Enjoy the Illusion, Return to the Truth

This weekend not only do many of us put on costumes and play at being other-than-normal, but we change the clocks -- "falling back" an hour. Such a good opportunity for seeing the way we use the mind to organize the world around us! Seeing the world from behind a mask, makes us feel so different. Clearly the sun rises and sets at its own intervals based on relationships of rotation of sun and earth, yet we call some hours day or night, make these longer or shorter based on hours we assign, and our work schedules. For example, "my day at work" could mean an all night shift, or a morning of teaching.

The truth is one of construction by the mind to help us be organized, and yet we attach so much more to create the illusory world we live in. What am I talking about? For example, we have feelings about getting up "early" to go to work. We attach meanings to staying "late" or "finishing early." We feel "pretty" in our silks,  "fierce" in our claws, and hidden with just a simple mask. 

We attach meaning through judgments and associations to just about everything. This makes life rich like a multi-layered embroidery. It can also fill us with anxiety, frustration, lethargy and even feelings of entrapment and oppression, even as it can liberate the dancer, the lion, the mysterious being behind the mask.

Here's the thing -- just a few moments of stopping the cycle of attachments and judgments can help loosen the grip of illusion! It won't make it harder to do what you do or take away the fun of the costume when you want it. It can reduce the way these unseen patterns of attachment and illusion chafe, worry, stress and oppress you.  

Return to the truth.   Let go of the good-bad/early-late attachments even for THREE BREATHS every so often during your waking hours, and you will feel the shift back into your own vital energies, no longer pushed and pulled entirely by the mind's gripping. See the darkness and enjoy the shadow shapes and twinkling lights. See the sunrise and revel in the turning of these astrological bodies that give us that which sustains all life on earth! Find the grace of your inner dancer, the power and ease of your big cat, the deeply mysterious nature of your own being without the masks and costumes. 

The best part of this interruptive breath focus is the way it helps to re-align you with your life energy and gives you the space to see the mind's gripping, being alert to your reactions and patterns. Some of these ways are traps, and some are facilitations. Once you see them, you can begin to use the facilitations and step away from the traps. You will have choices about the mind patterns that otherwise run your world.

Breathing is with you throughout every moment of your life. LOL! but true! That is why it is such a natural place to turn your attention, again and again. What else could be so stalwart, steadfast and supportive??

The Beauty in Hidden Structures

We are so busy moving ourselves around in the world,  that, like buildings, we see mostly the facade in passing. One of the gifts of living in a transitional bustling neighborhood of a major city is that there is constant building and tearing down so that, along with facades, all the inner structures are revealed coming and going.

Walking to teach my morning vinyasa class, I was stopped in my tracks by this gorgeous metal support structure. Light pouring through parts of it, it's undulations, shapes, reflective nature and span was strikingly beautiful. Just half a block further on, there is another one of these -- so it isn't any one-of-a-kind marvel at all -- that is covered in all the next stages of building with no light in it, and few of its textures revealed. In a week's time, they will both be invisible above ceilings and below floors.

Class was all about this in a subtle way starting with slow rocking in the hip sockets to feel how the thigh bones seat and mindful rolling through the sitting bone supports, to reveal spinal support even as the weight shifts.  Eventually we moved into standing sequences, unfolding and refolding with the breath, and allowing the hidden structures to do their work deep in the interior of each asana (posture). Yet their presence could still be established, felt, and explored.

Walking to my next class I caught a glimpse of a building being demolished. It has stood for decades, though this demolition has been elongated over the last few years it is active once again. At the moment, the remaining structure is like a gem hiding in its case. I think of the breath, its textures, its stalwart nature, its foundational strength, its subtle delicacies.  How grateful I am to live in this moment in a human form that I can explore at so many levels, cultivating awareness of the details and technicalities and the grand scale of the overall plan!

Transition is a State of Mind

So much emphasis is placed on college applications that the whole last half of high school is colored by this. Once accepted, there is another phase of accommodating all the changes taking place in moving to a new way of operating, often in an entirely different location. Once there's a rhythm established, many people start taking semesters abroad or as interns, getting part time jobs and turn their face towards what happens after graduation. Even semesters starting and ending, summer sessions and work study jobs coming and going, all of this seems like an enormous sequence of change upon change upon change.

It is much the same as a child learns to move in the world from sitting, crawling, standing, that hand-over-hand cruising, to walking, running, climbing (not always in that order!). To children, adults seem complete and finished as though all the pieces are set and the patterns established. To some degree this is a way of operating that many people try to adopt, sticking to their patterns, hanging on tight to who they think they are, or want to be.

But life is entirely transitional. Right down to the cells in the body, we are an ever shifting, changing organization of bits and systems. We live only in this moment, and whether we call it transitional or not, this is that moment.

When we tell ourselves we are in transition, or classify someone else as in a "transitional stage," we are emphasizing our idea that they are developing something and will not remain the way they are now.  This reflects our opinion or impression that perhaps that what is happening now is not sustainable, or that it is only a temporary way of operating or feeling. Certainly we comfort ourselves by saying that the deepest moments of intense grief are temporary, and we warn each other to enjoy the early days of childrearing as they "go so fast." What happens in the mind when we accept that every moment is such a moment, that we are constantly developing and can not remain the way we are now?

I stopped my class in mid stream in their sun salutations (Surya Namaskar), a series of yoga asana that are strung together in a fairly routinized way, though in my class you can never figure what I'm going to suggest. Each student realized that they had not placed their body as carefully as they would have if they had known they would have to stay there ... they had defined this sequence of postures as a flow of transitional movements, and discovered that this had occurred without much intelligence, relying predominantly on pattern and habit.  Yoga is a practice fundamentally of unifying, "yoking," awareness with the actions of being.

Waking up awareness is one of the darts that I throw at the balloon of habit in the mind. Cultivating conscious attention to include even the most mundane, momentary bits of life is where the vibrancy and depth of being resides. The yoga asana practice is a mechanism that can awaken an alert body and  mind, and help develop and train this level of consciousness and awareness without efforting. It takes focused attention to see that "transition" includes every moment, and that in every moment we can be completely present in the experience. We may never visit this place again, or be 19 years old, or feel confused about this particular thing, or be as broken hearted, or as proud and happy, or whatever it is. Those living with cancer know this feeling of uncertainty as a constant, rejecting or accepting the moment in all its fullness, again and again.  Being fully present in this moment is a state of mind, and thinking that this moment is just on its way to some other moment is also a state of mind, that leaches some of the potential from "now" and projects it onto "then."

Convenient to explain uncertainty and the unknown as a transition if we are not sure of what is happening and want to grasp at the next moment (or the remembered moment) as more settled or resolved or successful, etc.  This, too, is the mind setting a scene for the story we tell ourselves. It is still only in this moment that we are here, living. Impermanence is  the way of all living beings. Just look around you.

No Contradiction: Routines, Patterns & Alertness

I remember the arguments with my kids about getting their homework done. It seemed so simple to me that if they would just routinize it, it would get done, leaving them free to do the other things they wanted to do. The more they resisted it, the longer it sat before them, denying them the possibility to move on.  Isn't it the same with all distraction, procrastination and anxiety? It blocks the way between what we think we have to get done, and what we'd rather be doing. In that case, I do think that creating a routine can help.  It is partly for this reason that many people support the idea of setting aside a specific time of day for a meditation practice, or signing up for a yoga class (or practicing at home) at the same time of day every week or every day.  Knowing that it is on the schedule, that a place has been made for it, can stream line the decision making. Make the decision once, and then just follow through again and again.

At the same time, one of the revelations of meditation and yogic practice is the awareness of patterns that we have formed and that guide our behaviors mostly without our knowing of them. Cultivating awareness allows us to run into them quite directly and by seeing them, we gain insight into ourselves, into the traps we set and the strengths we have.  Perhaps it is as simple as noticing that in a seated posture, we nearly always cross our right leg over the left. Simply seeing this can help us understand why our right inner hamstrings are so tight, or why we tend to pull our low back muscles on the left. Seeing this can help us remember to mindfully cross left over right, gradually undoing the habitual training of muscles and joints into a more symmetrical and supported condition.

All patterns do not require "undoing." Knowing that our digestive system works better on smaller amounts more frequently, or by starting the day with plain water before that cup of coffee or tea, can be very useful and can protect us from unnecessarily struggles. Knowing that we tend to blame external causes when we are late for something, or get anxious about things the night before, are patterns that can be addressed and in many cases assuaged just by acknowledging them as temporal behavior and not permanent. We may see that this doesn't help us deal with anything, and that other kinds of behavioral steps can be put in place to ease the way and change the pattern. A step can be as simple as setting a timer to get you off the computer in time to get your coat on and catch the train, rather than missing that train and arriving late. Routinize a few minutes of meditation (even 5- 10 minutes) in the evening before going to bed can begin to dissipate that night-before anxiety, allowing you to sleep better and see the next morning with more equanimity.

Everything is happening in this very moment. Nothing tomorrow is happening now, nor is anything from yesterday happening now. Sounds ridiculous, but our minds and our feelings can be quite attached to this way of thinking -- about what we thought happened or will/might happen. We can be consumed by our reactions to something that is not happening now, and literally wipe out all the possibilities in this moment. I'm not just talking about the mind drifting in the middle of a conversation when you stop hearing your companion and are startled back into the moment by their silent pause, waiting for your response to something you actually didn't hear.  I'm talking about right now -- not noticing the slump in your shoulders or the effort of your eyes as you read this. The actual condition of balance in your body, the sweetness of the light around you, appreciation of the speed with which your mind absorbs all this information and catalogs it, making meaning or discarding it.

Alertness can help you gain the power of mindfulness. You can cultivate awareness in this moment, and put routines in place that support you, for example using abdominal muscles to help stabilize your pelvis and support your low back when you sit at the computer, or committing to that 10-class card so you can just sign in and go to yoga every Monday morning to start your week. Awareness allows you to acknowledge the patterns that bind you to behaviors that cause distress, like turning out your right foot when you walk which slowly stresses your hip and knee over time, or speaking over someone who is speaking to you because you are anxious to be heard. Once you learn to be alert, you have options. Being present in this moment, you can use this moment, and establish routines and patterns that support you, rather than trap you.