The Simplicity of Trees...

I keep thinking back these days to the very first time I encountered what could be called a spiritual teaching. Well, maybe it wasn't the first time I encountered one, but it was the first time I encountered one that encountered me, back.

I was twenty-four. I was miserable. I was miserable primarily because I was feeling like a failure as an actress, but I was also miserable in much deeper ways, ways that I couldn't quite understand. I just knew that some days I felt happy and some days I didn't and the days I didn't were nearly as many (and oftentimes more) than the days I did. And I had a friend, a woman many years older than me, who said to me one day, very simply, hey, there's something I think you should hear, and she introduced me to some teachings. Just some audio-cassettes of a teacher that she followed, giving a seminar.

We listened to them in her car as we drove around near her home in upstate New York.

I don't remember, honestly, if I was skeptical going into it. I don't think I had expectations one way or the other. I hadn't been exposed to much, other than my brief brush with Episcopalianism when I was young, but I wasn't naive, and usually I was wary of such things. In fact, as a teenager and early twenty-something I prided myself on my skepticism.  I mean, I have no idea how I appeared to the outside world, but in my head I was a chain-smoking no-nonsense fuck-you-guys kind of chick. (On the inside, I didn't like myself very much, but that's another story). Point being, I wasn't starry-eyed, you know? I wasn't looking for some solution. I had no thought in my head that what I was about to listen to would be anything other than...interesting.

But, what happened was actually pretty dramatic. I don't know how to describe the experience except that I knew, cellularly, in my bones, as I listened to those tapes, that I was hearing truth. Possibly for the first time. And maybe it was because I didn't have expectations, or the timing was just so exactly, perfectly, right...but I think I changed. I think I had one of those experiences where you actually change, from top to bottom, in an instant.  I was able to literally put down everything that was worrying me, confusing me, upsetting me, dragging me down, and turn, 180 degrees, into the light.

And I stayed there.

I remember the next day, I was standing in her dining room, looking out this window she had that faced a little copse of trees (I have written about this before here on this blog, forgive me for the repeat). I remember I was standing there and I was just trying to take in the beauty of the trees. Because part of what happened, when I opened up like that, in her car the day before, is I realized that I had stopped looking at the world. I hadn't been appreciating the beauty of the world around me. And so I was standing there, looking at the trees, standing in this blissful interior silence, when an old voice arose. What about all the things you have to do..... It started to say.  What about getting a job or fixing that old relationship? Why should you get to stand here and admire trees? Etc., etc....

And I remember I just very simply addressed the marauding voice and said, no...you're not ruining this for me. And it, and it's accompanying dark feelings, vanished as quickly as it came. And, in that moment I felt an immense power. I can do this, I thought. I can really do this.

Fast-forward seven years.

I have learned a lot more. I have read a lot more. I have been through a lot more. I have even been through an extended period of time where what I thought I found disappeared completely. Entirely. With no sign of return.  I have swung back and forth and gained and lost footing, and landed ultimately, most of the time, somewhere in the middle. Which is not a terrible place to land.

But I have been thinking back to this first moment. Because, there was something that was so clear, in that first encounter, which has become...confused. It's challenging to read so much, to listen to so much, to hear so many reasonable voices of truth (and some not so reasonable), to hear ideas and prescriptions that sound like ways in, only to discover that they are not maybe ways in for YOU. And I'm talking about the spiritual path but I'm also talking about the path of an artist, the path of a career, the path of making a home and a family...it is possible to take too much in. It's possible to want and expect too much, and for that wanting and that expectation to be the very thing that keeps you from the simplicity of looking at trees.

So, today the mantra is to remember the simple way. To remember the crystalline quality of truth. It's not complicated. It's not effortful. It's not pre-planned. It's the thing that makes your bones feel like they're humming. Just look for that feeling, and most likely, you're on the right path.

Buy Soap, Accomplish Less...

Does reading other people's blog posts count as writing?

(Please don't answer that).

I am on a writing regiment. I have assigned myself a certain number of hours a day to write, and for the most part it has been swimmingly easy. On many days it goes by so quickly I think, well, shoot...I could double this.  But on other days, (today, for instance), the allotted time feels like a pitch-y cavern laid out in front of me. One that I desperately want to avoid. And so, as my designated start time approaches I will suddenly find myself accomplishing a whole list of very necessary tasks that, no, can not be done at any other moment except this one. Ordering that face wash I've run out of. Checking my spam email for stray job offers, giant checks, missives from long-lost friends. Putting laundry in. Taking laundry out. Making a list of all the other very necessary tasks that I ought to get done at least that day, if not right this very minute.

And the time ticks by.

Procrastination, I believe they call this. (Who me? No...I'm just being productive in other ways.)  In The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali he lists procrastination as one of the nine obstacles to practice. He doesn't call it procrastination, in the Sutras it's referred to as styana, or self-defeat. Self-defeat. As in, I have made an agreement with myself that I'm going to do this thing that I want to do, that's important to me, that makes me feel better in the doing of it, but I--the other I, the other half of this contracted pair--am going to go ahead and disobey that agreement, ruining the whole plan from the outset.

In the midst of procrastination, both of these I's are present. If they weren't, there would be no conflict, right? It wouldn't be an uncomfortable state. The problem with procrastination, this styana, this self-defeat, is that both the you who made the decision to take the action and the you who now doesn't want (for whatever reason) to take said action, are present. And they are duking it out. 

This to me seems to be at the heart of all personal conflict.  There is the you that wants what's best, and there is the you that doesn't want to comply, or doesn't think she's capable of complying, or doesn't think she's worthy of complying, and those two you's are at war. Even the term "self-defeat" implies that there is a SELF (a bigger self, a she-who-knows-best-eth) and then there is that which defeats the self. These two forces are not equal--there is truth, and then the destruction of it.  There is me, and then all the crap I do to get in my way.

And what I love about this, and the philosophies of yoga at a whole, is that the basis of understanding, the hypothesis is that what is underneath, what rises up when we stop doing all of the stuff we do to get in our own way--is good.  That the big Self, is good. And contains in her all of the truth that we're after and the growth we're seeking and all of it. And that there is not, then, some perfect action that we have to take, all we have to do is stop defeating her. Allow her to be. Stop procrastinating. And see what happens...

Ch-Ch-Ch-Choices...

to see this photo in all its glory, go here.

I walked two miles the other day to get to a yoga class, as our car is in the shop and we're not getting a rental for a couple days...I wasn't going to do it, but I looked on the schedule and one of my favorite teachers was unexpectedly teaching a long class, so I put on my walkin' shoes and went on my merry way.

Let me just say, having recently experienced a walk across all of Los Angeles and now this mini walk from my house to my yoga studio--LA is NOT built for walkers.  It's just not.  There are crosswalks that span six lane intersections that give you 20 seconds to cross the street, there are big chunks of roadway with sidewalks only on one side of the street, there are pedestrian lights that never change...it's a sucky place to try and be a walker.  I was so annoyed at one point during my walk yesterday that I started writing an angry letter to the city in my head, though luckily I stopped myself halfway through the composition of it with visions of myself old and angry and taking it out on a typewriter in a dark room somewhere, "Letter to the Editor: I hate everything.  Love, Lia."

(The above falls into the coveted category of My. Worst. Nightmares.)

Anyhow, I get to the studio and my aforementioned favorite teacher, for whom I just walked two miles (two and a quarter if you count all the stupid detours I had to make to stay on actual sidewalks) WASN'T THERE!! Argh!! I was tempted, people, though I have railed against it in the past, I was tempted not to go.  But there was no way I was making that walk for nothing!

So, I went.

And let me say this...the sub was really lovely, a newer teacher but great, really passionate and sweet and welcoming, but for whatever reason I was just...not in the mood.

I wanted something familiar, I wanted the teacher I expected, I wanted to be able to sort of disappear into the class instead of, as it can happen with subs, to help hold up the class with them.  And I found that all through class I was sort of fighting myself, going off into these long deep spirals of thought and then swimming my way back to the surface again, coming up just long enough to get some air, to be in the room, and then diving back down.  And every so often I would think to myself...get in the room, Lia, just be in the room.

And for just a moment I would acknowledge the sanity of that--yes, I will probably feel better/be happier/move more deftly if I just decide to be where I am.  But, I just...couldn't.

Or, rather...I WOULDN'T.

Because I DO have a choice.  I know that now in ways I once did not.  I do have a choice.  Even when I feel like I am rotten and everything else is rotten and there's no way I could ever see anything as anything other than rotten...I know that I can.  I know that it's my choice whether I drop it or hold on tight.  It's my choice whether I indulge and dwell or whether I breathe and release.  It's my choice--and it was my choice in that moment--to either place my full attention on my body and my breath and the class in front of me, or to keep it where it was, deep in the muck.

Even to stay stuck is a choice--it's a sucky choice, most likely almost always for sure most definitely the WRONG choice...but it's a choice.  And I think what can be difficult is that, in those moments of choice, in those moment-to-moment how am I going to choose to walk through the world today choices, we are totally alone.  We are the final arbiter.  The big decision maker.  And there is no one or no thing on the outside that is ever going to be able to make that choice for us. And so sometimes it can be scary...to choose freedom, presence, happiness...it can feel irresponsible or vulnerable or somehow untethered.

But I am here to tell you, Shanti Towners, it's not.  And I am officially giving you my utter and full permission to make the right choice, the one that makes you breathe a sigh of relief...the one that sends thrills of peace down your backbone...I promise it will all be okay.