Starting Over. And over. And over. And over.

I am a terrible journal-er.

I have always tried to be a good journal-writer, and in my more angst-y teens and twenties, I was fairly diligent about it.

I wrote
A lot of poems
That weren't really poems,
but just long, long sentences,
that I divided up
into separate lines
for meaning
and

emphasis.

But, as I've gotten older, my journaling has become more sporadic and every year less and less excusable.  In my mind, I always imagine I'm going to be one of those older women with boxes of journals that highlight her artistic and spiritual development. Little works of art that she can pass down to her children and grandchildren.  But, in order for that to be reality, I would have to be one of those women who journaled about all the beauty in her life. One of those people who filled her journal with tiny paintings and detailed descriptions of the blooming orange tree at the bottom of her steps. (I have one of those, btw...it has never appeared in my journal).  Or better still, one of those women who wrote only about her ideas...about projects and images and all kinds of other healthy, adjusted, artistic stuff.

I would have to be one of those women and not, as I am, the kind of woman whose journal is full of awkward diatribes about ongoing neurosis, and the occasional poem;

Still written,
as are all the others,
line by line.
By line.
You can not know,
the power of the line break...
until you've tried it.
Namaste.

So, what I end up with are boxes full of journals, full of weird embarrassing gobbeldy-gook. The idea being, that writing the gobbeldy-gook will get it out of my head and onto paper. But most often what actually happens is that it gets out of my head, and onto the paper, and then back into my head again...amplified. Heh heh.

And the worst part? The journals? The ones in the box? They're all only half-full.

Because, at some point, with every one, the percentage of healthy to neurotic journaling tips in favor of the neurotic, I get embarrassed, I vow to change my ways, and then I realize that what I really need, what's really going to help me turn over a new leaf...is a new journal.

So, I box up the old half-full one, I pull out a fresh brand spanking new leather bound treasure trove of possibility, I breathe a deep sigh of relief, and I start over. Blank page. Fresh start. New me.

Only to have the same thing happen, all over again.

But, enough is enough, people! Sitting next to me on the couch right now, as I type this is, is my current journal. You would not be allowed to read it. I really want to abandon it. I really want to close it up, tape it up, and throw it the f* away. So that I can start over. So that I can pretend to start over. So that I can have the momentary satisfaction of the ritual of starting over. But, not this time.  One of my teachers said recently that the practice of yoga is the practice of focus. Of continuing. Of remaining steady. And if I can't make a positive change in what I'm putting out, even in the small world of this leather-bound book, without having to throw everything away and start over...then what am I teaching myself?

It's easy to start again.  It's easy to toss everything up in the air and feel like the world is just possibility. What's hard is to hang in there. What's hard is to allow yourself to stray from the path, to delve deep into teenage poetry, and then to come back to yourself again. Without punishment. And, without having to get rid of everything that came before.

Found Item. Now Shared.

Found this:



Thanks to her.

And this.

Time Out For Schoolin'...

I have written before about my love of the Sutras.  Patanjali is my guy.

I have a now slightly beat-up copy of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda (a famous guru dude), that I cherish. There is a picture of Satchidananda on the front of the book, in pink robes, sitting cross-legged on a bulk-head in front of a river.  In the picture he's laughing and looking somewhere just off camera.  He's got a long white beard and curly dark hair and I like to pretend that he IS Patanjali.  He seems so sweet, like if I met him somewhere, he'd hug me instead of shaking my hand.  He'd pull me into those pink robes and he'd just hug the fearful right out of me.  Sometimes I forget, altogether, that it's the smiling Swami on the front of the book and not Patanjali, and I look at that picture and I think, "Patanjali...you're my guy." And then I realize that Patanjali lived THOUSANDS of years ago (well, at least 1400 years ago, depending on who you ask), and they didn't have photos back then.  So, it would be more accurate to say, Satchidananda is my guy.

Neither one is alive, so hopefully there isn't going to be a wrestling match in the cosmic soup for my devotion.  I love you both, okay guys?  I love you both.

Anyhow, this morning has been a sutra visiting morning.  Of all the texts of yoga (many of which I still have yet to read) this one is my hinge-pin.  Maybe it's because the sutras are so like poetry, that they get right into my bloodstream the way poetry does.  Maybe it's their succinctness, their flexibility, the way that they build, one on top of the other, to form a complete picture.  When I was young and first studying acting, I used to love the way a line of Shakespeare could be endlessly dissected.  You could take it apart and take it apart, image by image, even word by word, and every time you dug deeper, the meaning changed, just slightly.  Or got brighter.  Or weightier.  The sutras are like this.  Some of the sutras (or so says the smiling swami) are so deep and multi-layered, they actually contain the whole meaning of yoga, and thus the meaning of all the other sutras, within them.  Meaning, if you can just really GET even one of the sutras...you get them all.

I love that.

The sutra I was re-reading this morning was Sutra 1:2, the second sutra in the first book of the sutras.  (There are four "books" of sutras, each one on a different aspect of the practice of yoga.  Book 1 is "The Portion on Contemplation"...it contains the philosophical foundations for the rest of the books.) Sutra 1:2 reads:

Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah.

Which means, as translated by the Swami, "The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga."

I'm about to nerd out on this...are you ready? Get ready!

It would be easy to read this sutra and think that it said, essentially, "the restraint of the mind-stuff is Yoga".  Which would make some sense...we hear so much about clearing our head, about living from our heart instead of our mind, about choosing our thoughts...it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the practice of yoga is about restraining the activity of the mind.  But, if you look closer, what it actually says is:

The restraint of the MODIFICATIONS of the mind-stuff is Yoga.

Meaning, what we're being asked to stop doing, if we're practicing yoga...is the modifying of what's in our minds.  Meaning, what gets in our way is not the stuff in our heads, intrinsically, what gets in our way is all the attempts to change or control or modify that stuff. And I think, if one were to look really closely at what's happening inside the mind, there would be a whole lot of unnecessary activity that could be characterized as "modifications". 

Isn't that...liberating?

That means, that our nature isn't flawed.  It means that--and this is the little experiment that is constantly being conducted in yoga studios and meditation studios and massage parlors and places of healing all over the world--that if we just leave ourselves alone, then...there we are.  Done.  Enlightened.  At one.  Peaceful. That is the natural way of things. And by leaving ourselves alone, I of course don't mean just zoning out and filling up on food or drink or sex or television or phone-calls or whatever...I mean the radical, courageous, deeply humble act of allowing whatever is there to be there.  No exceptions.  THAT, according to Patanjali (and the smiling hugging swami), is yoga.  

And what that also means, and the deeper implications for all of us engaged in any kind of spiritual practice (whether you know you're engaged in it or not, you artists, dancers, mommies, chefs, gardeners, and all manner of makers of things), is that IF you are using your practice to fix or alter or control the natural movement of your mind...well, then you're not practicing.  

This is the big trick of it...you can sit down and meditate.  You can go to yoga every single day.  But if you're using those practices to modify your sense of your self, to inflate or punish yourself, to prove something, to run away from something, or just to wall yourself in to the space you consider right or safe...those aren't the actual practices.  They might LOOK just like them.  They might SOUND just like them.  But, from a standpoint of spiritual growth, they're like...holograms.  You could reach out and stick your hand right through them.

So, the big challenge--the gauntlet that's been laid down by Mr. Sutra himself is--are you using your life and the practices of it, to open...or to close?  Are you, moment by moment, sloughing away all the impulses to make things right, or are you caught up in the constant cycle of improvement?  One is Yoga.  One is not.  And isn't that a relief, to know that Yoga is not some goal attained through some number of years of practice, or some thousands of sun salutations...it is actually the thing that is there when you stop getting in your own way.  

It is, what already is.