Releasing the Fear of My Own Impermanence

Preparing for a trip by plane has brought my attention sharply to the way I kick into anxiety mode around the idea that if something fatal happens to me, I am not leaving all my loose ends tied up nicely. I found myself on such a fast track to confusion about how to be responsible for others if I am no longer able to be there taking responsibility for others. The fact is so obvious: that if I am no longer there, something else will be happening and it is not my doing or choosing that will be the prevailing wind.

After a while of internally scrambling, I am amused by my grasping for control over that which is not even in existence! And beyond that, it is startling how easy it is to be willing to replace the real with the unreal! Sure there are ways to accommodate change that flow neatly into the legal system, or the family structure, or follow in a similar pattern to what might have been going on before. How things happen is not something I can predetermine though even if I finish all my plans, update all the legal papers, and file everything with clear labels.

When I fly out tomorrow morning, the files will remain as they are, the papers in whatever form they currently hold. Laws change and papers disintegrate. People come and go. Those who step in to take care of others will be missed when they disappear, but others will step in. The likelihood that this plane trip will disrupt my responsibilities depends more upon my frame of mind than whether there is some unforeseeable catastrophe.

I can let it go while I am away, knowing that I can check in if I am still breathing. I can simply go on being, knowing that the bills will wait, the unsorted details will remain unsorted unless they sort themselves. The people in my care and all their affairs will continue as they usually do, or something will spike as it sometimes does while I am wandering in a new place. I hope to absorb whatever I find; like taking a new route from one place to another, perhaps I can allow each moment to be what it is, without carrying the weight of anxiety or the fear of the unknowable.

The morning will come no matter what the time zone, and the evening will too. This is true where I am now, and will be true when I am no where. Somehow that is now very comforting after all my recent sloshing in the big waves of grasping for control and fear of death.

Reducing Reactivity: No goal, No Judgment

Doing it my way, not-so-subtly pushing for my point of view, feeling it as a negative when asked if I am going to do what I am already doing, or being told or asked to do something differently. All these situations depend on ego and reactivity and are traps that very often make for serious suffering in the form of hurt feelings, resentments, rejection. The self takes a beating whether building up in resistance or tearing oneself down with criticism.

What is the point of forcing opinions on someone else? Why the tendency to illuminate each intersection of a disagreement or take someone else's point of view as a personal attack? How is it a benefit to resist the way someone else does something or to feel that they must change what they are doing to meet one's own ideals? Is it really worth the conflict and bad feelings of arguing over doing something a certain way? This way of being comes up over doing dishes, planting seeds, organizing children's schedules or the classic squeezing the toothpaste scenario. Of course it potentially infects anything where individuals cross paths, coordinate actions, rely upon each other, or find themselves interacting. Strangers, intimates and family members, co-workers, anyone can be the source of this reactivity or the spark that ignites it in ourselves.

For me, a bigger perspective really helps. I am learning to be much more effective and generalized about releasing the reactive thought before I act upon it. A friend was just talking to me about how important it is to allow oneself to pause, giving just that instant of time in which to breathe, to adjust, to release, to see the pattern before plunging irreparably into the mess. It's not uncommon as a strategy to deal with anger, the idea of counting to 10 or taking a few deep breaths. This is so obvious, but the reasons that is helpful in adjusting the anger is that it allows the observing part of awareness to see the situation and by delaying the reaction, lets go of the intensity of the need to react.

That is a behavioral strategy, and it does work most of the time. For me, though, getting to the undercurrent has been very revealing. It is the goal I have set, consciously or unconsciously that makes me feel desperate to have things a certain way, and it is judgment that makes it feel so intolerable to have things go any other way than that to which I am attached. A pause can help me see the larger picture, not just delaying the response so that I can see my reaction, but actually enabling me to see the source of the grasping, the fear, the shame, the threat, the self-judgment, attachment or desperation over outcome that underlies my reaction. In the course of normal interactions, does it matter so much if this or that happens a specific way or in a specific sequence or with a specific result?

From teaching I have been thrilled to find that no matter what I suggest or introduce in a session, each student has their own experience, guided in various ways and with widely different effects from the words and movements of that moment and the next moment. This is a continuous reminder to me that we are all working with the same material and that our conditional experience is always subject to the individual levels of awareness, patterns and openness. There is nothing finite about us, and in that there is possibility that may escape us at this time, but is never far beyond reach. The practice of letting go that is part of yoga is cultivated in each moment. Savasana (the relaxation of "corpse pose") is when most students "work" at letting go, but in every breath the exhale can be a reminder to release what is no longer necessary.

Being Some Nobody

It is lovely to be nobody.

Breathing in the coolness of the evening.
Scanning the horizon as the sun sinks below the hill.
Wiping the mud from my shoes.
Turning my gaze in the direction of the calling bird.
Feeling the smoothness of the yogurt against my throat.
Stretching the muscles in the arch of my foot.
Watching the man I love kneeling on his kneepads planting onions.
Listening to the slow constancy of the creek down the way.
Straining to distinguish the sounds of the owls in the night.
Cuddling the fuzziness and heat of the cat in the dark.
Giving up all hope of finishing a task on this day.
Finding the soft resistance of the mattress below my hip bone.
Cherishing the depth of my own breath.

It is lovely to be nobody.

This might be the morning I rise in the dark to see the moon shine.
This might be the day I begin with savasana at sunrise.
This might be the day I plant the rest of the onions.
Perhaps there is more than this.
Perhaps there is no more than this.
No matter where I am, I am just here.
No matter who I am, I am just nobody.
How lovely! Free to be, entirely free.

Paying Taxes

I do not mind paying taxes. I am so grateful that so many people can collectively support each other in a peaceful, productive way. We have agreed to support on a massive scale the ability of many to travel within our communities, to collect and recycle our waste, to educate our young, to maintain the safety of our work environments, to protect ourselves from oppressive or violent external or criminal forces, to maintain an ever-evolving judicial system, to earnestly approach equity in our civil behaviors, to support those vulnerable and elderly and the very young to ensure nutritious food and health care, and so many other aspects of our common life here on this particular part of planet earth. It is not so in many places.

So many people seem to equate taxes with something bad. Perhaps the "government" is taking something away from its citizens in order to do destructive and terrible things. Maybe the taxes paid because of income earned on investments, and properties, on wages and winnings all came out of singular causes and conditions totally as a result of the efforts of one individual person. We know this is not so. Without each other's help and support none of us would be productive in the ways that we are now.

Certainly people take advantage of conditions and situations, and there are many who are unscrupulous and self centered in their greed. There are those who will sell a bad bill of goods, or not follow through on what they have been paid to do. There are those who take advantage of others in a state of need, and there are some who have no moral compass to help steer them away from harming themselves and others.

I like to imagine that these are the exceptions rather than the rule. I do not think of myself as so unique. The vast majority of people I have known throughout my life are people who, though they may have wrestled with indecision or moral confusion at times in their lives, are generally willing to put their hands in towards the common good or the good of someone else. It is this that I choose to hold when my heart sinks at the news of terrible human behaviors and irresponsible harm towards others.

This is how I conceive of taxes until they are used to pay for a military or industrial or environmental or educational strategy that oppresses others or causes irreparable harm. It is for that reason that I believe a fully functioning democracy is vital to sustain my belief that we can live in the principle of "Do no harm." I do my part to support a civil culture and structure that accommodates various belief systems and respects the individual among the many. Paying my taxes is part of this. I carry the weight on my own shoulders and I share that responsibility when I pay my taxes. A longer view helps me get through the times when I see the government take action that is harmful to others. I put more energy towards opening my ways of understanding, releasing my judgmental mind and being compassionate towards the fears and pain that are the underpinnings of these acts. This is not easy, but helps get me through my own anger and sorrow. I understand that others do not share my views and may feel despair at some of the actions I would perpetrate. Underneath everything, though, I hope we can learn to stop wishing others harm as a solution to our problems.

I hope our existence outlasts our separateness.

Video with Mooji: be grateful, be quiet & observe what arises

A friend sent me this 10 minute video of Satsang with Mooji related to a participant noting a "wave of helplessness washed over" him and he was frustrated by his conditioned self. Mooji explains how one can be quiet and see the whole idea of being frustrated or stuck with our reactive nature without being stuck or frustrated. He says, "look but don't touch," in simple terms expressing witness consciousness! Mooji speaks with gentleness and ease about being the silent observer in relation to whatever arises in our experience of ourselves. Not judging and not getting involved, he explains that "you are not the moving part," It is a marvelous 10 minutes. Take the time, enjoy this deeply compassionate perspective on what we all go through. Being grateful that whatever it is has arisen in order to make our patterns known. Lovely. Thanks, Anh Chi!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnMUNmyaipw

For more about Mooji, visit www.mooji.com

Words About Words

Perhaps where there is ego there is conflict. As I write my blog, if I speak from a state of separateness – that of ego – it is bound to cause some of my readers to feel I am preaching to or at them. It may cause some of my students to grasp for something they think I have, when in fact the state of being is something that only comes as it is. It is nothing in and of itself. So speaking of conditions, or of my discoveries about practice, I am not meaning to instruct others what to do or how to be or even to value this over that.

How then to express what I am discovering without the ego that creates attachment, grasping, judgment and suffering for me or my readers? Becoming sensitive to the use of words that sound like goals or achievements might be one way. Sharing the moment, the process, without a statement of revelation or value would be another. Perhaps, after thinking through what it is for me, I can turn it around and see if I can still see it without my self in it.

How would Lao Tzu phrase it? Ego-less and time-less, place-less and mind-less? For me at times his writing is so clear, other times so obscure that I taste but cannot identify the flavors. My blog is a continuous journey into finding out who I am as a yoga practitioner, teacher and student. Using words to explain or express, to reveal or explore, is also part of my practice and teaching. With this in mind, I will try to keep the instructional tone to a limit, this is not Me telling You, yet I still use personal pronouns and live a first-person life. My explorations are, quite honestly, about me and my yoga experiences. This blog is a way of sharing this so that others might see what is going on with me, thereby dispelling any illusions about me, while being encouraging in the active seeking of a deeper practice. I am in no way holding up my experiences as a road or a destination.

This life can be an endless experience of being with no specific outcome other than this moment. Perhaps this blog will follow me in this to an eventual state of silence, where there is no ego and are no words to describe that state. Somehow, given the way my entire life has evolved with language and poetry, music and the rhythm of breath at its core, I doubt that silence of that kind is around the corner, yet if it is, so be it! Meanwhile, I will struggle with ego and explore how to integrate, illuminate and expand without being preachy.

Weeding the Asparagus Bed

Three-pronged claw tool in hand, the task seemed both daunting and necessary as I faced the asparagus bed choked with field grass, milkweed, vetch and everything else. This has been going on all of 14 years, a continuous process of returning the asparagus bed back into wild field. My part of this is to turn the tide every spring, reminding the asparagus bed that for the next few months its asparagus production will take priority over its field-meadow production.

I am not in conflict with the weeds. I turn the earth to the depth I must, careful not to disturb the dormant asparagus, in order to pull out the roots and extract the majority of the visible volunteer weeds out of the bed. This process aerates the soil and integrates the compost and manure, reveals the health of the earth full of worms, and loosens up the top layer so that the soon-to-be growing asparagus will find its way to the light. The pile of weeds goes into the compost to return in a few months to enrich the soil from which it came.

Mostly I focus on the few inches of earth around where my tool has scraped. When I look up I see the expanse of the bed and all the weeds yet to come. In the same moment that the thought pops up, "this is going to take forever and I am already tired," I smile and acknowledge that as I go, the distance is covered, the bed is weeded, one handful at a time. I do not need to defeat myself by imagining the size of the task as too big, nor spur myself as an endurance test to work beyond my strength. I see how much there is to do, and know that it is this moment and this handful of earth, this grass root in my fingers that are my life, not the beating around the head feeling of how much more there is to do, nor an eventual patting on the back feeling of accomplishing the task.

Does this make life dreary, taking out challenge, motivation and accomplishment from the job? Not for me. I accept that my goal is to be happy in this moment. I can acknowledge my tired fingers and appreciate the depth of the root I am struggling to pull. When I stand by the compost bin to catch my breath and see the fullness of material I have just dumped in there, I can see the asparagus bed too, clear of weeds for the moment, rich earth ripe and ready for asparagus and weed alike. What I know is that the sun is still shining, the wind is pulling at my hair, and I'm ready for a drink of water. I'll be thrilled to see those asparagus tips come up, even though there are sure to be a young crop of new weeds right along with them.