Cultivating Generosity

It’s aparigraha month at The Samarya Center.  Aparigraha is non-grasping, non-hoarding, non-greed, non-accumulation of material things.  One of the qualities I don’t admire in myself very much is stinginess.  I’ve been thinking about the difference between greed and stinginess because I don’t think greediness is one of my main issues (to me, that’s about trying to get a lot, grabbing after and collecting up money or stuff or whatever).  But one of the opposites of greed would be generosity and one of the opposites of generosity would be stinginess.  Stinginess is not so much about accumulation, but about holding on tightly to what you have.  Greed implies having a lot (which is relative of course), but a person can have not much and still be stingy.

I have been reading a marketing book lately and the author repeatedly states that you have to give people value, whether they are clients, potential clients, professionals in your network or anyone else that you want to connect with.  That means you have to “give people value” before they are paying you (or if they never pay you).  Now I agree with this 100%.  You can’t be afraid of doing things for free—you show people what you know and can do and that’s what makes them want to work with you.  I’m on board . . . to a point.  That’s what I realized.  I want to give value and be generous, but there is part of me that wants to hold something back to make sure that I still have something to give.  I don’t want to give all the information (or whatever else) because what if next time I don’t have anything else to say.

Holding on seems to be about fear.  This feeling that I have to parse things out so I can save something for the future, just in case, is fear.  I would rather trust that there is enough, that I will learn more, earn more, have more.  And, I will say, I have gotten a lot better at that.  I’m just bumping up against the next edge.  The only thing that is coming to me right now in terms of practicing is:  to notice when I am holding back or holding on, when I am feeling reluctant to share, and then share anyway, give a little more.  For many years, I have used tipping in restaurants as a way to practice this.

So, in the spirit of cultivating generosity in myself and giving value, I recently developed a free online resource.  At the risk of sounding like a cheesy self-help book, I call it 5 Simple Activities to Help You Feel Better . . . Right Now.  Get more info here.  

Oh Rain

I’m just opening this up and putting my fingers on the keyboard and hoping something will happen.  After a few days of sunshine, it’s raining again.  My experience is that the sunny days make the rain not so bad.  And I am sure there are folks out there thinking that the rain coming back just shows how nothing good ever lasts.  Either way, it’s raining.  How I’m feeling today has less to do with the rain than with what I say to myself about the rain. 

I was recently having a conversation about affirmations with a group of therapists, about how a lot of times, affirmations are a load of crap.  I don’t really think the answer to feeling more okay with ourselves and life is lying to ourselves.  I don’t think the point of yoga or life is to like everything, to be happy all the time, to never get irritated and I think that this is one of the biggest misunderstandings about yoga and other spiritual pursuits.  Personally, I want to become more human, not less human.

There are a number of yoga concepts that seem to fit with this conversation.  Satya is the practice of being in reality—the reality is that it is raining and that, even though it seems more tolerable because we’ve had some sun, I’d still prefer that it were sunny today, and there is not a darn thing I can do about the weather.  Santosha always seems close to satya.  It’s the practice of contentment.  Notice that it is a practice, not just something I’m supposed to be.  Can I realize that I’m okay, my life is okay, even though it’s raining?  Can I even enjoy the daffodils’ sunny little faces and the tulips that are getting ready and know that the rain is part of what makes them possible?  I don’t have to be glad it’s raining to be able to find something to appreciate or be grateful for.

Finally, I’m thinking of pratipaksha bhavanam or cultivating the opposite.  This is the one that can be confusing and really fits with what I was saying about affirmations.  Patanjali is not saying that if I am bummed it’s raining out, I should just tell myself I’m not and that will help me experience yoga.  It’s possible to acknowledge my own real experience, whatever it is (whether it seems “yogic” or not) AND, at the same time, see if I can look at things from another perspective, which is a little like the examples I was giving for santosha. 

Do I want to spend more time feeling good than feeling bad?  Yes.  Do I want to feel like I don’t get emotionally tossed around by every little thing that happens on the outside?  Yes.  Do I want to be flatlined or some happy yoga robot?  No.  If my sense of well-being is not dependent on things outside of myself, it’s actually easier to own the fact that I have likes and dislikes.  Imagine:  you could even enjoy not liking something.  Could be fun.

Mindstuff

So the night before last, I was awake all night.  I had a headache and it wasn’t letting me sleep.  One of the interesting things I noticed was about the “thoughts” I was “thinking.”  My husband and I had spent the whole evening talking about a job-related decision he had to make—we had covered all the ins and outs and ups and downs.  Then finally we went to bed.  I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be sleeping because of my head and that he wasn’t going to be sleeping because of this decision.  All through the night, the main activity I would notice in my mind was “thinking” about all of the various things my husband and I had been talking about.  I keep putting quotation marks around the word thinking because what I realized was that I wasn’t really thinking.  It was just words and phrases and images flashing through my mind.  I wasn’t producing them or doing anything with them, they were just there.  But I could see how easy it could be to label it as worry or anxiety—if it had been my own decision rather than my husband's, I surely would have called it anxiety and I think I very well might have jumped right in and started wrestling with those “thoughts,” trying to go over everything one more time and sort things out.  But instead it was just what my mind was doing and really wasn’t very different at all from the pain I was experiencing physically.  Both the thoughts and sensations were just happening, moving, fluctuating, with nothing at all to do with “me.”

Patanjali’s definition of yoga is something like the “restraint of the modifications of the mindstuff.”  You always hear this term mindstuff.  I always thought it was kind of funny and maybe sort of understood why people would use this term, but I feel like I get it a little bit more.  "Mind" sounds like an entity, an object (though it isn't really), but "mindstuff" is the stuff of the mind, which is all this activity that we usually call "thoughts" only that doesn't seem like the right word because it implies thinking (which to me is a more active process than what's happening all the time in the mindstuff).  I’ve also heard an interpretation of this sutra (maybe from Jivamukti?) that says yoga is disidentification with the modifications of the mindstuff.  I think that’s what I got a clear taste of lying there in bed—not just not engaging with these thoughts but really seeing them as something completely separate from me.  Which is why, I guess, Patanjali goes on to say that when we do this, we know our own true nature.  I’ll leave you with this really great quote I just read by Wei Wu Wei:  “Why do you suffer? Because 99.9% of everything you think and everything you do is for yourself and there isn’t one.”

Process Update

So right at this moment, I am basking in the amazingness of what happens when we don’t think we already know what’s going to happen or that we have to make something happen or that things have to hurry up.  Things will unfold and, because as a human I am so limited, chances are that they are going to unfold in ways I don’t expect or couldn’t even really imagine—life is so much bigger than me.

In class this week, I was framing my current experience within the context of brahmacharya, which has a lot of meanings from celibacy to moderation.  What I have been thinking about is the idea of restraint, of not following the first impulsive idea that comes into my head—refraining, which is maybe something like containing, which I suddenly realize as I am writing this is related to continence, which is, in fact, another term used for brahmacharya (in case you thought I was making this up).  In practicing refraining from following my habitual patterns or just trying to get out of discomfort, I make room for something bigger to happen and don’t spend a lot of extra energy trying to clean up the messes I make when I react impulsively or regretting my actions.

Now, maybe the most interesting part of all this is that I don’t really think of myself as someone who has trouble with restraint.  On the spectrum of possibilities, I am closer to restrained end than the impulsive end.  So what I am talking about here is not holding back, suppressing or not acting in order to wait something out so it will be over (all of which I do sometimes).  I think it’s more about containing the behavior of the small “s” self (the individual, separate person), so that more possibilities become available.  I am refraining from doing something to get out of this moment that I am in right now.  I realize that restraining/refraining/containing may not sound like that much fun, but I’m telling you it’s good.  

The Process of Process

I have had some big stuff going on in my life and I have been trying to stay with the process of it, rather than jumping to the conclusion, which maybe has been my pattern in the past.  Well, I’m pretty sure it has been because the pull that way is really strong.  If I think I know how this is going to turn out in the end, then why don’t I just do that now so I can “get on” with things?  If I follow this through, I can see that it could lead toward missing out on life by just trying to get on with it.

So I have actually been feeling proud of myself for being able to stay in the process, which means being in uncertainty and resisting the desire to know what’s going to happen.  It’s been pretty amazing.  Just this week, I realized that when I’m in process, everything is included vs. when I’m focused on the outcome, I view most of what is happening as off-topic, distracting, getting in my way, etc.  That is kind of cool.  When I’m in that process place, I feel like my consciousness is literally getting bigger, I am stepping back and taking more in, becoming more spacious.  It feels like something good and important is happening.  But it can be kind of uncomfortable to feel like you are being stretched like that.  Sometimes I think I can’t handle it. 

In fact, just a couple days ago I thought, “F**k process.”  It never ends!  I just feel like I’ll never know what to do or just never do anything if I stay in this process of awareness and acceptance and presence.  I can feel it right now.  It makes me want to yell. 

It has taken a lot of tapa (effort, discipline) to do what I’ve been doing.  In the Yoga Sutras, tapa is grouped with svadhyaya (self-study) and ishvara pranidhana (surrender or devotion to God).  For sure, there has been a lot of self-study in going slow and paying attention rather than just forging ahead toward an end result.  The surrender part seems like it has to do with accepting the fact that I am not in control.  I could make a decision and do something, which would give the illusion of control, but he only real control comes from seeing what’s really happening.  Also, I guess the fact that we can’t be in a place of effort all the time.  It’s not sustainable.  So sometimes I just have to let go and surrender to the doubts and confusion and frustration, to just allow all of my reactions and responses to be there.  And that’s all part of the process.  See how that works?  Process swallows everything up.  There is nothing outside of process, which is starting to sound like another word for life.  So even though sometimes I find it infuriating, mostly I think it is great.

Having a Choice

Today I am feeling a little grumpy.  I could talk about why, what’s bothering me, how things aren’t the way they are supposed to be.  That would be easy to do because when in a bad mood, everything gets colored by that, the mind wants to keep focusing on what’s wrong.  But what’s interesting to me is what happens next with it.

I went to the grocery store and because I didn’t feel like shopping and nothing really looked that great (because of my mood), I did a crappy job.  I spent about half as much as usual, which means I got roughly half as much stuff, which means that now I can continue to be grumpy all week long when there is nothing to eat.  I really believe every moment is a chance to turn things around.  If I had been at the store focusing on what would really help this person out, what would nurture and care for her, I would have been setting the stage for a better week. 

So in yoga thinking, we have the idea of karma, which is basically the law of cause and effect.  What’s happening now is the result of things that have happened in the past and what we are doing now is leading to what will happen in the future.  This means that every choice I make is important and is planting seeds what will sooner or later grow. 

It can be hard not to get down on yourself when you are watching yourself do something that is not so great.  It could even make a person want to just stop being aware, to go unconscious, so you don’t have to see it.  But if I see it, then there is a chance I will make a different choice and that seems worth it.

I read this great quote by Victor Frankl on the website of a fellow therapist and yoga teacher:  “Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

I Love the Internet

Today, I am thinking about things I love and at the top of the list is the internet.  Which is pretty timely (though I don’t use the internet really to keep up on politics and news, but I happen to know that there is something going on about this right now).  Anyway, let me tell you about my happy findings.

I love Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology, which I think you can read in The Stranger, but I read on the internet.  This week, my horoscope quoted a poem that moved me so much, I’m going to put the whole thing right here:

FAMOUS 
by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

I am also putting the link that was in my horoscope, that takes you to a whole blog of poetry.  There’s some good stuff in there.  And it reminded me that I love poetry and I love being moved. 

And then, just now, before I started typing this, I was reading another blog that someone told me about, which is very funny in a dark and vulnerable way.  And I was thinking I love humor and vulnerability and creativity.

So today, I’m just enjoying enjoyment, enjoying gratitude and love and appreciation.  I always associate gratitude with santosha (contentment).  Which reminds me of another blog on this wonderful thing called the internet, where we get to connect with all kinds of people we don’t even know and share ideas and bits about ourselves and make all kinds of cool discoveries.