Category: Letting Go

Personal Update, May 24 2017

5/24/2017

Tomorrow my son will be done with middle school, and I will become the parent of a high schooler. He worked his ass off to maintain his grades in a self-contained gifted / accelerated program and got into the highest ranked public school in Arizona. Not only is he smart and determined, but he’s funny and empathic. I am proud beyond words.

But that is not the only transition my family and I are going through.

Our sweet old dog, Jane, passed away. A large, cancerous tumor, of which we were unaware, ruptured. She went quickly. The house is quieter, emptier without her. She and I spent most of every day together. Jane was 14 and had a good life. Still, it takes adjusting.

Another transition: I am reinventing myself yet again. It seems that I do this every five or so years. First I was an adjunct professor for five years, and a technical editor. Then an at-home mom for five years. Most recently I was a yoga instructor and educator for the last five-plus years. And now, I think I’ll be a writer.

The more I pull away from the public yoga-sphere the more comfortable I am in my skin. I love yoga and know the good it can do. The industry that has grown up around it, however, is toxic to me. So, I am not teaching for the time being. I am open to returning but only if I truly feel called.

In the meantime I wrote a novella, Thigh Gap. It’s a dark comedy about a woman who escapes a wildly over-controlling husband and becomes the world’s most famous stripper. It’ll be available in a few weeks.

I am also adjusting to medication for bipolar disorder, a.k.a. manic depression. The way bipolar manifests in me is through very long stretches, several months in a row, where I’m hypomanic; and then severe crashes into depression, which last a few weeks. Being hypomanic means being really up -- baselessly confident, euphoric, crazy productive -- but without the psychosis and compulsions of mania. (The latter are probably prevented by the medication I’m already on for OCD.)

You might be thinking hypomania doesn’t sound so bad, and honestly I am sad to let it go. But the tradeoff for riding that high and getting three times as much done as anyone rightfully should is that it is hell on relationships and hard on my health.

The first few weeks of any medication takes patience. There will be side effects to muddle through. Insomnia, headache, lack of coordination, and lack of short term memory are the most pronounced of those that I’m dealing with. Hopefully they will resolve soon.

To end this little update, I just want to give a great big "Thank You!" to all of my family, friends, and well-wishers for your patience and support as I make my way through all of these transitions. It means the world to know that, while I may be sequestered away, you guys have my back.

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There’s Always Less You Can Do

9/21/2016

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When I was first coming out of my agoraphobic stage, I told a friend that I felt like I was never doing enough. This woman, for whom I had mad respect, who spent her days in social activism and hands-on sustainability projects, said, “There’s always more you can do.”

Because of my irrational achievement needs, I interpreted this as an admonition, as saying “If you’re not at maximum capacity, you don’t really care.”

I realize now that she may have meant there will always be more work to do, and all we can do is our best. But I was off the deep end. I had gotten to the point where there was no such thing as down time. I believed that even reading fiction was a wasteful sin, forget about television. My entire life was striving to be a perfect version of the Earth Mother archetype.

Central to the story—this was never the role I wanted to play. I was well aware that I was living somebody else’s dream life: stay at home mom, huge raised-bed gardens full of vegetables, spending my days making beautiful vegan food and educating myself about all the atrocities modern life has wrought on the planet.

We installed a solar hot water system; composted; tried not to buy anything nonreusable; embarked on large research campaigns before all major and many minor purchases; and saved up our recycling for when we drove one county over, since our county didn’t have recycling yet.

I wrote blogs for a carbon credit organization and a vegetarian magazine, lecturing into the void about our failures as a culture from the safety of my home. Mostly I judged: I judged every single one of my own actions and most of everybody else’s by a set of completely unreasonable standards.

I was absolutely miserable. There was always more I could have been and should have been doing.

But, like I said, I knew this wasn’t my life. This was someone else’s ideal existence. I had left my path of study; of delving into the mysteries; of gathering lofty thoughts and taming them into manageable, relatable chunks. And in the process I lost my self.

Over the last year and a half, I’ve become overwhelmed with striving again, overwhelmed with the feeling that there’s always more I could be and should be doing, and it all has to do with the business of Yoga. I think there's more I should be doing: to be out there in the community, to market my books, to reach more people.

And I have to keep reminding myself, I came to Yoga to find peace. I became a teacher to make sure I maintain my practice and keep returning to that place of peace within. I love that what I do also helps other people, and I love the community I’ve become a part of. But I have to watch out for trading in one obsession for another.

So, this is the lesson from Yoga that I need to keep in mind these days –“There’s always less you can do.” As long as we are wrapped up in the ego personality, there is always something we can let go. As long as we keep holding on to the past and projecting into the future, there is something we can stop doing. Until we are at peace, present to this moment with grace and gratitude, there is always less we can do.

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On the Cloud of Unknowing: Medieval Mysticism from a Yogic Perspective

8/24/2016

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Dark Cloud Silver Lining, by Nareign. CC BY 3.0

The Cloud of Unknowing is a classic text of medieval Christian mysticism.* For some, this book has just too much about our “wretched sinful nature.” I completely understand. It took me some time to process my initial negative reaction. I wrote about that here. And now? I am absolutely digging The Cloud! And I want to tell you why.

In amongst all the talk of sin and the devil and our shame and guilt and puniness, there is the essence of mysticism. Check this out: after our anonymous author bids us not to be “inside yourself, outside yourself, above yourself, behind yourself, or on one side or the other” (chapter 68), he tells us spiritual work should feel as if we are doing exactly nothing.

“Continue doing that nothing, as long as you are doing it for the love of God. Do not stop. Work hard at it with a powerful desire to be with an unknowable God. . . . [C]hoose ‘nowhere’ and this ‘nothingness.’ Do not worry if you are not able to figure this out in your mind. That is the way it is supposed to be. This nothingness lies beyond your grasp. It can be felt more easily than seen. It envelopes those who contemplate it even briefly in blinding darkness. An abundance of spiritual light creates this darkness. Only our outward nature calls it ‘All.’ It teaches the essence of all things, both physical and spiritual, without giving specific attention to any one thing alone. The experience of this ‘nothing’ that happens ‘nowhere’ dramatically transforms our love” (68-69).

Do nothing; be nowhere; become transformed. That's the message of the mystics throughout the ages. Elsewhere he says, much as the Tao does, to “Think of yourself as wood in a carpenter’s hands, or as a house in which someone else lives” (34). But I am getting ahead of myself.

The Goal

A mystical path is one of seeking union with the Ultimate, and that is our author’s stated purpose. “I desire to help you tighten the spiritual knot of warm love that is between you and God, to lead you to spiritual unity with God” (47).

The method he advocates is contemplative prayer. This is not the kind of prayer I grew up with. Not “Now I lay me down to sleep” or reciting the rosary. This is not the freeform supplications of Sunday morning or even Wednesday evening preachers. To describe what he means, our nameless author says, “The essence of contemplation is a simple and direct reaching out to God. People who pray at this depth do not seek relief from pain nor do they seek increased rewards . . . ” (24). They are not praying for anything; well, not for anything other than moving closer to God.

Also super important, our author does not see God as a father-figure God, a jealous God, or any other form of God that can be described. “[Y]ou are far better off contemplating God’s pure and simple being, separated from all his divine attributes” (5). Much later he says, “We speak one way with people, and another way with God” (47). In fact in this type of prayer, “Words are rarely used” (37).

Contemplation is wordless prayer to a formless God.

The Work

Infrared Dark Cloud, NASA public domain.

Contemplative prayer isn’t easy. In fact, “Everyone finds contemplation difficult,” he says, “regardless of personal experience” (29). It is hard and constant work, as we see in these admonitions:

“Devote yourself now to a time of contemplation. Beat upon this cloud of unknowing. Rest will come later. This will be hard work, unless you receive a special grace. Let it become habitual from continual practice” (26).
“Though I highly recommend brief prayer, there is no limit on the frequency of prayer” (39).
“You do not have any freedom to practice moderation during contemplation” (41).
“Engage in it tirelessly for the rest of your life” (41).

He does not, however, advocate “vulgar straining.” Rather he beseeches the reader to “discover how to love God joyfully with a gentle and peaceful disposition of body and soul” (46).

To accomplish this “devout intention directed to God” (39) we must forget everything else: “Let modest love prompt you to lift up your heart to God. Seek only God. Think of nothing else other than God. Keep your mind free of other thoughts. Give no attention to the things of this world” (3).

This instruction to turn our thoughts away from worldly things is central to contemplative prayer, because “whatever you think about looms above you while you are thinking about it, and it stands between you and God” (5). “Whatever you think about”—we are to forget about everything, even things we might not consider worldly, things we would consider sacred—everything but God.

“Even holy work interferes with meditation. Similarly, you will find it inappropriate and cumbersome to think profound holy thoughts while working in this darkness of the cloud of unknowing” (8).
“Thinking about humility, charity, patience, abstinence, hope, faith, temperance, chastity, or voluntary poverty is counterproductive” (40).
“Forget about time, place, and body when you engage in spiritual effort” (59).
“Put distracting ideas under a cloud of forgetting. In contemplation, forget everything, including yourself and your accomplishments” (43).

Our author recognizes the difficulty of this, especially in letting go of the self. He offers a few pieces of advice that we’ll recognize as encouraging mindfulness, such as “Pay attention, then, to how you spend your time” (4), and “I want you to evaluate carefully each thought that stirs in your mind when you contemplate God” (11). At one point he entreats his reader to relax completely, realizing the impossibility of our effort, and to accept ourselves as we truly are (32). “Nothing humbles us,” he says, “more than seeing ourselves clearly” (13).

Clearing the mind of thoughts about oneself is key to clearing the mind of everything: “You can see that if you are able to destroy an awareness of your own being, all other hindrances to divine contemplation will also vanish” (44).

There is one tool that our author offers to help us control the wandering mind, and that is to choose a word and hold fast to it.

“You may wish to reach out to God with one simple word that expresses your desire. A single syllable is better than a word with two or more. ‘God’ and ‘love’ provide excellent examples of such words. Once you have selected the word you prefer, permanently bind this word to your heart. This word becomes your shield and spear in combat and in peace. Use this word to beat upon the cloudy darkness above you and to force every stray thought down under a cloud of forgetting. . . . Do not allow the word to become fragmented. If you keep it intact, I can assure you distractions will soon diminish”(7).

But earlier, you may be saying, didn't he say this type of prayer was different, wordless? The difference is in the way we use the word: “Let the word remain in a single lump, a part of yourself” (36). He is not advocating using words to ask for anything, nor is he advocating the intellectual investigation of the concept the word represents. That would be futile. Really, he’s quite persistent in reminding us that our thinking minds are unable to comprehend God:

“[W]e are incapable of thinking of God himself with our inadequate minds. Let us abandon everything within the scope of our thoughts and determine to love what is beyond comprehension. We touch and hold God by love alone” (6).

The purpose of the focal word is to turn off the thinking mind, not encourage it.

The Cloud

Campfire and Sparks, by Kallerna. CC BY-SA 3.0

Then, when we have quieted the mind, put all of our thoughts under a cloud of forgetting and set aside even our discriminative faculty, we approach the cloud of unknowing.

“God remains far beyond even our most profound spiritual understanding. We will know God when spiritual understanding fails, because God is where it breaks down. St. Denis wrote, ‘The only divine knowledge of God is that which is known by unknowing’” (70).

The experience of the cloud of unknowing, he says, consists of “a dark gazing into the pure being of God” (8).

While he tells his reader that the process is lifelong, the actual experience of union can happen in a flash.

“Genuine contemplation comes as a spontaneous, unexpected moment, a sudden springing toward God that shoots like a spark swirling up from a burning coal. . . . Any one of these sparkling moments may take on a unique quality resulting in a total detachment from the things of this world.”(4)

“Many think contemplative prayer takes a long time to achieve. On the contrary, results may be instantaneous. Only an atom of time, as we perceive it, may pass. In this fraction of a second, something profoundly significant happens. You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God. This brief moment produces the stirring that embodies the greatest work of your soul.” (4)

And that is the end to which he would have us strive: “the greatest work of your soul.” Later he amends himself, saying “Perhaps it would be better to speak of it as a sudden ‘changing’ rather than a stirring” (59).

What exactly is this “greatest work?” What is it that changes? “After God graciously transforms our soul, we begin perceiving what is ordinarily beyond our comprehension” (4). The cloud of unknowing “teaches the essence of all things, both physical and spiritual” (68). We begin to gain control of our will and may come to experience heavenly bliss (4). We find rest for our soul (26). And “Once this moment passes,” he says “prayer for others will be inclusive, caring equally for everyone.” After which he immediately assures us that,

“When I speak of the passing of the moment, I do not imply that we come down completely, but rather that we descend from the height of contemplation in order to perform activity required by love” (25).

Perception, presence, bliss, rest, seeing into the essence of things, and recognizing the equal worth of all people—those are the results of union with God.

The Cloud and Yoga

Every one of the mystical elements our author relates is also described somewhere in the Yoga tradition. The Bhagavad Gita tells us to reach toward God with love. The Yoga Sutras tells us that after we still the mind and come to reflect the Sacred, we will have a new perception of reality and control of our will.

In Yoga, some of the tools we use to overcome the self are

bhakti: devotion
tapas: discipline
svadhyaya: study of scriptures and self
pratyahara: withdrawing attention from the senses
vairagya: detachment from the world outside and from the ego
dhyana: meditation

These tools help induce samadhi (union), which results in ananda (bliss).

That is what I saw in The Cloud of Unknowing, a stunning description of the timeless human experience of touching the Sacred.

Om / Amen

Darwin River Dam, by Bidgee. CC BY 3.0.

* Link is to the modern interpretation I use throughout, edited by Bernard Bangley.

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Simplicity, Patience, Compassion

3/10/2016

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Laozi, legendary author of the Tao te Ching, By Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, Paris, France - Exposition Clemenceau, le Tigre et l'Asie (MNAA-Guimet, Paris), CC BY 2.0

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
Tao te Ching, 67. Trans. Stephen Mitchell

I have been stuck in a loop. It goes like this: I find myself with a little spare time or energy, so I commit to a couple extra projects. (Extra for me is anything besides teaching and writing.) Then life happens and I find I’ve taken on too much. I “soldier” on, trying to keep my word and maintain all of my commitments.

Writing gets put to the side and, as the chaos mounts, I use teaching as my own refuge instead of maintaining that space for my students. The pressure continues to build as I deny I’m in over my head. Then, I hit the wall.

I break down, freak out, panic, cry, and, ultimately go into hiding.

In self-fabricated crisis, I drop the extra commitments like hot rocks and find breathing room. When anxiety ruled my life, I dropped everything, not just the extra. And I stayed hidden for months and years.

A few weeks or months after finding balance, I get asked to take on one more thing, then one more thing, then . . . and the cycle repeats itself.

Why do I do this? Because I want to be of service? Yes, and . . . I want to be important to people. It’s ego attachment par excellence. Freud would call it sublimation: I’m camouflaging my need for acceptance and approval with helping behaviors. And we all need these things; we all need to be needed. What I need to realize is that the work I love and feel called to do is enough.

Those actions that feel like a natural extension of my true self are enough.

The Tao te Ching is the wisdom text I turn to when I need comfort. “Tao” is a big concept referring to something like the Universal Flow. The Tao, while it can’t be completely captured in words, is described as living close to the ground, as flowing like water, as having great strength without effort.

Since I first heard it decades ago, I’ve been attracted to the Taoist concept of wu-wei. It mean, paradoxically, “inactive action” or letting actions come from a place of stillness. Nothing is contrived. All is spontaneous.

And to get there, we practice simplicity, patience, and compassion.

So, I’ve simplified. I’ve let go of projects that are not teaching or writing. I’ve removed the Facebook app from my phone. I leave my phone behind when I go places with my family.

I’m being patient and giving myself time to let the water calm and the sand settle so I can see more clearly.

And compassion? Well, for me right now that means acceptance, not berating myself for having fallen into the same pattern again. And that might just be the hardest part.

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

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Loosening the Knots in the Heart

2/20/2016

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When all the desires that surge in the heart are renounced,
the mortal becomes immortal.
When all the knots that strangle the heart are loosened,
the mortal becomes immortal.
This is the teaching of the Upanishads.
--Katha Upanishad

The spiritual path is full of paradoxes. The one I’m taken with today is this:
We must contract in order to expand.

To say this a couple of different ways, we must turn inward before we can move outward.
We have to practice self-discipline before we can effectively offer compassion to the world.

In practice this means that order to grow, to expand to our full potential, first we have to stop.

Just stop—and witness . . . witness our thoughts and emotions and reactions to the worlds that are both within and without. This is how we find the knots . . . the knots that bind us to our limited conceptions of who we are and what we can be.

To undo these knots, to be free of them, we have to let go of fear, whatever our fears might be—fear of the unknown, of failure, of looking ridiculous (<-- that’s a big one for me).
Whatever your fear might be, it will become apparent to you if you just watch, just turn inward and listen.

And then, after we’ve gone within, witnessed and done the work of recognizing the arbitrary constraints that we’ve incorporated from culture, from family, from wherever . . .
After we’ve cut through these knots that tie us to the small, limited self . . .

Then we can expand!

Then we become what we always already are--divine consciousness in physical form. And we are able to live from a place of ease and spontaneity, a place of trust and love.

Now, if this seems far away, or even hokey, that’s o.k. Because the practice we do when we come to our mats, to unite body and mind in mindful movement and stillness, this practice has short term and long term benefits that come with or without the goal of radical freedom. All you have to do is keep coming back to your breath and your body, to the experience of right now.

And maybe by turning inward,
by letting go of the rest of the world,
by contracting,
it will be easier later
to move outward,
to expand out into the world
with compassion.

Written for Soul Expansion in Bisbee, 20 February 2016

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Gentle, Soft, and Strong

9/13/2015

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Tao Te Ching
78

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.

Therefore the Master remains serene
in the midst of sorrow.
Evil cannot enter his heart.
Because he has given up helping,
he is the people’s greatest help.

True words seem paradoxical.

(Trans. Stephen Mitchell)

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Brain Waves, Yoga, and Meditation

9/9/2015

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yogas citta vritti nirodha

Yoga is to still the fluctuations of the mind.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, chapter 1, sutra 2

Yoga means a lot of things to a lot of people, and I think most of them would agree that what ties the myriad types together is their effect on the mind. Whatever branch of Yoga we practice, the goal is the same: to overcome the mental chatter of the ego and, through that effort, to find spiritual liberation.

My hope is that the following discussion about brain waves can help us on that quest by giving us two things: (1) a better understanding of what is going on as we progress through various meditative states and (2) words with which to label our experiences. Because, as it turns out, the practices of Yoga such as pranayama, asana, and meditation have a profound effect on the frequency of brain activity, in every sense of the term.

Brain Waves 101

Brain waves are electrical impulses created by groups of neurons firing together. Measured by electroencephalographs (EEG), they are categorized according to their frequency or speed. At one end of the spectrum are slow delta waves that are comparable to low, heavy drum beats and at the other end are fast, high pitched gamma waves, comparable to a piccolo played allegro.

While different wave patterns are distinct, the brain very rarely has only one type of wave going on at a time. Various parts of the brain can function at different frequencies simultaneously. Therefore, it’s more accurate to refer to certain wave types being dominant.

Also, there isn’t one type of brain wave that’s better than another; the goal for healthy functioning is to find the best, most functional balance for ourselves, individually.

First we’ll look at each of the wave types and when they occur, then we’ll find out how Yoga can help us better balance our brain waves.

Delta – Delta waves are the deepest, slowest waves. They occur during deep sleep and are more common in infants and children than in adults. Delta waves are associated with deep healing and regeneration. They can also occur during all-consuming states of meditation when awareness is completely detached.

Theta – Theta waves are slightly faster than delta waves and also found in sleep and deep meditation when our senses are withdrawn. Theta waves are associated with dreaming, deep relaxation, visualization, hypnosis, light sleep, and the hypnogogic state between sleep and wakefulness. Theta waves are important to learning and memory consolidation. In this state we can experience unconscious memories and very strong emotions.

Alpha – Now we are awake. Alpha waves coincide with quietly flowing thoughts. When alpha waves are dominant we are calm and alert, in the now. This frequency facilitates mental coordination and mind-body integration. Alpha waves are characterized by a relaxed presence, stable mood, and access to our creative and intuitive ideas. People who learn and think well spend a lot of time in alpha.

Beta – The fast waves of beta are associated with conscious thought. This is the realm of focused attention, problem solving, and social interaction. The beta range has been divided into two categories: low and high. In the higher bands of beta waves, highly complex thought occurs, new experiences are processed, and we experience excitement and anxiety.

Gamma – The fastest waves are gamma waves. At this super high frequency, several areas of the brain are working simultaneously and there is rapid information processing. This is the “Aha!” state, where we experience bursts of insight. Gamma waves also dominate in states of expanded consciousness such as universal love and spiritual emergence.

Beta waves are often described as the standard for normal waking consciousness. But continual functioning at beta takes a tremendous amount of energy. It’s not an efficient way to run our brains and, over time, it wears us down. High beta is especially hard on the system, as spending too much time in it is associated with tension, stress, anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, agitated depression, chronic nerve pain, and spasticity.

When beta waves become our only normal state, we can even stop producing alpha waves altogether. When this happens, as it does for people living with generalized anxiety, we go straight from spending all day dominated by high frequency beta waves to shallow sleep dominated by theta waves and right back to beta upon waking up. No alpha and no delta.

The benefits of Yoga and meditation for our brain wave balance

Yoga and meditation increase alpha and theta waves. These two types of waves are beneficial for our immune system, help to balance our brain chemistry in favor of better mood, and are where we process the information that we take in during beta.

In Meditation and the Brain, Benjamin Kramer tells us that in one study “after only an eight week mindfulness meditation program, regulation of alpha rhythms helped the brain ‘turn down the volume’ of distractions in the surrounding environment. Researchers noted that mindfulness meditators had more ability to adjust brain waves and exceptional ability to rapidly remember and process new facts.” (Emphasis added.)

He goes on to relate that mantra meditation has been found to produce predominantly alpha waves, while open monitoring systems of meditation, such as mindfulness and zazen, produce theta waves. The practice of yoga nidra, a deeply relaxing form of meditation, produces both alpha and theta waves.

On the other end of the spectrum, as Rick Hanson points out in Buddha’s Brain, “when experienced Tibetan practitioners go deep into meditation, they produce uncommonly powerful and pervasive gamma brainwaves of electrical activity, in which unusually large regions of neural real estate pulse in synchrony 30-80 times a second. . . , integrating and unifying large territories of the mind.”

While there are some theories, nobody knows exactly how or why this leap happens from the slow, low rhythms of meditation to the super fast frequency of transcendence.

What we do know is that the chatter of our everyday consciousness is the voice of beta waves. And through the practices of Yoga we begin to quiet the mind. We slow down to listen to the voice of alpha waves, the voice of intuition. We can even sink beyond that into the silence of theta.

And then, as with any spiritual transformation, a miracle happens. Or at least something we can’t explain yet. The concepts of grace and humility become relevant here, as we realize our limited control over the process.

All we can do is practice, prepare, and be open to gamma waves and the higher states of consciousness that come with them.

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The Ego as a Contraction of Consciousness

8/28/2015

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The ego personality is a necessary contraction of Consciousness. We need to view the world from this singular perspective to make sure we get what we need, to keep us safe.

But in order to make sure our needs are met, the ego seeks out what we lack. And in order to keep us safe, it seeks out threats. The ego personality functions from a place of fear.

But when we know we are safe, we can let go of that contraction.

We can let go of thoughts about the past and future, regrets and worries.

We can let go of inner criticisms.

We can let go of all the mental chatter that keeps the ego contraction in the lime light.

There is a saying that on the spiritual journey there are many paths that lead up the same mountain. All those paths, all the different kinds of Yoga and meditation, all the mystical paths of the monotheistic traditions – all of them – are about letting go of our habitual tendency to see the world from the contracted perspective of the ego.

In Hatha Yoga, we practice moving our awareness not only inward but downward. We practice staying conscious of our body. And through this mental discipline, through this particular kind of self-remembering, the ego contraction is removed from center stage.

So, as you move on your mat, notice when you become trapped between your ears. When thoughts come up, instead of getting tangled in words, come back to your breath, to your body, and to that quiet stillness between thoughts.

That is where you can reconnect with your true self, who is beyond words. That is where you let go of contraction and begin to expand.

The ego is not an entity but an activity. It is a contraction of the field of Radiance.” Adi Da

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Expansion and Contraction of the Spirit

8/8/2015

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Expansion or contraction, from the perspective of psycho-spiritual growth, these are our choices.

Contraction

Contraction stems from fear, from stress, from not having our basic human needs for safety, rest, and belonging fulfilled. Contraction comes from expectations and attachments, which themselves come from fear—the fear of not being in control, fear of change, or the fear of being overwhelmed and unable to successfully navigate the rough seas of this life.

So we contract. We pull inward and make ourselves small and hard like a tired, grumpy turtle pulling into its shell.

And sometimes withdrawal is necessary: sometimes to protect ourselves from very real threats, sometimes to heal, sometimes like the hermit who goes into her cave to seek enlightenment or mystical union with God.

But many of us get stuck here, in this protective place of contraction. And then we stop growing. We stagnate or decline.

Expansion

Expansion comes from love, from feeling safe and cared for, from being patient and compassionate toward ourselves. Expansion comes from being accepting and understanding of ourselves so we can be accepting and understanding of others.

Expansion comes from letting go—letting go of expectations and attachments to how we think things ought to be. Letting go of the judgments and criticisms of self and others that stem from these attachments. Letting go of worries about the future or regrets about the past or whatever it is that keeps us from being fully present, in this moment right now.

When we can let go, we can let our hearts and minds, our whole being shine with love, and we become open, inclusive, expansive. Joyful.

Expansion on the Mat

This is what we need to practice on the mat to continue expansion:

Feeling safe. Yoga meets everyone right where they are, with no expectations for you to be anyone other than who you are right now, body and mind.
Slowing down. To let go of self-criticism we must become aware of it, and to do that we have to turn inward and stay mindful; we have to listen to the internal chatter so we can consciously decide which voices to encourage and which to turn off.
Being patient and compassionate with ourselves. This job takes time. We’ve spent a lifetime listening to the chatter and taking it seriously. It won’t be turned off in a day. But if we can continue to observe and accept ourselves right where we are, the voices that lead us to contract will fade away.
Letting go. Let go of fear and worry and self-criticism. Let go of all those things that make us emotionally and spiritually small and hard.
Filling up. Fill up with compassion and ease and joy. Fill up on all those things that help us expand.

That is how we grow on the mat.

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Have You Tried Not Giving a Fuck?

7/7/2015

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What if you didn’t care what other people think? Assuming you aren’t a sociopath and that you have at least moderate levels of empathy and compassion, you would probably find it liberating to try not giving a fuck.

When we, as humans, hit adolescence we develop a habit of thought psychologists call the “imaginary audience.” We think people are always watching and judging us. Usually this fades away as we mature, though it may come back at times of stressful transition, like when you have your first kid or go through a divorce.

For some of us, it never leaves. Anxiety puts your brain on high alert for danger, and as social creatures we can end up on high alert for negative social cues to the point where we see them when they aren’t really there. I spent a long time feeling like I was under constant observation. It’s not much of a stretch to say I was paranoid about what people thought of me.

The first step to overcoming caring excessively about what other people think is to separate what you know from what you are imagining. For instance, a friend is uncharacteristically short on the phone. What I used to do was rack my brain for how I offended them. What did I do wrong? And you know what? I’d always find something that I could have done differently.

But they never said I offended them. There could have been a million and two different reasons they were abrupt that had exactly zero to do with me, but that didn’t occur to me. Frankly, anxiety makes you pretty damn self-centered.

The point is—don’t guess. Just stop pretending you can read people’s minds. (Unless you really can; then let’s have lunch!) Let the people in your life be responsible for saying what they mean. The vast majority of the time people are not judging you. And for those few who do spend their time criticizing others, well, they have their own steep path ahead of them.

When I let go of imagining what other people were thinking about me (which took a long time and a lot of reminders that I’m not telepathic), I realized I had been a social golem. I’d been encased in clay that I tried to make look like what I thought people wanted to see. When that clay finally cracked and fell off, piece by piece, then I could finally just be me.

Yoga is about stripping away the layers, the façades our egos build around us. Our egos think they are protecting us. But when they fall away and we are able to just be, then we learn how to care for people instead of caring about what people think of us.

So try it—try not giving a fuck. Let go of all the fucks you give about what people think of you. Try it for a minute, then for half an hour. Discover how much of what you do is influenced by your ideas of what you think people expect of you. Then try it for a day. See how it feels. You might find a little freedom.

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Personal Update, May 24 2017

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