Month: November 2010

I know that we are to clear the mind, allow for experiences of awareness without thought. But there is also an understanding that learning to “unleash” the mind – to let thought and imagination and vision practice running hard, just as we run the body despite our love of stillness – this is part of integration.

Different people are more oriented to certain kinds of awareness. If an attentive, grounded baker imagines baking a cake, she puts lots of care into collecting the right ingredients, mixing them with lovely precision, and baking a reliably delicious gift. A “thinker” or head-oriented person might start instead with a recipe and question “what if” and consider a whole range of other possibilities for inclusion or changing the recipe. We all know that thinkers may not be very good cooks! But there is a kind of creative baker who can integrate both aspects. She can give permission for the unfettered thinking that does not reject ideas just because they float through – is willing to consider putting lime juice in, or prunes, or skipping the eggs, or adding ketchup or any number of seemingly ridiculous ideas. She knows that the ideas themselves do not threaten her intention to make a cake, that they are not solid profound instructions that she is obliged to manifest, but they are interesting, curious bubbles of possibility. They are illusion. And the baker laughs in recognition that the flour and eggs and hands she brings together are also illusion, just less so. And from her grounded experience, her sensation and wisdom and past success and failure, she can choose to manifest a new bubble and see what that contributes to her cake. Or not. But she has a level of freedom and creativity that allows her to live in a liberating relationship with “maybe” and a receptive confidence that is open to embodied change.

This understanding is linked to Joanna Macy’s understanding of the kinds of visioning and creative manifesting we need for making the shift to a sustainable economy. We need safe, supportive ways to play with collective thinking – to generate what ifs and maybes – and yet not get caught up in certainty or rigid belief that these visions are solid or yet another way to distract us from being present. The “maybe” mind – the one that says a creative yes, like a theatresports actor – can fuel our embodiment and contribute to the sustainable personal and collective of how we live.

We do need to rein in our minds, to learn the habits that allow for it to hush and take a back seat to presence. But the very concept of “reining in” acknowledges that we have powerful stallions to exercise, feed and nurture. And there are many reasons why we need trained stallions to run wild in the field of the mind. To go the distance together, we need visions and possibilities and theoretical models and creative marketing and art that contributes to change and legally rejuvenated contracts and complex systems in order to survive together.

We can’t rely on this illusory hope that there are smarter people out there – better, wiser experts who will save us. There are many other minds that will contribute to the saving, but we each have a responsibility to free our own visions, to exercise our possibility generator, the stallion that wants to run. Not to live in a state of illusion, or have the stallion running all day, but to allow it regular practices that keep it healthy and vigorous.

I have been wrestling with the demon of responsibility lately, learning to live in a new kind of trust that seems “irresponsible” but is really a radical act of accountability.. trusting that the survival needs will be met, that we can lose and gain and lose without living in fear.
After journalling one morning, I sat with Andrew on the couch in front of a fire and spoke lots about this sense that I was caught in a paradox between “responsible” and “irresponsible” – knowing I was stuck in it but not sure how to rise above the black and white opposites to see the zebra. Then while I was thinking out loud, I had an understanding that being in Now blows that paradox apart, makes it irrelevant. I have been trying to “forecast” into the future and connect to the past with this sense of responsibility or control. It is an illusion. I can only “be responsible” or alert in the now – the outcomes or results are not under my control, and no amount of “being responsible” will guarantee outcomes. Too much sense of responsibility will make me feel restricted, unspontaneous. So it is not about letting go of personal accountability, but it is about letting go of control, which is an illusion anyway.
I said it was like no longer trying to be a navigator on a ship but rather like being a log tossed on the ocean. Andrew rightly pointed out that it was more like being a log on the bottom of the ocean – the waves still toss around but there is stillness.

This is not about falling in a hole but just falling to ground…

Nausea, fatigue, gratitude, sadness, quiet. Caretaking, caring, being careful to tend what is here. Uncertainty about flight but willingness to stop looking ahead, to be with what is here. Learning to breathe, to walk, to lie down, to make love, to be organized. Learning to make room for emptiness. Learning to accept not-busy and to trust body intelligence. Learning to see ego throughout the day and invite it to hush. Learning to be in sivasana, the corpse pose, without agitation or falling asleep.

So much learning when we can find ways to listen to our own bodies. In forgiving the ways I have constricted breath, I stumbled over my early belief that “I” live inside this body like a spirit wearing a heavy snowsuit, rigid with padding. Recognized that really “I” am present as cells and skin and lungs and bones… my being is embodied, these membranes are not just a “vehicle” or tool for my experience of life but are actually “me” in this moment. These filaments of connection – nerves, blood, muscle – remember past movements and the steady hum of change that has been “me” since my conception. There are likely aspects of my interconnected being-with-others and being-with-life that had essence before my conception and will continue after my last breath.. but “me” only happens once, I am this body coordinated by this brain, marked by these sensations and opportunities and hurts. I do not live “in” my body like a toddler overbundled. I am a naked sense organ, moving from lawn to mud puddle to bathtub, learning with each step and inhalation. That journey has brought protections, defenses, learned patterns of constriction – my snowsuit – but I am grateful for this growing sense that I can unzip it to live in more direct exposure.

Am noticing the additional alertness required by self-employment, and the spaciousness it offers, knowing that by not slipping into a 9-to-5 routine I have the added opportunity and responsibility to be alert today. It is like facing a fresh easel each day, knowing that there are a range of tools at hand and colours available (current priorities and tasks) but with some room to craft the day. Interplay between “crafting” and “receptivity” – true openness to what arises rather that arising from obligation or “shoulds.” The difference between should and could is slight but significant. And the key element – to which I still feel traces of resistance – is truly opening to the fresh easel, the unmarked moment, the uninjured heart. Creating daily space for emptiness so that motivation for picking up “a good brush” arises from the stillness.
On this side of the process (before meditation, buzzing from coffee and two separate drives to the schoolbus), I can also understand that there is a creative surprise in store – that the “good brush” might be a financial task, an emotional task, a creative or domestic task, etc. The act of doing that arises is less significant than the quality of being that surrounds it – and at the same time, the act of doing is the only way to manifest presence and creative energy in this lifetime.