Misperception

I have been wanting to write something about viparyaya for a while now and had an experience at the PT recently that is a great example.  I was having a pain in my foot and some concern about a possible baby bunion beginning, so I went to see Barb Canal (the most fabulous physical therapist who has helped me immensely many times).  The only thing I had really figured out is that it seemed like when I supinated my foot more, it felt better, so concluded that it had to do with my pronating tendency (for those of you not familiar with these terms, pronating is when the foot rolls in and supinating is when it rolls out).  Within a few minutes in her office, I found out that everything I had perceived wasn’t really true—that my big toe was not going in so much as the rest of the toes were going out, that the internal rotation of my hip was the thing to pay attention to rather than the weight distribution of my foot.

Viparyaya is misperception, also referred to as error or mistake, and is one of the five activities of the mind according to Patanjali—the most common one.  While it’s easy to hear the word misperception and think that’s bad and we should avoid it because it’s the wrong thing to do, the reason it’s the most common mental activity is because most of the time we don’t really have a choice about it.  It’s the best we can do until we get more information that points us more toward what’s really happening. 

I feel like the main thing I try to do when I teach yoga (or anything) is to direct people back to their own experience and return the authority to where it rightfully belongs rather than let it rest with me.  Then I have an experience like the one in Barb’s office and I think back to so many things that I totally thought I understood or had figured out only to find out later that I really didn’t, and I have a moment of doubt about whether or not we can trust our own experiences.  But I’m actually quite sure that that’s what we must do.  My own direct experience truly is my best place to look (vs. other people and sources), but I must simultaneously remain aware that it is probably viparyaya.  

I always remember a story someone told once on our teacher training about moving and not being able to find these wine stoppers she’d had.  She knew just what she was looking for and kept looking in all the places she thought they would be until she finally gave up and bought some new ones.  When she went to put them away, there were the old ones—she thought they were white, but they were actually gray, so she didn’t even see them, right there where she had looked a million times.  Everyone has a story like that.  My view is limited not just by what I think I know, but by what I do know, what I don’t know, by my past, etc.  It’s like wanting a kid to understand multiplication before they know how to do addition.  I can only see or know what I can see or know in any given moment.

So my aim is to be open to new information, to allow my perception to change, rather than thinking I have something figured out.  To be able to trust myself and at the very same time know that there is so much more out there that I can’t even grasp, that whatever I am experiencing right now is not the end of the story and that probably at a later time I will be able to see pieces of the picture that I can’t see now.  Misperception doesn’t mean I am doing it wrong, it’s just that until I am enlightened, it’s mostly all I can do—what’s helpful is knowing that that’s what’s going on.

I was trying to talk about this whole idea in class recently and somehow during the conversation, a student said, “But what if you really, really do know that there is something wrong with you.”  And I said, “That’s the biggest misperception of all.”  That is how the mind sees things and interprets them and then uses the misperception to confirm itself as truth.  Patanjali gives this an even bigger word, avidya (spiritual ignorance).  So even when we are caught in this trap, if we can remember that it is a misperception, even if we can’t see how and can’t see our way out, we can know that it’s just not true, simply because we’re not perceiving anything accurately, because our mind is limited compared to the vastness of all that is.

Socks

I really like warm socks.  My feet tend to be cold all winter, so nice warm socks are really important to me.  My best pairs of socks are the ones I knit myself—they are really warm and have lasted longer than any store-bought socks I’ve ever bought.  (Since I mostly take my shoes of inside, it doesn’t usually take very long to start wearing out the bottom of the heel).  When I first started knitting socks, I thought I would never buy a pair of socks again.  But then I realized that I like knitting other things too, so I recently found myself at the store looking for socks.

A few years ago (before I was knitting socks), I taught myself how to darn a sock from a video on YouTube.  I was really pleased with myself—it always seems terrible to throw out a pair of socks that are perfectly fine except for the hole in heel, especially if you like them.  So after visiting several stores in search of socks to meet my specifications (which are apparently unreasonable—thicker than a dress sock, thinner than a hiking sock, not mostly acrylic, not too expensive), I finally sat down earlier today to mend a sock that I already have.  I think I haven’t worn these socks in over a year because I wanted to darn the heel, but kept putting it off because it would take too long, was too boring, I wanted to do other things, etc.

In about an hour and fifteen minutes, I had it done.  That’s less time than I spent shopping for new socks and I’m not adding to the landfill and I get to have that nifty feeling of being handy.  So what’s the deal? How do I get tricked into this same situation time and time again?  Just the number of blogs I’ve written about it is enough to wear anybody out.  Something I want to do, something I enjoy both the process of and the result of, yet don’t do. 

There’s reality (satya) and then all the stories.  And as long as I am willing to listen to and believe the made-up stories about my socks and my life, I am in trouble.  There is a story about wanting or needing “free time,” but I am not even sure what free time is, since something is always happening.  And there are many stories about what is more important, worthwhile or desirable than something else.  For example, it’s better to be working on my website than mending my sock or it’s better to go on a walk than mend my sock.  At least that’s the story until I make that choice and then the story changes to how I’m working too hard or wasting my time.  See, that’s why you can’t trust the story—it just changes to whatever makes you feel bad.

So instead of evaluating and assessing and deciding, I could just do whatever is the next thing that needs to be done and enjoy it.  What a concept! 

Memorization is Cool

Last June, Sonia Nelson did a Vedic chanting workshop at our center—it was just a couple hours introduction sort of thing.  I imagine to a lot of people that doesn’t sound very interesting, but to me it sounds very awesome.  And, in fact, I had so much fun.  (If I were going to get all woo-woo, I’d say something about how it feels like something I have done in previous lives and that somehow I am supposed to be chanting, but I won’t).  Anyway, I bought her Yoga Sutras Tutorial CD and have been working with it pretty regularly during commutes since then (with some days/weeks off for Cheri Huber podcasts).

In the last few weeks, I finished memorizing the second chapter.  And I have seen many interesting things in the process.

1) Things that seem insurmountable in the beginning, if taken step by step, are actually totally achievable.  At the beginning of this endeavor, when I was probably on sutra 1.10 or something, it seemed like so much for my brain to hold, I couldn’t really see how I could learn the whole chapter.  Then when I did, I thought, “How can I possibly learn the second chapter? Will I have to forget the first one to make room for the second?” It felt like my brain was literally stretching when I started it and then, incredibly, I did actually learn the whole second chapter while still remembering the first.  Crazy!

2) Life is non-linear.  This project seems to really highlight for me how things do not go in a straight line. I learn a little chunk and really get it down, then I go back to the part before so I can put them together and I can’t remember how that part goes, or I remember the first part and can’t remember the new part anymore (even though I was chanting it just a couple minutes before).  It seems like a continual process of learning and forgetting around in circles until at some point it’s finally in there for good.  And the whole process could be quite frustrating if I were really wanting it to be orderly.

3) Having an outside guide is really important.  I’ve had the first chapter down for a while now, so I don’t need to concentrate super-hard to chant most of it.  Sometimes I can even do that thing where I chanted part of it but I wasn’t paying attention and wonder if I really chanted it (like arriving somewhere in your car, but you don’t remember the trip).  Recently, I was chanting it through with Sonia on the track where she chants it straight through and I caught quite a few places where I had gotten sloppy or mis-remembered a note or a long vowel. It made me think that’s why we have teachers or therapists or other outside people to reflect to us what we are doing.  It is easy to start to drift off into my own little world and I could imagine my version of the sutras getting further and further from the original. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to have an objective view of ourselves.

4) Memorization is cool. Memorizing things seems very old school.  I wonder if kids memorize things in school anymore.  We have much more emphasis on understanding things, which I generally agree with. Understanding something seems better than just being able to spout off information. But memorizing the sutras has been very fun.  I feel like it uses my brain in a different way and it really gets rid of the cittavrttis (the waves of the mindstuff). There is something relaxing about just learning all these sounds and not worrying about what it means. (Though I am learning more about what it means as I go).  And it feels good to have it inside me.  I would recommend memorizing something to everyone—a poem or a chant or whatever.

So I don’t know if that is interesting to anyone.  A little tapa (effort, determination), a little svadhyaya (self-study), a little ishvara pranidhana (surrender)—hey, that’s kriya yoga (sutra 2.1)!

Knitting Yoga

Last night, I had my third start on a new sweater and I think this one might stick. Ripping things out is an inherent part of knitting. If you don’t have the stomach for it, then you’ll probably stick to scarves or find another hobby. It has gotten easier for me, but it is still hard. This time, for instance, I had a couple days in on the back of this sweater and had to admit to myself (satya) that I didn’t really like the stitch that was the main stitch of the sweater (too bumpy). Even though I had spent a good little chunk of time on it, I was able to step back and see that the amount of time spent compared to the amount of time left was quite small and weeks from now those couple of days would be forgotten. So I unraveled it and wound the yarn back up on the skein.

Very early in my adult knitting career, I was knitting a hat and was probably over half done when it became clear that it was too small. I was debating about whether to rip a bunch out and make it bigger or keep going and my husband said something like, “Don’t you want a hat that fits?” Ah, clarity. I think of that a lot when I am at that point of deciding whether to take something apart.

So this particular knitting lesson seems to be about satya, that willingness to be in reality, and also vairagya, non-attachment. I get so attached to the work that I have done, it is hard to let it go, even in the face of seeing that it is not working out. And because I do that with knitting, I know that I also do it with other things. Sure enough. Right now, I feel like I am in the process of seeing how to make a life that fits. Which means being willing to stop continuing on with the things that aren’t working and either re-fitting them or trying something new. Very exciting—I’m looking forward to seeing what I will make.

I'm Here!

Where?  Well, literally, at my sister’s dining room table while my nephew is putting on his shoes to head to the bus stop.  But really, I don’t know.  I am here, but I’m not sure where that is.  I am in some kind of a gigantic transition period and have been spending time trying to re-envision my life (perhaps more accurately just to envision it).

One thing I see is that I really want to post more on this blog.  Then I wonder what gets in my way.  The usuals:  time, lack of energy, choosing knitting.  And then there is this other one that kind of sneaks around in the background:  there are so many blogs and so many yoga teachers, people don’t need another person saying the same stuff, thinking that she’s having some big insight.  Well, that’s not very nice. 

My friend Molly lent me this new book by Rod Stryker, The Four Desires, that is all about finding your dharma (life purpose).  Dharma is one of Molly’s favorite topics, but it has never really clicked with me.  I resonate more with Cheri Huber when she talks about how much suffering people experience feeling like they don’t know their purpose when maybe the purpose of life is life.   “As if being alive isn’t enough,” she says.  And the Buddhist saying that is something like, “Trying to find the purpose of life is like trying to ride a horse on top of another horse.”  Which I take to mean: just ride the horse.

So what’s happening for me now is that all of this is fitting together.  Each one of us is a completely unique manifestation of life (or consciousness or God or whatever), so everyone has the same dharma in a way, which is to completely be that unique manifestation.  (The fact that it is unique is what makes everyone’s dharma seem to be different).  I know some of you have heard me talk about something like this before, but I'm having some new understanding of it (mainly, that it actually applies to me, rather than being a nice idea or true for everyone else).

Owning that life is expressing itself through me in a way that is different from anyone else means I don’t need to worry about anybody else’s blog or even if anyone is reading mine.  So I’m going to commit to more frequent posts (and see what happens).

(p.s., I hate to advertise on the blog, but I am also working on a book and if you’d like to help me, I’m doing a “guided self-study” email class on ahimsa (non-violence)—click here)

Say No to the Hamster Wheel

I’ve been reading a therapy magazine; this issue focuses on grief and dying in this age of “advanced” medical technology.  The world we live in is just so different from the world even sixty years ago.  It used to be that people just died.  Now everything gets stretched out and it’s not clear at all that this works out better than the old way.  Take something like the pacemaker, which I’ve always thought of as a relatively benign and helpful device, but which will just keep ticking away for ten years, regardless of how sick the rest of the body is getting.  And nevermind the whole disgusting system of insurance that encourages putting them in folks who may or may not really “need” them.

Of course I am not saying we shouldn’t use any of this stuff or that “western medicine is bad” (a common refrain amongst yoga-types), but the system/society/culture never stops to assess where we are going and it is difficult to fight the tide as an individual.  The underlying assumption is that we should stay alive at any cost (literally and figuratively).  It seems like all of this technology and medication would make us feel safer somehow, but it actually creates more and more fear and striving to keep from change and aging, which is the essential nature of being alive.  (Sort of the same way that all of the communication technology we have doesn’t save us time, it just gives us more to do).

So this was the frame of mind I was in when I was watching t.v. last night.  Now, I am usually quite entertained by pharmaceutical commercials, especially the ones that list off all of the possible side effects and contraindications.  But last night I got creeped out.  First, the woman talking about something you can take for “inadequate eyelashes,” then prescription eye drops for chronic dry eye, then special face cream that rejuvenates your stem cells in your skin to get rid of your wrinkles.  Life will be good if we can just take something for everything we don’t like and make it go away.  Just thinking about it makes me tired.  (I’m sure there’s something I can take for that).

So this brings us to some of my favorite yoga topics.  We were talking about abhinivesha (fear of death) just a couple posts ago.  And satya, which we can think of as practicing being in reality.  Do we really want to spend all of our energy trying to fight reality?  Because that’s what we’re doing.  Now, it’s important to distinguish between acceptance and resignation.  As someone who can easily slip into Eeyore mode (oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway), let me be clear that’s not what I am recommending.  Yoga has a lot in common with that Serenity Prayer—you know, changing what you can, accepting what you can’t.  But where do we draw the line?  It seems to me that when I can feel myself getting on a hamster wheel, that’s a good sign to stop and check in.  I don’t want to live my life on a hamster wheel.  And, despite all my conditioning, I really don’t want to just avoid everything uncomfortable or unpleasant.  Partly because even with all the eyedrops and creams, it is futile, and partly because I am a human being and I actually want to have the experience of being a human being, even though sometimes it scares me.

To Be or Not to Be Offended

So, I have sometimes prided myself on being a person who doesn’t get offended.  Sure, I get annoyed and think people are dumb and all that, but I don’t really get offended by something.  Getting offended comes from taking something that someone says or does personally, like they are doing it ON PURPOSE to hurt ME.  There are just so many faulty assumptions in there, the biggest ones being that other people are actually making conscious decisions about their words and actions (most of us seem to be unconscious a large part of the time) and then that they would consciously make those decisions based on how it would impact me (in fact, no one really is paying attention to or cares about me and my life).

So it seems that being offended comes from the ego (ahankara).  (The irony of saying I pride myself on not getting offended is not lost on me).  I am wrapped up in my own “I” and all the identities that go with it and think the whole world revolves around me and so end up feeling offended when something doesn’t fit with my vision of how things should be.  It perhaps goes hand in hand with our lawsuit culture where a person sues for any sort of slight or accident, trying to put blame on someone because we should be able to go through life without anything bad ever happening to us.  (Before you get offended, I realize that some lawsuits are perfectly legit—I’m just saying that sometimes we’re just human and make mistakes or fall down).

Anyway, all this is really a lead up to introduce you to this blog I found called Recovering Yogi.  I’m sure there are many “yogis” who would be offended by this blog, but I think there is a lot of funny stuff in there.  I don’t agree with everything in it, but I like the Keepin’ It Real aspect.  Sometimes they are even talking about me, but I still think it’s funny.  I’ve always thought our sense of humor resides in our witness aspect, that part than can step back and observe objectively.  The ego definitely doesn’t have a sense of humor.  So, here’s a link to a recent post, which is mild on the snark-o-meter compared to many of the posts, making it a good entry point, I guess.  Hope you enjoy!

My One Wild and Precious Life

I just got back a few days ago from a week-long meditation retreat with Cheri Huber.  It was called “Not What But How,” which means we were looking at how the process of how we do things is more important than the content (the what).  I left the retreat with a renewed vigor for making the most of every day, not waiting around or holding back or feeling stuck.  I have said more than once this week that it seems that if we’re unhappy in a certain situation, we can choose acceptance or we can do something, but to sit around complaining and being unhappy is just a waste.  My favorite part of the recitation we do at the monastery is “If I am suffering it is because I am choosing something over ending suffering.”  The thing that is so big about this is that everything comes back to me—most of us don’t really want to deal with that.

So just a couple days ago, I was listening to a live recording of Cheri Huber and it was one of the people in the audience that framed it this way, which is pretty powerful to me.  He said that we spend our lives trying to survive, all the time we find ourselves in survival mode, but the fact is we don’t survive.  Right!  Somehow it has always seemed like a reasonable rationale—when I or someone else finds ourselves in survival mode, it makes sense somehow.  In yoga, we call this clinging to life abhinivesha.  But the only thing we know for sure about life is that we don’t make it out alive!  Now, I’ve said something like that before many times, but the way this guy said it really had an impact.  I’ve been thinking about the lines from Mary Oliver ever since the retreat and now I posted it in our bathroom:  “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / With your one wild and precious life?”

Here is a video that Cheri showed on the retreat this year and a couple years ago:

It is good to be re-inspired on this from time to time because when I’m just going about my day-to-day life and my husband isn’t doing what I want him to and I feel like I can’t catch up at work after my time away, I can feel the dissatisfaction and projection bubbling up.  I want things to be different.  But I don’t really want to spend my life wanting things to be different (do you see how that it is still wanting things to be different?).  So I keep saying to myself, “This is it.  This is my life.”  In every moment I have a choice.  And I choose to be amazed.  I choose to be grateful.  I choose fullness and wholeness.  I choose life.

Here’s a story about how great life is:

Pretty much from the retreat orientation forward, people kept mentioning the frogs that live in the outshowers at the monastery—little green frogs.  I was excited to see them.  Well, I only took a couple showers and on my last day as I was stepping under the water, I was disappointed that I hadn’t seen a single frog (aside from the big toad that startled me in the dark by the outhouse one night).  I went about enjoying my shower and when I was done, I opened the curtain and there on my towel right at eye level was a frog—no way I could possibly miss it.  Yay!  I even got to carry him on my finger from the towel to the bench.  Thanks, Life!

Yoga and Little League

So that nephew I was talking about in the last post just turned twelve and he is on the all-star little league team.  I went to the game today and they lost, but it was close (they’re not out of the tournament yet).  Some of their strongest players, though, have a real tough time keeping it together when they aren’t doing so well.  As soon as they fall behind or miss a play or get out, they start crying or stomping around.  And they can’t recover from that, which is the important part.  You can imagine I am not of the boys-shouldn’t-cry ilk, but for everyone, it so incredibly helpful in life to be able to bounce back, to not get so identified with the upset part that you can’t continue on with what needs to be done.  I remember hearing Cheri Huber talk once about a friend of hers who is a figure skater who said that we never see some of the very best figure skaters because they can’t handle the pressure of the competitions.

Yoga is largely about being able to control our minds, to direct and use them in the way that we want, to see the fluctuations as just that, rather than thinking that we are those fluctuations.  (That’s sutras 2, 3 and 4 of book 1).  It’s always easier to see these things at work in other people, which is maybe why we are all here—to help each other out.  Watching those kids playing baseball, it is apparent how disruptive and unhelpful it is to have your sense of yourself be so attached to the thing that is happening in the moment.  It seems to me to be part of the mind’s strong pull to make meaning.  If I drop the ball, it means I’m a terrible ball player—only it doesn’t.  I’m the same ball player I was a moment ago.  If I can see that making a mistake or blowing a play doesn’t mean anything besides that I made a mistake or blew a play, then I can move on. 

This is not to say that I never experience any feelings about these kinds of things (which I think is a common misperception amongst yoga-types), but that I can feel the feelings and let them go.  Which, by the way, also gives me a better chance of actually learning something from what happened than if I am caught up in the story about what a loser I am.  So those are my little league musings today.  They have to win tomorrow or they’re out—wish them luck!

Anything is Possible

I have a growing backlog of things to write about on the blog, some of which will probably fade out before I get to them.  Many of them you will have already heard me talk about if you come to my yoga classes.   A bathroom remodel provides lots of opportunity for yoga practice . . . and not much time to write about it!

But today I want to go back a few weeks to a Wednesday when I was driving on the 520 and got in a car accident.  Thankfully, it was not really that serious—well, not serious to me and my body but pretty serious to the car that I don’t have anymore.  And really, one of the things I learned is that even an accident that “isn’t that serious” can leave a person pretty shaken up and discombobulated.

But one of the most interesting observations that I made was that one of my identities is Someone who Has Never Been in a Car Accident.  It felt strange and sort of like a loss to give that up.  Now I am Someone who Has Been in a Car Accident.  I contemplated that for a couple days before I realized that it was much bigger than that.  More than the loss of identity, it was being faced with my own vulnerability.  As long as I was Someone who Has Never Been in a Car Accident, I could imagine that it would never happen, that I could drive around in this fast, dangerous machine and never get hurt.  And now that delusion has been dashed.

It is sort of the opposite of (but the same as) a story that I love to tell about one of my nephews playing basketball (when he was seven, which is very cute).  It was the last game of the season and the only one I had been able to get to, so my mom and sister were giving me a synopsis, which was that Harrison had pretty much spent the whole season trying not to get the ball and when he got it, to get rid of it as soon as possible because he didn’t think he could make a basket.  In this last game, some of their stronger players weren’t there, so he didn’t have as much of a choice and, lo and behold, he did end up making a basket.  Well, he was like a completely different kid for the rest of the game—getting the ball, trying to get down court, he even ended up making another basket.  The shift was so clear to me:  he went from being Someone who Couldn’t Make a Basket to Someone who Could Make a Basket in that one instant.  We just need to experience something once to know it is possible.

So now I know that me being in a car accident is possible.  And while that is scary, it also helps me remember that anything is possible.  And that given the choice, I want to be open to possibility, which means moving toward life rather than away from it, even though there is a risk I could get hurt.  I guess it may all sound a little hallmark card or something, but acknowledging these sorts of insights when we have an actual experience of them (vs. them just being a nice idea) seems important in really letting them sink in.

How does this fit with yoga?  Well, I can only get something out of this experience through self-inquiry (svadhyaya), ego (ahankara) is involved, and it certainly seems to be related to abhinivesha (fear of death).  But really what comes to mind is something I was saying this weekend at a training, which doesn’t have a word that goes with it, but is expressed with a gesture.  I was saying, “Yoga goes like this” (imagine me starting with my hands together and then pointing them diagonally out and moving them forward, out and away) “not like this” (imagine me starting with my hands apart and then pointing them diagonally in and moving them forward, in and together).  Yoga helps us be more expansive instead of contracted.  Sounds good to me.

My Little Teacher

It started last Tuesday when I was on teacher training.  It was evening time, not yet dark, and I was in my room and there was this intermittent strange noise, part thud, part scraping, but pretty loud, like it was happening just outside my room.  Sure enough, when I looked out the door to the little balcony, there was a bird sitting on a rafter there a few feet from me.  Yes, that was definitely a bird sort of noise.  It seemed he was trying to fly through the tiny little triangular window up near the ceiling.

Well, this went on for the next couple days until teacher training was over and I came home.  For all I know, he is still there doing the same thing.  As I gathered more information about what was happening, I concluded that he was trying to land on the little tiny sill outside the window, but there wasn’t room for him there.  He spent hours and hours flying back and forth, hitting his little head on the window sometimes, flapping his wings, trying to grab on. 

At first, it was really annoying.  He woke me up those last few mornings between 4:53 and 5:10.  But mostly I felt sorry for him.  And my main thought was, “Please, Lord, don’t let me be like this bird.”  I really don’t want to be someone stuck in a pattern, just doing the same thing over and over again without the awareness or willingness to try something different, hitting my head against the wall.

Around that same time, I was reading in one of Brené Brown’s books about the difference between sympathy and empathy—that sympathy creates distance and empathy creates connection.  That fits right in with my own understanding of yoga, which is another word for connection.  It is so much more useful to see how we are the same and how even when I haven’t had the exact experience someone else has had, that I have had similar experiences that help me to understand the other person instead of just saying “poor you” (glad I don’t have to worry about that because you are so different from me).

Brené talks about how frustrating it can be to have a conversation with someone who wants understanding while insisting that you can’t understand.  I recently had a conversation like that.  It felt to me like this other person was so focused on our differences that there was no way to bridge the gap.  I totally could have handled it better, stayed more spacious.  I felt a little bit like we were both stuck in our own habits of thinking or acting.  It didn’t feel good and it didn’t get us anywhere.

Part of the reason listening to that bird was so painful to me is that I know what that experience is like.  I am really sorry that that little bird was having that experience.  And I am grateful that he came along to be my teacher.  Having that image in my mind is very helpful to me in thinking about who and how I want to be.  Not getting stuck is not just an idea—I just picture and hear that bird and I feel motivated to do whatever I can to keep growing.

My New Definition of Stuck

I have always thought of raga and dvesha (attraction and aversion) as two forces that pull in opposite directions, creating a feeling of getting tossed around.  At my first Somatic Experiencing training a month ago, the teacher talked about impulse and inhibition and how we are more or less constantly living in this place of having an impulse and then stopping ourselves from following it.  This is not good or bad, but is a fact of life.  Socially speaking, it serves a purpose for sure.  How would things work if we followed all of our impulses without consideration of the consequences?

And it is interesting to look at that place where impulse and inhibition meet.  As I started to look at this in myself and to practice my SE skills with some willing volunteers, I kept seeing this dynamic between impulse and inhibition arise.  And it usually appeared as a feeling of being “stuck.”  I feel like I am a person who has a lot of experience with “stuck,” but I was suddenly having a whole new understanding of what it is.  I had always thought of stuck as a feeling of being constricted, either by something outside of me or inside of me, that it was a unidirectional.  But what I think actually creates the feeling of stuck is that there is an impulse or desire to do something AND something stopping it, so there are actually two forces at work.  I’m not sure why I always thought that being stuck was sort of passive—it seems clear to me now that I only feel stuck if I am wanting to do something and perceive that I can’t somehow.  This feels like a really important discovery for me—maybe some of you other stuck people can let me know what you think.

So when I was thinking about how this relates to yoga concepts, I thought about raga and dvesha.  These opposing forces might pull on a person, but maybe they can also push on a person.  Or maybe both raga and dvesha manifest as impulses and our yogic ideas of how we should be are the inhibition.  Well, I guess that’s it.  Seems kind of anti-climactic.

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

I was having a discussion recently with a friend about the ideas of duality and non-duality—different branches and texts associated with yoga tend to describe things in one of these two ways.  It is funny that the “non-dualists,” who propose that all is one have to describe themselves as NON-dualists, that is, “we are this, not that,” which is, of course, dualistic.

I can see why it is difficult to take a non-dualistic view, even for some who identify as non-dualist.  It seems to be the natural thing our minds want to do—to put things into categories, especially the good/bad categories, which also manifest as I like/I don’t like and pleasant/unpleasant.  I’m not sure this can really be avoided (and really, even wanting to puts us back into dualistic thinking).  OK, I’m trying not to get to heady here.  The fact of the matter is that nature is full of pairs of opposites (or perhaps we could say complements)—night and day, hot and cold, etc.  To say this isn’t true or that one side is true and the other isn’t just seems silly.  It’s that whole yin and yang thing—both sides are part of the whole. 

I’m remembering a workshop with Daniel Siegel, the big brain guy, where he talked a lot about integration and that integration requires differentiating the parts and then bringing them together.  For him, integration is the hallmark of well-being (I feel like I’ve talked about this before in the blog, but oh well).  So, it seems like “non-dualism” is a matter of stepping back far enough to see the big picture and how the two parts relate to each other and are actually inextricable.

So, just for example, our dog, Maggie, is really cute and a really good dog overall and brings me a lot of happiness just in being who she is.  I like her.  And today, she just kept barking and growling all morning—there must have been something going on outside that was out of my hearing or something.  She was driving me crazy and I was getting really irritated.  I didn’t like her.  Both sides exist.  I challenge you to find someone that you like 100% of the time.  For most of us, the opposite is a little more difficult to see because we are conditioned to look for what we don’t like mostly, but if I think of someone I don’t like, I can find something about them that I do like or can appreciate or even something that I don’t dislike quite as much.  The two things are intertwined—two sides of the same coin.  Think about that phrase, “two sides of the same coin.”  The two sides are distinct and yet together they make the whole.  To me, that’s non-dualism.  It’s not picking one side and just saying that the other side isn’t there or something.

So who cares?  What does this have to do with anything?  Well, I can just speak for myself.  I don’t really think it matters what you call it, but in my experience, when I can hold opposing viewpoints or perspectives, when I can accept the complexity and multidimensionality of any person, object, experience or situation, I have more peace.  I have less compulsion to do something, to get something, to get away from something, to make things different.  This ultimately results in fewer waves in my mind (citta vrtti in yogaspeak).  I am not caught so much in the push and pull of raga and dvesha (attraction and aversion).  It may seem counterintuitive that by acknowledging the attraction and aversion inherent in all things, inherent in life, they have less power over me, but that is how it works.  (And by the way, that’s how it works with everything—it’s the things we don’t acknowledge that keep us trapped).

In the spirit of “keepin’ it real,” I will offer you something practical:  a favorite Samarya game called Upside/Downside.  Just spend a day looking for the upside and downside of everything and see what happens.  Like right now for me:  boy, this dinner is taking a lot longer to cook than I thought.  The upside is that my husband is getting home much later than he was planning, so dinner is not sitting around waiting for him getting cold or getting overcooked.  The downside is that I am hungry and I am tired of cooking dinner.  I’d love to hear from you about how this little activity goes.

As I was writing, two quotes came to mind, so I’ll put them here:

The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.  –Anne Lamott  (I’ve been thinking of that one a lot lately and this seems like as good a time as any to share it)

All men are deceived by the appearances of things, even Homer himself, who was the wisest man in Greece; for he was deceived by boys catching lice: they said to him, “What we have caught and what we have killed we have left behind, but what has escaped us we bring with us.” –Heraclitus (the epigraph in a book of poetry by W. S. Merwin)

Since Leaving the Jury Room

I have been thinking a lot about responsibility since my jury experience.  While I have a great deal of compassion for people’s suffering and struggles, I do believe that we are responsible for our actions.  And I think we have a responsibility as a society to the members of our society.  We are interconnected and need to support and care for one another.  It seems that many of the problems we face today arise from our ability to disconnect from each other and from the consequences of our choices.

I don’t think punishment works.  I don’t think it works with kids and I don’t think it works with adults convicted of crimes.  It doesn’t promote healing, learning, growth or transformation.  Nevermind the death penalty, which is completely horrifying.  So here I am, sitting on a bench in this courtroom thinking about my participation in this whole thing.  I’m feeling very uneasy about the fact that I could be making a decision that would at worst kill someone and at best take away a big chunk of his life in a meaningless sort of way.  What we are told is that our job is only to determine the facts of the case and whether or not the defendant is guilty of the crime.  Essentially, we are to compartmentalize our role in the process and not worry our pretty little heads about what happens after we are done.

This doesn’t feel good to me.  I have put a lot of work into getting more connected not less.  But I have this very strong undeniable sense that “getting out” of this based on these thoughts and feelings (if I could) would be exactly the same thing.  I see that not being on the jury does not disconnect me from what is happening, the same way not being the judge does not disconnect me from the sentence.  On the jury or off, I am connected to this.

Now, for the record, while I don’t know much about other countries’ judicial systems, I feel pretty sure that ours is better than most.  But it has problems.  For instance, this young man on trial had a lawyer who seemed so much less capable than the prosecuting attorney, I assume because he couldn’t afford anyone better.  That doesn’t seem fair.  I probably have fewer issues with the judicial system than "correctional" system, but I guess the point of this whole post is that it is all connected.

I don’t have an answer or any way to tie this all up.  I just looked up “responsibility” in the online Sanskrit dictionary and “no results were found.”  I’m quite sure that doesn’t mean that there was no notion of responsibility in ancient India, but that it was conceptualized differently.  For me, the whole practice of yoga leads to me taking responsibility for my own actions, my own life, to stop projecting things outward and look inward to see what is going on.  Perhaps this post is about karma, the law of action and reaction—whatever I do, there is a consequence.  I also think of avidya (ignorance), the first klesha (obstacle to happiness or cause of suffering).  Ignorance is not seeing that everything is connected in essence.  Dharma—I just thought of dharma—that is one form of responsibility.  That is the question I have been wrestling with.  What is my duty, my responsibility, the right thing to do?

I don’t know.  But coincidentally, the movie that arrived in my mailbox recently was a documentary called What I Want My Words to Do to You about Eve Ensler doing a writing group in a women’s prison.  It did reinforce for me that people are beautiful and full of potential.  Maybe I will get involved with teaching yoga in prison or something.  I just made a donation to the Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.  I wouldn’t have thought when I went to the courthouse last Monday that it would lead me here.

Tales from Juror #41

I was dismissed today after three days of jury selection for a murder trial that was expected to go until the middle of April. I feel like there has been a lot of blog material this week!

I had already been thinking about what I wrote in the last blog about saying what I want and how that is completely unrelated to thinking I should or will get what I want or especially that someone else should do or give me what I want. It is important to recognize my wants because they are part of my real experience as a real human, but not things should be the way I want them. On my way home today, I could really feel all the tension that had been building for me in the last few days and was suddenly aware of how much energy I had been spending on analyzing and trying to determine what I wanted. Part of me wanted to be on that jury as an escape from my regular life and part of me wanted to be on the jury because it would be a fascinating experience and part of me wanted to be dismissed because it would mean I would miss a training that I have been looking forward to for months and part of me wanted to be dismissed because I just wanted to go back to my regular routine.

But this whole thing had absolutely nothing to do with what I wanted. I got summoned and had a responsibility to meet; I took an oath and one of the reasons for dismissal was not “I don’t want to,” so I was just in the process waiting to see what would happen and it completely didn’t matter what I wanted. That is, it didn’t matter in terms of the external goings-on. It was useful and is useful still as I come down from the whole thing to know what is going on inside. There were moments when I considered exaggerating the truth; I spent time “strategizing” ways to appear partial. But because I was aware of my internal processes, I could keep them separate from my duty in the moment and not act on them. This leaves me with a feeling of integrity, which is nice.

Raga is one of the obstacles to happiness. It means desire or attachment. I would say it’s not desire that is the problem exactly. It’s thinking that I can only be happy when my desires are met and chasing after those desires that really causes suffering. It’s possible to want something and enjoy the wanting and even enjoy trying to meet the want without thinking that whether or not I get it means something about me or my life, that things really need to be a certain way or that there should be a certain outcome.

And besides, I would suspect that a lot of the time we actually want multiple, possibly conflicting things anyway, like me and jury duty. When I acknowledge all of my wants in that situation, then whatever happens is okay—part of me is relieved and part of me is disappointed and all of me is okay.

Connection

I feel like I’ve made a few big discoveries lately.  But like most big discoveries, they don’t really sound like all that much when you say them out loud or write them down.  They’re what we might call “universal truths”—something you discover more than invent yourself, something that many great seekers and thinkers and teachers have said in lots of different ways.  Something I already know, but suddenly I know it more.

1) when I am feeling something and then start to figure out why or what it’s about or what I should do about it, I have left myself

2) when I express what I want or how I am feeling, it creates connection rather than separation (which is what I think I have believed)

I have been very moved by this woman named Brené Brown who is a social worker (yay!) and researcher of things like shame and vulnerability.

Here is her Ted talk.

And here is a link to her blog.

I decided to start reading her blog from the beginning, which is a few years worth, and every time, I feel like I am going to start crying.  I am not sure what it is exactly and I am not trying to figure it out.  I am just feeling it.  One of my sweet students lent me her book, which I am saving for Monday when I have jury duty (we’ll see if that turns out to be a good idea), and said she sounds like me.  That’s because she’s talking about those universal truths.

Anyway, I don’t really have much to say.  And I guess the way this ties into yoga is that one translation (my favorite) of the word yoga is connection.  I just wanted to say hi.

Right Action

Earlier this week, I noticed that one of the big five-gallon water bottles at the yoga center was leaking—there was just a small ring of water underneath as it was sitting on the floor.  I tipped it on its side and put a towel there.  Later, I told one other person about it.  (I’m still unclear why I didn’t put a note on the bottle).  When I came in yesterday, I saw that someone had put the bottle up on the dispenser thing and thought, “Oh great.”  I went over to inspect the situation and it wasn’t spilling over (which is what happens where there is a whole in the bottle and thus no vacuum), so I just went about my business.  This morning, everything was wet and someone had tried to assist by putting a bucket underneath to catch the drip.

What’s interesting to me about this is that I knew that was going to happen, but I didn’t want it to be true, so I just interpreted things as I wanted them to be instead of clearly perceiving them as they were.  I was just talking the other day about dharma in yoga class, using the broad definition of “right action,” and was saying, I think, that our yoga practice helps us develop the clarity to see what the right action in any given moment is, and also the strength to do it.  I said that it seems like often we do know what we should do, but for lots of different reasons, choose something else.  And then I got to see these very things happen with my own self just a couple days later.  Now, obviously, the leaking water bottle is not a big deal, but it pointed out to me internal processes that I know I do in other places in my life.  Sometimes I just see what I want to see.  Sometimes I take the easy way. 

The great thing is that in every moment we have the chance to again choose right action.  I removed the bottle and dumped the bucket and moved things so I could lift the rug so it would get more air and dry.  And although I did have a little frustration with myself that I could have avoided the whole thing, I didn’t say anything mean to myself or “should” on myself.  And that is definitely right action.

When in Doubt, Do Nothing

Perhaps you can tell by now that one of my struggles in general is getting myself to do things.  One of my main strategies in life has been to just wait things out—whatever the feeling, desire, inclination, if I just wait long enough it will go away.  So last week, I was in a little bit of a state of inner turmoil about a certain situation.  Everyone knows this place—getting tossed back and forth with all the questions that don’t really have simple kinds of answers but mostly serve just to get a person upset and confused.  Pretty soon I’m feeling bad and thinking that I need to FIGURE THIS OUT so I can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.  Now, while I’m sort of paralyzed by urgency, I get hit with the “you never do anything about anything, you just wait around” finger pointing.  Why is that voice in my head so mean?

This is what we call in yoga “chitta vrtti,” the movements or fluctuations of the mindstuff.  According to Patanjali, yoga is the restraining, directing or stilling of these chitta vrttis.  When this happens, we can see things clearly, including our own true nature.  (This is all in the first couple verses of the Yoga Sutra).  It’s often compared to a lake and since the image works so well, I’ll use it here.  When the surface of the lake is full of waves, it is hard to see the bottom—the waves stir up sand and sediment and make things muddy.  But when the lake is still, the water is clear and we can see the bottom easily.

So in the midst of my storm of chitta vrttis, I heard someone say, “When in doubt, do nothing.”  I am sure I have heard this before and it just went right past me with an “of course” (because it fits so nicely with my habitual behavior patterns).  But this time, I heard it differently.  It doesn’t mean that doing nothing is preferable, it means that WHEN YOU ARE IN DOUBT, it’s not a good time to do something.  I really could feel the truth of how when I am all confused or panicked, I’m just guessing at what to do and trying to use the very mind that is creating the confusion to figure out the answer to the confusion.  This is going to add another whole mess of chitta vrttis to ripple out across the lake and stir up more trouble.  This is the time to sit still.  By sitting still, I can allow all the muck to settle and eventually begin to see more clearly. 

The real kicker is that while my mind is getting me all riled up about doing something about a situation, the main thing I really need to do something about is my mind.  The confusion and doubt is an entirely separate thing from the actual situation—it’s just what my mind is doing.  Oh mind, just stick to the things you are useful for, like adding numbers, reading words, remembering how to drive a car and so many other harmless and beneficial things—you don’t need another job.  You’re fired.

Structure and Fluidity

So it’s really been a whole month since I posted!  So many potential topics have come and gone—long-distance skype kirtaning, broken guitar strings, jiffy lube, educational standards, group process, airplane rides, holidays, the new year, focusing, etc.  So what’s happening now?  Well, in some ways, I am still thinking about the same things I was a month ago—I was just telling some friends last night that I am more convinced than ever that commitments are the secret to life.

I took the last week off from working at The Samarya Center so I could work at home on my book, which has been taking a back seat for quite a while.  It was awesome.  I created a structure and stuck to it and was pleased with how much I got done.  So I made a list of things I wanted to do over the weekend, and though it was quite long, I felt optimistic about being able to do it because I was feeling so productive.  When I just decide to do something and don’t have all the internal discussion about it (do I want to do it, am I going to do it, etc.), I have so much more energy to actually do stuff.  It went great yesterday—I did a number of things on my list and still had time for my nephew’s basketball game and some relaxation (which, of course, is often one of the other discussion topics—if I do this, will I have time for this other thing?).

So today, I woke up with appreciation for my re-discovered appreciation for structure and no doubt that I would complete my weekend’s tasks.  I am master of my own fate, a task-completing machine, yes!  What I didn’t take into account is that other people exist in my universe and life is out of my control.  So I spent most of the afternoon helping my husband fix our leaky kitchen faucet and grocery shopping.  While we were out and about at Lowe’s and Trader Joe’s, I could feel my inner control freak doing what she does best—freaking out.  She was not enjoying the fact that her plans were being so callously ignored. 

I managed to keep my cool (sort of).  I don’t want to live my life feeling incompetent and not accomplishing the things I want to do because I never get around to them.  And I also don’t want to be so attached to my plans and lists and schedules that I can’t go with the flow of life.  Somewhere in the middle, there’s a balance.  So I think two of my words for 2011 are going to be structure and fluidity.  It’s sort of like abhyasa (practice) and vairagya (non-attachment).  Discipline and commitment to practice create the structure that gets things done, but non-attachment allows me not to get stuck, which happens to be something I am very good at.  I’m sure we’ll have more coming down the pike on these subjects.

So, now that I have written this blog post, I can cross off 2 out the 5 things I had left on my list today.  I’m sure I can do the rest in the next couple days.  Not too bad.