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.