Posts Tagged ‘mind’

counting chickens?

Friday, February 27th, 2009

im not superstitious, but sometimes these things seem to reflect some principle to me that leads me away from suffering.

one example is that prematurely declaring success can foil that success — even in ways that seem unconnected. ficticious case: i become a finalist for some writing award, and the night of the awards, because everyone is telling me i’m going to win, i phone my friend and say ‘i’m so going to win this thing, it’s practically in the bag’ … then i don’t. or i’m sure i got that job, but because i told someone about it, i didn’t get it. or i tell someone how my car has never needed more than an oil change for years, and it suddenly needs fixing.

being ‘too quick’ to assert what isn’t quite true yet is one way in which i can become disappointed and withdraw from what i’m doing when it doesn’t happen.

it can be called ‘realistic pessimism‘, which i would venture to say is more protective than unrealistic optimism, but i think both are illusory, more so anyway than some sort of “poptimism“. hah. nice word, eh?

it relates to my previous post about impermanence. if i live in the present, keeping in mind (even if at the back) that the present is not forever, i can begin to work on seeing something that hasn’t happened yet as .. well, not having happened yet. and because it hasn’t happened yet, i can’t declare that it has.

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the more i connect with myself in the present moment, the more i can speak from the present — who i am, and not who i desire to be, not who i was. and this — this is what will allow other people to meet me where i am at right now, it will enable both of us to see the ‘now me’ more clearly.

if i stay in the present moment, i can keep open to possibility. keep connected with myself, and i can feel what or who i am connected to around me. authenticity. the present moment.

namaste

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when i speak from my experience

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

the language of i

many of us have heard of i statements.

for instance, instead of “you are annoying,” it’s less harmful to say “i am feeling very annoyed with you right now.”

this is advice often given to parents, i suppose to try and avoid equating child with behaviour and casting certain individuals to lifelong identities of crime and misdemeanor.

in other words, “i statement” means no name calling.

the practice of ahimsa means to cultivate non-violence. violence can be with words, not just actions, like bopping someone over the head with a gopher because they’re being annoying. name calling is a kind of violence.

but there’s more..

there’s another (lack of) use of ‘i’ statements that i really want to talk about here. it’s pervasive, and i don’t know how far back this useage goes.

i’ll lay a (fictional-but-based-on-real-life) scene out for you. it’s between an unnamed but very successful talk show host, and her interviewee.

Host: “so tell me, ivan, what were you feeling leading up to the moment you killed your wife?”

ivan: “well, you know. hmm. you know you feel like you’ve been managing for a lot of years, and you even convince yourself you’re happy sometimes, you know? and then, like, one day, you don’t know if there’s any point in trying anymore, you don’t believe it’s going to change. and then you, like, you just start having thoughts, and at first you can dismiss them but they just build and build until you can’t put them out of your mind, and it seems the only way to get rid of them is for you to do something…”

wait. what? i’m ivan, and i’m a killer? is famous host a killer? who is the “you” he is referring to?

a couple things about this:

  • ivan didn’t answer the question, at least linguistically. he didn’t say “*i* was feeling this, that and the other, and then *i* felt this way.”
  • he wasn’t in the past tense, he was in the present tense. grammatically then, he was decoupling the situation from its moment in time.
  • by using ‘you’ instead of ‘i’, ivan was disavowing his experience. meaning, when he said “you feel this” he disidentified with his words. he placed them on his listener. perhaps this was a way of subconsciously trying to gain identification from his listeners, so that he himself didn’t feel like a monster. i mean, anyone can kill their wife, right? what he described is common enough experience so “you could be feeling this too”… right?

this is an extreme example of “you” language. it should be acknowledged, though i’m not grammatician, that the use of ‘proverbial you’ i believe is useful and needed at times. but i think it’s overused to the point of being a sign — a symptom if you will, of how alienated people are from themselves.

ok, but i’m not a psychopathic killer

compare these two passages, an example of a mundane situation that is more relatable (perhaps):

when you approach the speaker at the drive thru, sometimes they answer right away but sometimes you can wait forever for someone to come. you can’t always hear them well, and they usually mess up your order. then, they don’t always tell you what window to pull up to, so you take a slow.. pass by the first window and if there’s no one there, you assume it’s the second window. when they hand you the change, it’s always coins on top of bills which you can’t understand, because change in the hand first is a lot more secure.

i find that when i go to a drive thru, there are times when i have to wait a while before someone serves me. i have a hard time hearing the person through the intercom. i find they often get my order incorrect, but that may be because i always take cheese and lettuce off my order, so it’s a special case. i’m often also not really sure where to pay, and i find the transfer of money is awkward because a lot of cashiers like to put the change on top of the bills and receipts, which seems very unstable to me.

i think it’s palpable, the difference between these two passages, which are essentially saying the same thing.

the second is grounded in one person’s — the speaker’s — experience.

it communicates the specificity of their account, but doesn’t exclude the possibility of someone identifying with some or all of it.

they aren’t imposing the experience on the listener, they are owning their own perspective and voice.

a meditation on this concept

i bring this to my awareness. i notice how others are speaking about their experiences. i notice if i am using “you” language when i speak. i notice how it feels to use “i” language.

namaste

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witness consciousness

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

some core benefits of yoga and meditation are the very things that are most difficult for practitioners, especially when they are starting out. in the beginning, meditation, relaxation and breathing exercises where the mind is “supposed” to focus on the breath, or ideally be “empty of all thoughts” are especially difficult. the goal of an empty mind seems like a distant and ridiculous goal for so many people.

but we want peace, right? so we need to try and empty the mind, try and not have all those thoughts, try and focus and find the pure state of nothingness that is the buddha. right?

i wonder how many people give up. i wonder how many people hear “let your mind rest, become peaceful, put the world and your worries away,” and never come back to a class because they can’t do it? how many people sit in class and hold in their urge to squirm and shift, and berate themselves for not being able to clear their mind and become one with their mat? that’s far from relaxing, isn’t it?

oh, the noise!

a partial journey out of this struggle involves learning about monkey mind, and picking apart the myth of silent mind.


monkey mind is the constant chatter the mind does. thinking about the past, the future, problems, plans, desires, feelings, resentments, questions, fears. all amount of effort to silence this seems to make it worse!

i’ve done it myself - i’ve sat in meditation, and become more and more upset because i just couldn’t find a stillness. my body wants to move, my mind is chattering away, and as soon as i’ve brought it back to watch the breath, i’m back thinking about what i’ll need to get at the hardware store later.

while long-term practitioners of meditation and yoga may find moments of “silent mind”, most likely don’t experience pristine silence throughout practice. when they do find peaceful quiet from monkey mind, they didn’t get there by forcing their full weight on the monkey to silence him. pushing the monkey and telling him to “shaddup” is only going to make him yell louder. so how in the world can you tame monkey mind?

becoming “one”

some people will suggest that it’s a matter of “becoming one with”. the idea of moving like water. instead of resisting, go with it. ahhh. well this does feel easier. just let it happen, man! just sit in meditation and think about your shopping list! it’s just fine, really. the mind does what it wants to do. become one with your mind, become one with your body, the planet, the universe!

geeks letting go

yeah, that’s the idea… but perhaps it’s missing a step to suggest this first. i’ve talked to students who are incredibly confused by this, or simply unable to do it. so am i. how do i become one with my anger when everything i’ve ever learned is telling me that it’s wrong?? now should i be telling myself it’s the opposite of wrong? should i be telling myself that it’s wrong to have the aversions i have to anger? if my anger is telling me to go smash something, are you telling me that is not wrong? no that has to be wrong! ok i’m confused about what is right and wrong. what am i supposed to tell myself?

witness consciousness

kripalu yoga in stage II involves cultivating witness consciousness. this is a sort of non-judgmental awareness which begins (and ends) with noticing. witness consciousness is applicable to yoga practice and meditation and then can become an awareness that filters into every aspect of life.

non-judgemental awareness is a very different way of engaging with the spiral that happens in the mind. the spiral goes something like this:

  1. i have a thought
  2. i am aware of that thought and i don’t like it (because i’m supposed to be meditating?)
  3. try to put it out of my mind
  4. berate myself for having the thought
  5. i am not able to get rid of the thought
  6. i berate myself for not being able to get rid of the thought
  7. i berate myself for berating myself
  8. etc.

the spiral can get quickly out of control. it’s as if, i think that by yelling at myself, i can whip myself into submission. oh, no it doesn’t work that way. self-immolation is a chinese finger trap. chinese finger trap the harder i try to resist and force my way out of the unpleasantness of my mind, the harder my mind squeezes me.

the practice of witness consciousness can effectively short circuit the spiral that happens with the mind. where do i get attached? in becoming “one” with my thoughts and emotions am i not attaching to them, seeing them as part of me, and thus unable to let them come and go?

begin with yoga. i do a forward bend. oh, my hamstrings are tight today. ok i can notice that. then i notice that i am beginning to have feelings about that. perhaps feelings of inadequacy, or frustration about it. i wasn’t this tight yesterday! perhaps i notice myself striving to go further, and ignoring the threshold where i am pushing too far. just noticing. hm. interesting how my mind is behaving. let’s watch this some more.

practicing witness consciousness has helped me see where i move from being aware of a particular thought or feeling or state, into making *meaning* out of it. i become aware of how i’m taking thoughts and running with them (or allowing them to run me).

mandala

letting go?

witnessing means that i am, in a way, a bystander to my mind. i am not my mind, i am watching my mind. therefore, even as i experience myself as a constant in the universe, i can realize that my mind is not constant. it becomes possible to let a thought come, and let it go.

the last sentence offers an interesting “out” to the problem of monkey mind: “let it come”. we focus so much on letting go. but in order to let it go we have to let it come.

so if you feel a cry coming on in a yoga class, what do you do with it? stuff it inside? what if you let it come?

if you are laying in bed and can’t stop thinking about what you have to do tomorrow, why stop? perhaps the lack of sleep will give you something you need. can you be open to that?

if you are sick, and your body needs rest, are you stuffing more cold medicine into you and ignoring the pain, or can you listen and let yourself rest and the cold work itself out?

let it come. notice it. then you can see if you are able it go.

jai bhagwan

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injury and yoga

Friday, January 30th, 2009

today i am in pain. yesterday, i went to a yoga with a teacher i’m subbinng for next week. i wanted to experience her class to get a sense of how she teaches, thus what her students might expect, and how i can address what might be some expectations they’ll have.

attending classes as a teacher (known as such to the teacher) is a very particular and interesting experience. maybe i’ll discuss in another post.

this post is about pain. yes, pain. at ytt (yoga teacher training) i recall someone pointing out that there is a difference between pain and sensation. that it’s important to learn this, and teach students about this. the thing is, i’m having trouble with it.

i can tell when my joints are in pain. they’re either in pain, or not in pain. the joints get stressed - there is either ligament or tendon overstretch, or there is joint compression. ouch. many yoga teachers have trouble with knees, especially at first. so i’ve heard.

sensation and pain

tension and sensation vs. pain is a trickier one for me. when have i crossed that line? a few thoughts:

  • often crossing the edge means the breath has become constricted.
  • there is tension in other places in the body
  • the mind is striving, wanting to get further
  • um.

the thing is, all of these things kind of “surround” instead of describing the pain itself. they are byproducts, if you will. like, when it rains, there are generally clouds in the sky, or it is overcast; but that is a more distant feature or way of describing rain; being overcast is not sufficient or necessary to describe rain. what about saying that droplets of water hitting the ground and my face? that perhaps captures the direct experience of rain a bit more?

same with pain. however pain is not necessary to addressing the above list. for instance, striving. we need not cross into pain in order to examine how we are striving, and why. this is a worthy inquiry in itself.

a way out?

still, what to do with pain? it is necessary to protect the body, honour it, listen to what it is saying. pain is also a way of exploring suffering. chronic pain is one example of that. sometimes, pain manifests in ways that don’t come out of agency-based action (at least in a clear way).

so, what does the mind do with suffering? what is keeping me from causing myself more suffering? the path out of ignorance. this is what the seeker is seeking.

namaste, jai bhagwan


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