The Winds They Are A-Blowin'...

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.  How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop."

- Vita Sackville-West 

It's Fall here. Though you wouldn't know it most days, through the 80 degree weather and endless (ENDLESS) sunshine. You might scoff, you of the darker climes, but it is inhumane to live in a place where the weather never changes.  Sunshine, or no sunshine.  Two days ago we had our first bout of the Santa Ana winds...all night long they rattled windows and blew down unsuspecting plants. There is something unsettling about so much movement in the air, but I was grateful for it. Some weather, any weather, is a blessed event after this long, hot, summer.

(And as the winds blow outside, the winds blow within.)

Our apartment has been invaded with critters. Yesterday a cricket fell from the ether right smack into the middle of my keyboard and then hopped merrily off. The crickets are staging a coup, I'm sure of it. And the creepy drawer-dwellers, and the spiders, and even, the other day, a praying mantis, perched on our curtain rod.  Last night I spent twenty minutes trapping and releasing a giant brown spider that had housed itself in one of my scarves. All that work to keep it alive and away from the house, and then as soon as I let it free on our porch it tried to scurry back in. At which point I grabbed a notebook and whapped it, and whapped it, ready to kill.

Lucky for him, I missed.

I find myself, lately, thinking and thinking. Thinking of all the things that need to be done, thinking about all the time I don't have to do them in, thinking about where I'm going and where I've been, thinking about how I'm going to get to the next place, and why I'm not there yet. Thinking about my friends and my family, wondering how they are and what they need, thinking about my mind and my heart, thinking and thinking and thinking and in the midst of the thinking feeling nostalgia for this very moment as it passes me by, unacknowledged.

In a conversation earlier this week I confessed to someone, "I think I ought to be more present, but then I worry that if I'm present, I won't know what needs to be done next and how to do it." And she said to me that I only have this moment to deal with things, anyhow, and that I would just have to trust that I will know how to handle things, when and if they come up. And that in the meantime, there is nothing to do but be in my life.

And I thought about this for days, afterwards. I turned it over. I let the winds wash it around. And I discovered that she was right.

I can only be inspired in this moment, I can only affect circumstances in this moment, I can only take action in this moment, and I can only react to my life, in this moment.  What happens in the future is an unknown whether I'm preoccupied with worry about it, or not. It will come and present challenges and openings, whether I've been thinking about it, or not. But this moment is already here. This sun is already shining. That bird on the wire outside my window is already there. This morning is already upon me. This breath is breathing me, keeping me alive, and this silence is the only one I get. So, you know...use it or lose it.

I trust these winds. They are appropriately timed, all in preparation for the great hunkering down of winter. I will let them blow through and shake free the last dead leaves of summer.

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.

Sunday Q and A. (Without the A)...

Action as Cliff-Diving...

No complaint. Action.

My husband has been bandy-ing this about lately.

(Bandy-ing? Bandieng?)

Anyhow. He read it somewhere, and it touched him. And I have grown to like it quite a lot, too. No complaint...action.

And we've been using it. In moments where we find ourselves slipping into mutual bemoaning...jobs, careers, creative projects, money, weather, driving, social outings...one or the other of us has been piping up, "no complaint, action!" And it has an immediate silencing effect. A positive silencing. A silencing of the mental wheels turning and a clarifying of sharp irrefutable CHOICE. As in...we have the choice to do something about that which gets us down...or not. Either way, the complaining either pre- or post- or during, is useless.

But, this is not about blind action or action as the only force of change (because I firmly believe that action is a partner in the process of creation, not THE process of creation)...because sometimes the "action" that rises up to release the complaint is just a few deep breaths. Sometimes the action that rises up is just about going back to driving the car or writing the email or eating the food--DOING whatever it is you were doing before you found something to complain about.

And I realize, that there are things that seem unchangeable, there are things that seem to have no complementary action...either because they are out of our control or because they just feel too big to ever be able to DO anything about them...but still, if you were to apply this equation, even to those peskiest of concerns:

No complaint, action...

Then wouldn't the only choice be to engage in SOME kind of action, in place of the complaint? A long walk. A phone call. A book. Sitting down and making something. And wouldn't that result in a kind of letting go? A softening around that thing that seems so impossible?

I had a conversation with a student after class today about falling out of handstand. She had taken a falling workshop and hadn't been able to master the art of the fall. It was too scary. The giving up of control too great. And we talked about how much courage it requires to fall. We talked about how it is so much more about the body and so not about the mind.

And, I thought about what it's like to jump into water from a great height...you know that feeling, when your toes are at the edge of the cliff, or the edge of the diving board, and the water is stretched out underneath you? Do you know the one?

Being the younger sister of a highly physically adventurous brother, and not being one to publically turn down a challenge (especially if presented by said older brother), I have found myself a reluctant cliff jumper on many occasions.

And what I have discovered, is that my mind is never what leads me off the cliff and down to the water below. To the contrary. My mind, if it had its way, would have me standing and contemplating possible outcomes, my calculatable physical safety, why on earth I'm doing this in the first place, until the sun went down behind me.

It is my body who has to decide. It is my body who has to take action. Body just steps...and falls. And it's done. Whatever happens afterward is a present-moment experience, and there will be no choice but to take it as it comes. Action, action, action.

(Perhaps the state of presence is nothing more than a state of action. Without complaint.)

Regardless of what else you may believe, it is clear that we are physical beings, living and breathing and loving and working in a physical world. We are meant to act. Action is a delicious thing...and it exists, it only exists in the present. You can't take action yesterday or tomorrow...only now.

And so today, if you feel yourself drifting into complaint (which includes self-criticism, which includes any thought/feeling/story that concludes that what is happening in your life in this moment is somehow not appropriate), stop, take a breath, and look for an action to take. Not to SOLVE what you're complaining about, but for the pure pleasure of engaging in the present-moment-ness of your life. Jump off that cliff.

(No complaint. Action.)

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...

FRESHness...

I had an experience in a class I was taking, many moons ago, in which we were doing partner poses, and I, pro that I thought I was, was proudly holding up one of my partners legs, when I heard from across the room the rather stern voice of my teacher, calling out:

"Lia! What are you doing? You're spotting the wrong pose!"

And I looked down to discover that, indeed, I was spotting my partner in the non-rotated version of the rotated pose we were supposed to be doing.

"Notice that." my teacher said, rather brusquely, "You're not paying attention."

And for many minutes afterwards I fumed, silently, about the way she'd spoken to me. I felt scolded. I felt reprimanded. I felt called-to-task.  All of which, I was. And all for good reason. Because she was right--I wasn't paying attention. And I knew it.

I have, over the last several weeks, been noticing a lot of this in my own classes. Students jumping ahead, assuming they know where we're going, when most often, they do not. Students going through the motions without listening either to me or to their bodies, when it's clear to me from across the room, that either I have just said something...or their body has...and that it has been ignored. I am sensitive to it these days.  It gets under my skin.

I think about stories of spiritual masters who give "shaktipat", the experience of instant enlightenment--the direct transference of awakeness from themselves to their students--and how some have been known to give it with a quick smack at an opportune time. That was what my aforementioned teacher gave to me. A well-placed THWACK to shake me out of my sleepiness.

But, it's not a surprising thing--all of us, anyone who does anything with repetition, anyone who practices anything, is going to fall occasionally under the spell of their own expertise and fool themselves into thinking they don't have to pay attention anymore. It happens in yoga, it happens in art, it happens in relationships...things get known, they get forgotten...and they get stale.

And so this word, freshness, has been coming to mind. Such a perfect word: fresh. One of those lovely words that is how it sounds and sounds how it is. Fresh. Freeeeeeeeesh. Fresssssssshhhhhhhhh. 


There are ways to be "present" that just involve the mental regurgitation of the learned pattern of things, meaning: Here's a tree. I know what a tree looks like. Here is my mental picture of tree, laminated over the top of that actual living tree. Isn't that pretty. And there are ways to be present which require an absolute newness, as in: Branches moving. Leaves fluttering. Solid trunk. New moss on the ground. Heat vibrating off bark. 

One requires more effort than the other.  

And in the practice of yoga, we are asked to practice the latter. We are asked to use our breath as a guide.  The breath, which is never ever ever the same (not ever once will this inhale be the same as the last) but is a perfect teacher because it can be mistaken for sameness. If you're not looking closely, the breath could just seem like the same pattern, repeated over and over. So, in order to see it for what it really is, in order to keep attention on the breath, in order for it to be FRESH, you really have to be there with it. You really have to be feeling out, each inhale and each exhale.  And, that is the way we are supposed to be coming to our practice.  Every time, as if it's new. Even the poses (especially the poses) we have done 100,000 times before--we are supposed to be looking with fresh eyes. Every time. What's new about this? Have I seen this? Have I really seen it? Or am I just holding myself in this position, because it's the way I've done it before, and so that's the way I'm going to do it now. Am I paying attention?

THWACK!

Am I paying attention?

Back in Action...

So, you may very well be asking yourselves, if you're still reading this blog...if ANYONE is still reading this blog...

Um...where did the blogger go? 

I, the bloggee...I am here, dutifully it seems, more dutifully than aforementioned blogger. So...what's with that? One can not exist without the other. Especially after one (aformentioned bloggee) has already combed through the archives to see if there's anything either a. interesting to read, so that your visit to this blog was not a complete waste of time, or b. some explanation as to the radio silence.

I am hopeful that there is some of option a. available.  I am well aware there is none of option b.

Oh, Shanti-Towneres...where do I begin?

First of all, let me assure you that there is no tragedy or crises or meltdown to be blamed for my absence. That is a good thing. However, that does mean that blame rests squarely on my shoulders for this stunning lack of blog upkeep over the past several months. 

The honest truth, and put as simply as I am able--I am having a re-shifting of priorities. And I haven't quite known how to talk about it. At least, not here. My family and closest friends have had earfuls. But  you, sweet Shanti-towners, many of whom are ALSO close friends...I have not known how to talk to you about it, mainly because:

1.  I don't want to seem like this girl:

2. Because it's complicated, yo.  And;

3. Well, because, most everyone in my life has been so supportive of my embrace of yoga and my transition into teaching, that I haven't wanted to let anyone down or seem like a flaaaaaaake. (Again, please reference video, above).

Now, the whys and what-fors of this re-calibration are really, I promise you, deadly boring, unless you live inside my head, or maybe if you're married to me, and even then, it's only interesting insofar as it relates to my day-to-day happiness.

But the outcome of the why-ing and what-for-ing is: I have realized I am not done pursuing a career as a writer and actress. I thought that I might be. It turns out I'm not. So. What does that mean to you?

Well, possibly absolutely nothing. But, if you're a reader of this blog, it just means that the focus of my writing here and my exploration about life and practice and love and and and...will just be expanding a bit to (re)include my creative work, as well as my yoga practice.  Other than that...onward and upward!

Thank you, so much, for hanging in there.

I'm back. I promise. For reals.

xo

YogaLia