Blame No One

In November, 2011, Amma came to visit the US.  She comes every November and just makes a couple stops (not like her huge summer tour), but as 9/11 had just happened, we weren’t sure she would be able to come.  But she did.  During the retreat’s Q&A, I think someone asked about the situation and she said, among other things, “Blame no one.”  I have remembered that sentence clearly ever since.  Blame no one.

At 6pm this past Sunday, I was standing at the Snohomish Little League field.  It took me an hour to get there (including the time I spent lost) and, much to my dismay, when I looked around, I saw no purple uniforms anywhere.  Which means my nephew’s all-star team wasn’t there.  I called my mom only to find out not only was at this field at the wrong time, I had missed another game that was actually closer to home.  There was a wave of sadness followed by a wave of anger.  I was very frustrated.  But somehow, I didn’t go to blame.  I didn’t blame my mom, myself or anybody else.

I could see quite clearly what my part in it was.  I had completely misinterpreted the text message my mom had sent by making assumptions and I didn’t reply.  In that moment, I saw how I often don’t respond to others’ communications in a timely way or at all and how that causes difficulty (always easier to see when it causes difficulty for me).  But it didn’t need to be my “fault.” 

There is a difference between blame and responsibility.  Not blaming doesn’t eliminate responsibility; it’s just that there are usually so many factors involved in any one thing happening that it just doesn’t really make sense for it to be all somebody’s fault.  It makes it seems like we have more control than we do.  But I can see my part—I can see how I contributed.  And in a weird way, that actually feels good (as opposed to blame, which pretty much always feels bad).  When something happens and I ask “What’s my part in this?” I can learn something.  So not blaming seems like one of the many ways to practice ahimsa (non-violence), which allows us to practice svadhyaya (self-study) because it is so much easier to look at myself when I'm not going to get hit with blame, shame and judgment.

Delusional

Sometimes I can hardly bear being at the gym.  There are lots of things there that might cause this reaction, but the thing that drives me nuts is seeing all the crazy things people do thinking that they are getting a better workout.  Putting extra weight on the machine, more resistance on the stairmaster, more incline on the treadmill, then contorting themselves into weird positions to make it work.  It just seems delusional.  And, sadly, it seems so darn representative of the general delusional nature of our society—just a giant disconnect in the quest for results.

So the question this brings up for me is “where am I delusional?”  I too have blindspots where I am contorting myself into false realities—where are they?  When I start looking, I feel like I see them everywhere.  Virtually all the time, I am thinking that something should be different than it is.  It is quite incredible how little time I spend in the reality of the present moment.  I should be happier, I should have more clients, I should write more, my marriage should be different, I should wake up earlier, I should have gone for a bike ride instead of coming to the gym.  This is delusion—I just looked it up in the dictionary.  Delude means to deceive the mind.  Delusion means a false belief or opinion.  Since the Buddha and the ancient yogis talk about delusion, we can know that it something that we humans do, but it does seem like perhaps Americans have taken it to a whole new level (watch the movie Inside Job about the 2008 financial fiasco if you’re not sure).

I do like having a visual though.  When I catch myself shoulding, I can picture those folks at the gym and remember how ridiculous it is to deny reality.

Conquering Dualities

Boy, I have been meaning to post for a while.  I have been interested lately in a certain duality that seems to come up frequently for me.  I noticed some weeks ago how funny my obsession with getting the best parking spot by my office is.  I get so happy when one of the very closest non-time-limited spots is available and can be weirdly dejected when I have to park a block away (oh, woe is me).  When I notice this, it seems silly, which flips me over to the other side of the duality—it doesn’t matter and/or I don’t care. 

Now, I’m seeing this process everywhere.  Like I usually eat a salad for lunch that is a lot the same from day to day, but there are some ingredients that are crucial while others are more variable.  The other day, I left off the toasted sunflower seeds (which fall into the crucial category) and I was very focused on the lack until I switched to the it-doesn’t-really-matter line, trying to convince myself that the salad was just fine.  Which, of course, it was AND it would have been better with the sunflower seeds.

We ended up talking about this a lot on the recent yoga teacher training—the idea that two seemingly opposing ideas can both be true and also that there is a vast area between “everything has to be exactly so” and “I don’t care” (it’s not either/or, it’s a spectrum of gray).  While parking places and salads can feel important to me in a given moment, it’s not hard for me to realize that they don’t have a very big impact really and also that it’s okay for me to have preferences.  There are other things, big things, that really do seem important, like environmental destruction or poverty, which make the duality more interesting.  When I find myself in the “it doesn’t matter” place with these, it becomes clear that this is a coping strategy—I feel so helpless or overwhelmed, that I just want to give up or check out.  The helplessness arises directly out of the sense that this thing is so important that it has to change now and it’s up to me.  If I didn’t swing so far one way, I wouldn’t swing so far the other. 

There is a commonly quoted yoga sutra, sthirasukhamasanam, which is usually translated as something like, “One’s posture should be steady and comfortable.”  Donna Farhi has a translation I love:  “Through steadfastly abiding in the part of the self that is unchanging, one finds ease within the posture of the moment.”  People talk less about one of the sutras that follows (2.48) that describes the result—if you are able to be steady and comfortable in your pose, you conquer dualities.  It makes sense to me; if I am able to transcend or integrate opposites in my posture, this will lead the way to doing it in other parts of my life.  This middle way is not rejecting either side, but embracing them both.  I feel like I’ve been sitting with this koan, “How can something be important and not important at the same time?”  I say it’s a koan because I feel like I’m getting to understand it, but I can’t really explain it to you.  

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.