“I” and the Universal Self

In the course of my life I've been trained in a concept of speaking about feelings or interpretations of fact or observations in terms of "I" statements. This can help prevent many upsetting and hurtful conversations. Clearly, things can get complicated quite fast when starting a phrase with "you." Something directive, anticipatory, projecting, assumptive, dismissive, and plain wrong can so easily slip in when one person begins to say something directly related to another person's identity or self. "YOU" is a one word descriptive of "OTHER" in some ways. If I say, "I see your shoulders are hunching" it is different in feeling than if I say, "You are hunching your shoulders." What is different? One is my observation, and implies that I am responsible for what I notice. The other is a statement about you, implying that there is consciousness and responsibility on your part and potentially judgment on mine. The later statement is much more likely to set up distance between us.

At the very same moment that I am trying to frame things from my own perspective without stepping on your identity, I am also able to see the construction of my own framing and content. In a way, I can observe myself seeing your hunched shoulders and in doing so I can become aware of a series of choices I can make, both about my reactions and about my actions, including what I do or don’t say and my choice of words. Of course, if I take enough time noticing all this, I might find that I need not really say anything at all, and that simply relaxing my own shoulders is enough, unless I am teaching a student to notice their own condition.

Watching, or witnessing, my own way of interacting leads me to a distinct feeling of being more than just the reaction I might be having. I am more than the urge to speak, more than the impulse to interact with others or produce a result. This sense of being feels much larger than “I” do. Being is a fluid awareness, not set within boundaries of conditional thought or circumstance.

My sense of being an alive, breathing entity can easily be limited and defined by my patterns of behavior or thought, my judgments, feelings, and mental constructions. I can choose to see others in these terms and stay in a dualistic world of "me-you," "here-there," "right-wrong," etc. Some of this is conceptually necessary for figuring out what's going on around us – for example, is the car at the intersection moving or still? (In terms of physics we might explain that nothing is still, since every cell has moving parts, each atom has movement between the neutrons, electrons and protons.) And yet, even while using this ability to understand duality, I do not have to make myself miserable and separate from others by constant judgment, filling up with self-limiting ideas that do not reflect the essentially limitless aspects of being.

Strangely, the more I learn to see the “I,” the clearer it seems that beyond the “I” is something very much more universal that is shared with all living beings. Through my practice, it seems that the “being” is what makes life worth living and so I remain curious about the human structure within which “I” live.

Finding Right Speech: Traps of Blame & Shame

Recently subjected to verbal rants disguised as opinions or information, passionate distortions and hurtful jokes, I have felt terribly trapped and upset. I suffered for days from reverberations and dissonances. I hung my head in sorrow, coming to know that as offensive as it all sounded to me, as painful as it was to hear "a nice person" speak so mean, so blind, so destructive; the same was also in me. I, too, have spoken without thinking that I was forcing someone else to swallow my words. I, too, have been passionate in my opinions, pushing others into silence about their own experiences or feelings. I, too, have assumed too much without grounding, have sought an object upon which to blame a frightening outcome, have wanted to make others feel responsible for a set of conditions resulting from behaviors or choices. Being human and verbal, I, too, have felt and done these things.

I know that I live in a world that makes some human beings into property. I know that I live in a world where people believe they can own land, displacing natural habitats and tolerating that others are homeless. I live in a world where essential resources are being bought and sold all the time for profit. The truth is that these are all conditions, not finite, not infinite, just conditional. Speech also reflects the conditional moment. It is here that I can cultivate Right Speech, one of the aspects of the Eight-fold path of yoga practice.

Patterns of behavior can be recognized and understood. Opinions and blame, hate and disrespect, aggression and fear are all conditional. It is this, in part, that unifies all of us human beings -- with specific conditions, we have specific reactions or responses. Once seen, these conditions can be recognized, and reactions can be seen for what they are -- reactions. Once seen, these reactions can also be understood and the root causes can be seen and recognized too. Not everything can be changed, but much can be, and sometimes simply seeing things as they are is enough to change the conditions and enable a choice of reaction.

Listening is part of speaking. I heard my neighbor speak of so many others as flawed and wrong and stupid and mean. I heard my neighbor separate himself from others as though he plays no part in decisions and choices, relationships and actions around him. I hear him sounding helpless, in a way reviling this helplessness, fearing for the future and bemoaning his inability to solve the problems he sees -- just as he blames others for this. This is what I hear when he faults the inequity of a nearby neighbor's action, or the greed of a business or ineffectiveness of a government, or the beliefs of people in another land. It is his pain I hear when he makes a derogatory joke about people he does not know; he is ill at ease in the world in which he sees himself.

It is suffering I hear, and it is this suffering that I feel for days. I think now that this suffering is mine because, in fact, we are not separate, my neighbor and I. The urge I felt to respond as he spoke, the deep desire to shout louder than he, to drown out his suffering, to say it is not so: this is my own human condition. To be inflammatory or dismissive is so easy. To denigrate the way others live and think, to find ways to blame and fault are all coping mechanisms inside each of us, as if it protects us from feeling helpless in the face of fear and pain and uncertainty. I can do it too. The insults come out when we see ourselves as separate from "the other," or perhaps we turn hatefully towards ourselves. Jokes prompt that uncomfortable laughter to hide how offensive a remark really is.

To stop it I acknowledge the pain, though this is where I sometimes get stuck - in the pain. Being open to the infinite imperfections in all of us, this is where I begin to feel the true laughter. No one knows the way, no matter how strident they are. There is no path. Just walk and see how it is and is not. The path is under my own foot! I can let words haunt me, or see them as shells in the sand. The ocean and the wind hear nothing separate.

Right speech acknowledges the fullness of silence, seems inclusive of the pain and the laughter, lets the words be like rain falling into a pond -- already the words are the breath. Perhaps right speech is simply allowing the words to be breath, that energy and release shared with all living beings, not something we wish was finite. I cannot stop the pain my neighbor feels, but I can take the precaution of doing no harm. It does not stop by asking him not to speak to me this way or of these things. He will simply carry his pain elsewhere. What I can do is be present, and truly see him there too, knowing and acknowledging that we are not separate. That world that he paints is a world where I also live. I am continuously choosing to water different seeds in myself and my experience, perhaps making a space possible where he can hear his own voice and recognize himself. I cannot avoid myself much as I might like to run away (think of the idea of gaining strength to stay within the context of meditation), and by being present, perhaps I encourage right speech in others as I do in myself.

Freedom: Even When It's All Still There

I do love it when my students glow with joy and attribute this to their new yoga practice, but I am deeply aware that pain and sorrow do not evaporate when a person begins to feel better with asana practice. Asana and meditation draw the energies of the body and spirit into active engagement, and can bring feelings of well being, acceptance and strength that are quite rejuvenating. This is terrific indeed! But at the same time I find sometimes my students, and even myself, approach the mat with the hope that it will solve the problems, bring peace and in some way wash away the hard parts of life. We just want the troubles to go away if we practice enough.

Practice does make us feel better. The core of this soothing, deep peace that can be gradual or sudden as one effect of yoga and meditation practice is real. It is accessible and amazingly liberating for any one, regardless of how long they have practiced. I believe, though, that this impact is the result of accepting what actually is, and letting go of judgment and attachment to defining good and bad, to playing the past or projecting the future. Sometimes this process brings up the roughest stuff, and can shake a person up. It is at this same moment that we can realize we are actually sitting through this, shaking yet not falling, or even falling yet not suffering any the worse for tumbling out of the asana onto the mat.

When I meditate, or practice on the mat, I am still going to find that I am out of balance, or that my mind is circling the same defeat, or my heart is aching with fear of loss. The acknowledgment of this is in itself a relief. The view of the tangle, or the deep pit, or the aching desire, comes clear when there is nothing else attached to it. I don't have to avoid or deny the sources or the troubles, nor condemn or praise my own or anyone else's reactive nature. I do not have to solve the problem. I do not have to know everything that I do not seem to know in order to comfort myself. The comfort actually comes from seeing that I crave those things - solutions, knowledge - and I can tolerate my own human condition, to be craving or judging.

In acceptance and letting go I free myself to relax, sitting with the fear or the dissatisfaction. Through the practice, I learn the range of my emotional reactions. I can listen to the story without being the story. I can actually relax all the mechanisms that otherwise get in the way of being at peace and accessing the fullness of my energy. My troubles don't go away, but they no longer define me or run shotgun over what I feel and do.

The Path Is Not Global - It's Very Personal

There's a strange tendency to imagine that others have their act together when I feel that I do not. I see this as my ego fighting for attention. The idea that I seek to be judging myself, that I imagine myself to have any way of measuring or assessing the condition of others, are a product of ego and the craving for distinctness, for separateness and, yes, identity. This is part of what has become visible or clear in yoga and meditation practice.

Yoga is a humbling activity. I may discover incredible open spaces and be reassured by the fact that my body continues to move and respond to my queries about energy and muscle, about positive and negative aspects of being. I also become acutely aware that all there is to me is my breathing and my ever-varying levels of willingness to be aware. There is nothing about this that is global in scope, it is quite personal. There is nothing grand or powerful in this, it is really the good part of that speck in the universe feeling, perhaps a sparkling speck, but speck nonetheless.

My practice connects me to a universal energy and awareness, both widens and narrows my attention, and puts me into a context that is vast, but it is the small self, the individual person on the sidewalk walking, who experiences these frames of reference. I feel it intensely in my teaching and when I take classes from others. My breath may join with all the beings in the room, my cells may share their composition and reactivity with everyone else, but there is still that person, THAT person, who grew up wearing my face and feeling my feelings and that person is the one through which I am sorting out the world outside and inside.

I don't get lost staring at my own belly-button, so to speak. It's not that kind of Ego with a capital E. But I think it is important to acknowledge and understand -- just as I do with each one of my students -- that it is through this body, this set of experiences and patterns, that the freedom comes. The path is not outside of my self, it requires my very specific self to take the walk in order to see the way.

Making choices: pruning & oil spills

The catastrophe of oil spilling into the gulf waters has brought a lot of attention to the choices we make, the risks we are willing to take to fulfill our desires, and how we see responsibility for the outcomes.

Oddly enough, pruning involves these same aspects. The action involves cutting into a living thing in order to suit a desired purpose, taking risks on behalf of that living thing and in committing our energies, in so doing. Sometimes it is hard to tell the winter die-back from the not-quite-juiced-yet early spring twigs. Sometimes the growth that is stimulated by cutting off the ends of things can result in a skipped year of blooming, an invigoration of the remaining plant, or an overly exuberant growth spurt out of proportion to the supporting stems. Cutting can open a plant to infection from a variety of bacteria or insects. And so, convincing ourselves that it is for the health of the plant or for beauty of form or an increase in output, gardeners prune the shrubs, fruit trees, roses and other perennials and live with the results. Sometimes the outcome is not what we expect, losing the plant, thwarting the intended result, or requiring a more intense or vigilant effort -- an even deeper involvement -- in order to get what we want, deal with the difference, or salvage the situation.

Our desires for energy, car and plane travel, long-distance shipping, constantly increased electronic connectivity, more packaged products and profits in all its forms, in addition to a seeming proclivity to deny the role our choices play in the problems from which we suffer, all seem to boil down to that same equation: the choices we make, the risks we are willing to take to fulfill our desires and how we see responsibility for the results. A couple things seem clear, we don't usually consider widely enough the ramifications of our choices, nor do we find it easy to recognize the depth of self-centered desire embedded in those choices. In terms of gardening, though, I think we are likely to be aware that we make these choices in order to serve our purposes, in other words, to bend the plant to our desires even if we don't think through fully what fuels those desires or might result from them.

Perhaps it is helpful to think about pruning, starting with recognition that the world in which we live is, in essence, living organisms and inter-dependent systems that are not separated by names or our ways of making distinctions among them. Like choosing to plant something in a spot that is not conducive to the culture it requires, first we must recognize that we are not in charge of everything nor do we know all there is to know when it comes right down to it. Then, either we must take responsibility and make the deep commitment to ensure that the culture is appropriate so that the plant will prosper, or we must look again at our motives for putting it in that spot, and reconsider our desires in light of the risks we cause. The life of the plant hangs in the balance, as does our desired outcome.

The role we play is part of the natural process of living organisms in this earthly context. Elephants and beavers reorganize the natural habitat to suit their purposes, and suffer the wider ramifications without taking responsibility for changing the habitat for others or displacing other species of flora and fauna. Humans have the ability to see this especially now that we do have hundreds of years of experiences and research to draw upon. As if holding those pruning shears in hand, we have the ability to see our choices, and act in the interests of the plant's health rather than in service of our ever-changing desires for larger fruit or bigger blooms.

Freedom of Non-attachment

Traveling recently, I was struck by how little it takes to release attachment or to enmesh myself with those deep swirling currents. In some ways it matters very little what I do, what I eat, what happens in any one moment -- the impact of any of this is created by the meanings (feelings, significances) attached by my mind. In and of themselves, the moments do not have a hierarchy or embedded significance. One moment offers the same freedom as the next, or the last. A phone call changes the emotions and interactions of the moment, a gust of wind changes the experience of the moment, a cool sip of water changes the sensations of the moment and the mind can play with meanings in every case.

Looking out of my hotel window down to the sidewalk below, I watched pedestrians and vehicles coming and going every which way. From above, each body was a head with moving parts to carry it -- the mind in every person filling and emptying continuously in response to the wind, the traffic lights, the weight of their bags, the morning experiences or projections ... whatever the mind's content. I could not even begin to pretend to know what was going on inside but could clearly see the forms moving in space. My yoga teaching has given me a physical awareness of balance and imbalance -- watching the gaits, feeling the movement. There need not be a story attached unless my interest is in making that story to help control or understand, to predict or participate.

Each moment is a bit like visiting an art exhibition, where I place myself in front of a piece of art and observe it at the same time as I observe my reactive nature in relation to it. I can choose to read the narrative on the wall beside the piece or the introductory explanations as I enter the room; I can choose the sequence in which I experience the exhibit or choose to follow the map provided by the creator of the exhibition. Sometimes I might react to the date of a work, or the colors in it, or my feelings evoked by the image I perceive. My reaction might change if I have "information" about the artist or the history of this art form. It seems the same is true for the moments in my day.

Traveling in a new place made it easier for me to notice that the food tasted particularly yummy, or greasy, or bland as I was seeking out the nature of experience in a new place; and in all those circumstances I got up from the table no longer feeling hungry. Having only so many days in a place, perhaps helped me give more attention to whether the day was misty or sunny or rainy or cold since I knew that this was going to be my experience of that place; and each moment filled with sights, fragrances, tastes, sounds, textures, ideas, interactions, choices, experiences.

I felt a strong positive sense of my own unimportance in these days of travel. It was just fine to walk out and be one of those moving bodies seen from a 6th floor window, walking along with my passing and changeable goals, in rhythm with the moment. Walking to work in my own neighborhood, it was most interesting how this same astonishing joy of being translated once I returned to Brooklyn.

While Mind Makes the Meaning We Can Let the Story Go

Like a living history of the Boston Tea Party told from all the variant points of view, our minds create us with meanings, triggering feelings that define us as individuals though they don't really intersect or make a solid entity any more than all the Tea Party stories make one historical event. Anyone with siblings knows how confusing and funny it can be to try to get a memory corroborated only to find that no one experienced the same thing at the same time.

During a yoga practice it is possible to notice feelings and emotional reactions, even physical aspects that are fleeting. This introduction to impermanence, to the momentary nature of what we tell ourselves about ourselves, can be an entry into letting loose of that which we use to define ourselves, limit ourselves, and make up our stories about who we are. How we use what we notice is also a choice we make, sometimes instantaneously, sometimes as part of the structures we use for years.

I use the breath as a way of reminding myself of the immediacy of my being. This sounds so new age, but actually there is so much grace in it, so much texture and support. It is the foundation that is always present. Maybe my legs are shaking as my body is struggling with an asana in this moment, or maybe it is my mind that is defeating me with judgments and dismissiveness, or driving me with shapes and goals. When I find that soft inhale, feel my shoulders release on the exhale, I know that everything is still possible, that I am not these stories, not my own or the ones others might tell about me. I am simply this breath, an opening in the moment that my heart can fill.

A series of distinctly separate images carry the meanings that any viewer brings to the viewing. We cannot leave our stories completely, but we can come to see them for what they are, as the reflections of stories on the surfaces we see, and with that, we can free ourselves from limitations they impose.