is me chafing at being... which more often than not makes me laugh when I see that it is happening.

Actually, now, today, when it happened again, I saw that it was simply the grace of the breath made visible.

So I looked around and wondered if the teacher also saw beauty in the man standing there fighting with himself about balancing, rather than taking an accommodation for his hamstring situation and letting his body rest in balance. Maybe seeing it in that woman folded in child's pose instead of taking a twisted Ardha Chandrasana balance (standing half moon, with opposite hand down). Or could it be seen in the practice of that dancer in the corner with the incredible lines from fingertips to toes, or that young man who was finding new space in his spine while he tried to relax his forehead. Every one of them was beautiful to me, as they searched their souls for freedom in that moment to let the body twist, rise, extend, stretch, deepen, breathe, and be in a most specific way! Willingly, and with concentration, each one of them was expressing grace as it was in that moment, for them, in that body, on that day.

So next time I see a piece of dark chocolate and crave that sweetness melting in my mouth, I will think of grace, and simply take a piece. There is no need to reject the compliment, nor to make any more of it than its intention of appreciation. I'm learning to leave ego out of it, and just be grateful for the flow of grace.

Ego & Body: Less Ego, More Breath

Yoga class. Look around. Put your body on the mat, and see if you can get your mind to stay with you there. Every breath, awareness streaks through your body, is it really always saying "me, me, me?" Can we separate out ego in the practice so that the mind can simply be alert and not defining self constantly?

I am experiencing the oddest combinations of this as I attend classes in various Yoga Studios, Capital "Y," Capital "S." I feel very different in my little neighborhood storefront shelter-from-the-storm studio, and definitely in the classes I teach at the medical center and the shelter. This level of visibility is new for me, this witness to the ego during practice. It is a level beyond ego that observes the "me" watching the "me" on the mat. Perhaps it is because I am putting my self in a new and demanding context in which the judgment/assessment of others is more likely to be felt. My breath saves me every time, as each breath flows into my body, taking shape in the asana, somehow the "me" goes out with the exhale. I can literally become a body in space for which some "I" feels such compassion. Sometimes I can shake with love for the form taken, accepting this, and this, and this. It is "me" and "not me." Some part of me is laughing at the part of me that observes me, too. Watching "me" watch "me." Now that is funny!

Where am I when all this is going on? I am drawing my bones more squarely to my foundation, or pressing gently into the earth to find my core rising up, or simply softening whatever body parts I can notice that are clenching and opening the energy to flow more freely.

When I look around, I see ego in the bodies around me, sometimes ego seeps out and the bodies rest quietly in their shapes. Sometimes ego causes suffering, or even celebration. It raises questions for me about why people practice yoga especially in classes. I do think sometimes classes can build reactiveness, strengthen judgment, bolster existing tendencies, and increase attachment to form or goal. For some it will take a particular teacher to shake this up, or it might take a certain amount of practice before something begins to loosen the grip of ego. And it sometimes happens like a stroke of lightening, striking and obliterating what was always there; as though a solid object has simply burnt up and vanished leaving space, open space in its place.

There is no way that I can sit on the yoga mat and not be me. The wild thing is that I can truly be me on the mat and not be attached to any significance or meaning related to that. Lately I'm just flooded with gratitude for the opportunity to be doing and teaching yoga, to be breathing and sharing these moments. It is not a matter of ego if I can do this or that asana. It is not a matter of ego if I can let go or am still grasping. It is not a matter for judgment and self definition whether I do yoga or haul wood. The less I cling to ego on the mat, the more I find peace and joy in the practice.

May I just say that bodies are amazing. We humans have a remarkable vehicle in which to experience life on earth. Phew.