Quit Frontin'.
I'm giving a grounding restorative workshop called Down To Earth Yoga this Saturday afternoon. This is an invitation.
A while back I was riding the bus with some kind of intense emotional whatever-the-heck going on, and I had the thought that I was such a clever master of disguise, no one on the bus knew how much chaos was rattling around in my little heart area. Imagining how I might look to anyone else, I figured I was so utterly non-descript that nothing about me could possibly give it away. No shaky hands, no streaks of mascara, no labored breathing or dark circles under nervously shifting eyes. I looked like no one, like everyone, like a bowl of oatmeal. It occurred to me that if there were no evidence that I was on the verge of complete meltdown, maybe I wasn't. After all, airport security screeners don't search me; I must be regular.
Dismissing the (admittedly horrifying) prospect that I might be completely normal, I had another, more interesting Third Eye-opener, which came is a deeper, slower voice: I may not be the only one on this bus about to lose my marbles. This was funny to me at first, so paranoid, so murder mystery theater. But after my uberdetective laugh faded, I refocused on my busfellows. Who could deny that we were all in transit from somewhere to somewhere else, all on the same bus, for different reasons, on different journeys. I made up stories, as I am fond of doing, about the characters in my view - where they had come from, what they were carrying, in their bags, their pockets, their neocorteces. Someone on the bus had lost his keys, another her mother... the couple beside me had broken up twice and would again, that afternoon... a young man was so tired from work, hated wearing that suit, just wanted a drink and the company of the one he left for that stinking job...
I imagined us all as children, and then how time and money, family and language, history and geography wore on us. This week, talking to students in and around yoga class, the idea of identity has come up several times. It's annoying, I know. Not because it is the most self-obsessive anxiety on Earth (though I wouldn't outright deny that statement), but because it's the kind of thing that most of us feel like we should have settled already. I mean, we've been working on this a while now. The project of self-definition begins before age 3, when things are, if we're lucky, still fun. We learn to repeat the facts that will one day be shared, maybe, via drivers license: name, sex, age, eye color. No one tells us that this information will expire, and we do not care. Life is good. A few years later, paralyzed by "Favorite Color:", our minds begin to grasp the concept of self-contradiction, and our work is set before us. "Who am I?" will resound, at least occasionally, for the rest of our lives.
Anyone who's been cruising around on Facebook knows that we're obsessed. We want to fill in the blanks about who we are, even and especially when we don't fit in the blanks. The status update is the most satisfying little hang up because we, at last, are allowed and even expected to change every day! We can post a new discovery, a new experience, a new perspective, with photos to match, just as fast as we can type. It is no wonder that most of us feel more at ease working on our profile page than we do having tea with a coworker. [wiggly screen indicating fantasy sequence...] She says, "so, where are you from?" and witnesses a damn near panic attack, as you try to decide how to answer. What should you say? You were born here and grew up there but your parents came from elsewhere and split while you lived with your aunt who is not your actual aunt but close enough, considering that she and your mom lived together in college, not that they were gay, or that it would be a problem, since they raised you, mostly, to be accepting, at least when it did not interfere with what they had in mind to accept, which happened to exclude what you decided to pursue as a career, unfortunately, which is what sent you to treatment in the first place, but is this too much information?
It is. But not because your answer is so much more screwed up than hers. It's too much information because her answer is exactly that screwed up, whether she reveals it or not, and a get-to-know-ya tea break at work should not last more than 15 minutes (25 if you're still on the clock). But, more obviously, it's too much information because you should never, ever tell ANYTHING to a coworker (if you still have coworkers). Jobs are not exactly expendable these days, and if you are counting on someone else (i.e. the person with whom she decides to casually misinterpret the factoids of your life) to be professional and stop her from inventing career-shattering rumors, you will be so, very, sorry. It doesn't matter to anyone more than you. The gossip-stopping ball is completely in your court. Am I saying share nothing? People are evil? Trust no one? No. I'm saying that trust is a responsibility not to be hurled at innocent bystanders*, that harm happens regardless of the presence of "evil", and that I am grateful I work with such lovely people.
Some of us may be asking: If I am supposed to protect myself and keep everything quiet, won't I implode with the perpetual anxiety that I am an imposter? How can I find the safety I need to feel accepted with all my incongruities and quirks (and extreme neuroses)? Well, it's funny you should mention that, because that's just what I've been thinking. In fact, I think it almost everyday. I want to be known fully and accepted as a complete ball of whatever I am, just like you. (Ack! TMI!) The reality is that, in my experience, most of us don't know how to accept each other fully because we haven't embraced all of our own self-contradicting truisms. (Hold on - am I about to say the answer is to love myself? Because I'd rather eat lutefisk on my birthday than get new age rainbow light about it. ...shit. I see no other way out. Sorry, friends.) The answer is learning self-love.
When I am loved, I can stop trying to front like I'm a better, smarter, cooler person than I am. Showing affection to the one who appears flawless is easy, but I would argue that it is not compassion. Compassion is not a soft practice. It hurts. Taking in the scars and tangles of those we choose to love takes a courageous look within. When I practice self-love, I am using the best possible guinea pig for this, because, if I look patiently, I can see my whole mess. I know about me that I do not intend to harm others, and yet I harm others. If I can let go of judgment, and refuse to label myself as blameless or malicious, than I can do that for my loved one, too. Hell, I can even do it for my coworkers if I want more peace in my life (and, if the stars align right, this may inspire them to do the same for me).
The problem with all of this is that most of us are deluded into believing that our identity is information that can be typed up, printed out, and placed in a file folder somewhere. We are taught that our identity is, in fact, something that can be taken from us and reproduced artificially on the internet! It's true that the information of our lives, our histories and numbers, can be written, filed and, indeed, stolen. But what's truly helpful, to me at least, is to remember, as often as needed - which is about thrice per hour, that I am not that information. A while back, my life was saved by a poem. (First self-love, and now POEMS?) Some of you will recognize this, because I paraphrase it everyday in every class, but I thought it was time I let you have the real deal.
So, what I mean to say is, we gotta quit frontin'. (Except when we should, out of courtesy and professionalism.) And then love what we see. And if that's tough, remember that the messy stuff is just the outift we're wearing in this life. Also, Saturday's workshop is not about identity, trust, compassion or workplace gossip. It is about letting go of the braintangle. In other words, if you are still reading this, you would be well advised to come.
*yes, that is an apology from me to you.
A while back I was riding the bus with some kind of intense emotional whatever-the-heck going on, and I had the thought that I was such a clever master of disguise, no one on the bus knew how much chaos was rattling around in my little heart area. Imagining how I might look to anyone else, I figured I was so utterly non-descript that nothing about me could possibly give it away. No shaky hands, no streaks of mascara, no labored breathing or dark circles under nervously shifting eyes. I looked like no one, like everyone, like a bowl of oatmeal. It occurred to me that if there were no evidence that I was on the verge of complete meltdown, maybe I wasn't. After all, airport security screeners don't search me; I must be regular.
Dismissing the (admittedly horrifying) prospect that I might be completely normal, I had another, more interesting Third Eye-opener, which came is a deeper, slower voice: I may not be the only one on this bus about to lose my marbles. This was funny to me at first, so paranoid, so murder mystery theater. But after my uberdetective laugh faded, I refocused on my busfellows. Who could deny that we were all in transit from somewhere to somewhere else, all on the same bus, for different reasons, on different journeys. I made up stories, as I am fond of doing, about the characters in my view - where they had come from, what they were carrying, in their bags, their pockets, their neocorteces. Someone on the bus had lost his keys, another her mother... the couple beside me had broken up twice and would again, that afternoon... a young man was so tired from work, hated wearing that suit, just wanted a drink and the company of the one he left for that stinking job...
I imagined us all as children, and then how time and money, family and language, history and geography wore on us. This week, talking to students in and around yoga class, the idea of identity has come up several times. It's annoying, I know. Not because it is the most self-obsessive anxiety on Earth (though I wouldn't outright deny that statement), but because it's the kind of thing that most of us feel like we should have settled already. I mean, we've been working on this a while now. The project of self-definition begins before age 3, when things are, if we're lucky, still fun. We learn to repeat the facts that will one day be shared, maybe, via drivers license: name, sex, age, eye color. No one tells us that this information will expire, and we do not care. Life is good. A few years later, paralyzed by "Favorite Color:", our minds begin to grasp the concept of self-contradiction, and our work is set before us. "Who am I?" will resound, at least occasionally, for the rest of our lives.
Anyone who's been cruising around on Facebook knows that we're obsessed. We want to fill in the blanks about who we are, even and especially when we don't fit in the blanks. The status update is the most satisfying little hang up because we, at last, are allowed and even expected to change every day! We can post a new discovery, a new experience, a new perspective, with photos to match, just as fast as we can type. It is no wonder that most of us feel more at ease working on our profile page than we do having tea with a coworker. [wiggly screen indicating fantasy sequence...] She says, "so, where are you from?" and witnesses a damn near panic attack, as you try to decide how to answer. What should you say? You were born here and grew up there but your parents came from elsewhere and split while you lived with your aunt who is not your actual aunt but close enough, considering that she and your mom lived together in college, not that they were gay, or that it would be a problem, since they raised you, mostly, to be accepting, at least when it did not interfere with what they had in mind to accept, which happened to exclude what you decided to pursue as a career, unfortunately, which is what sent you to treatment in the first place, but is this too much information?
It is. But not because your answer is so much more screwed up than hers. It's too much information because her answer is exactly that screwed up, whether she reveals it or not, and a get-to-know-ya tea break at work should not last more than 15 minutes (25 if you're still on the clock). But, more obviously, it's too much information because you should never, ever tell ANYTHING to a coworker (if you still have coworkers). Jobs are not exactly expendable these days, and if you are counting on someone else (i.e. the person with whom she decides to casually misinterpret the factoids of your life) to be professional and stop her from inventing career-shattering rumors, you will be so, very, sorry. It doesn't matter to anyone more than you. The gossip-stopping ball is completely in your court. Am I saying share nothing? People are evil? Trust no one? No. I'm saying that trust is a responsibility not to be hurled at innocent bystanders*, that harm happens regardless of the presence of "evil", and that I am grateful I work with such lovely people.
Some of us may be asking: If I am supposed to protect myself and keep everything quiet, won't I implode with the perpetual anxiety that I am an imposter? How can I find the safety I need to feel accepted with all my incongruities and quirks (and extreme neuroses)? Well, it's funny you should mention that, because that's just what I've been thinking. In fact, I think it almost everyday. I want to be known fully and accepted as a complete ball of whatever I am, just like you. (Ack! TMI!) The reality is that, in my experience, most of us don't know how to accept each other fully because we haven't embraced all of our own self-contradicting truisms. (Hold on - am I about to say the answer is to love myself? Because I'd rather eat lutefisk on my birthday than get new age rainbow light about it. ...shit. I see no other way out. Sorry, friends.) The answer is learning self-love.
When I am loved, I can stop trying to front like I'm a better, smarter, cooler person than I am. Showing affection to the one who appears flawless is easy, but I would argue that it is not compassion. Compassion is not a soft practice. It hurts. Taking in the scars and tangles of those we choose to love takes a courageous look within. When I practice self-love, I am using the best possible guinea pig for this, because, if I look patiently, I can see my whole mess. I know about me that I do not intend to harm others, and yet I harm others. If I can let go of judgment, and refuse to label myself as blameless or malicious, than I can do that for my loved one, too. Hell, I can even do it for my coworkers if I want more peace in my life (and, if the stars align right, this may inspire them to do the same for me).
The problem with all of this is that most of us are deluded into believing that our identity is information that can be typed up, printed out, and placed in a file folder somewhere. We are taught that our identity is, in fact, something that can be taken from us and reproduced artificially on the internet! It's true that the information of our lives, our histories and numbers, can be written, filed and, indeed, stolen. But what's truly helpful, to me at least, is to remember, as often as needed - which is about thrice per hour, that I am not that information. A while back, my life was saved by a poem. (First self-love, and now POEMS?) Some of you will recognize this, because I paraphrase it everyday in every class, but I thought it was time I let you have the real deal.
(The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, pp 263 – 264)"Padmasambhava describes the luminosity:
This self-originated clear light, which from the very beginning was never born, is the child of Rigpa,
which is itself without any parents – how amazing!
The self-originated wisdom has not been created by anyone – how amazing!
It has never experienced birth and has nothing in it that could cause it to die – how amazing!
Although it is evidently visible, there is no one there who sees it – how amazing!
Although it has wandered through samsara, no harm has come to it – how amazing!
Although it has seen buddhahood itself, no good has come to it – how amazing!
Although it exists in everyone everywhere, it has gone unrecognized – how amazing!
And yet you go on hoping to attain some other fruit than this elsewhere – how amazing!
Even though it is the thing that is most essentially yours, you seek for it elsewhere – how amazing!"
So, what I mean to say is, we gotta quit frontin'. (Except when we should, out of courtesy and professionalism.) And then love what we see. And if that's tough, remember that the messy stuff is just the outift we're wearing in this life. Also, Saturday's workshop is not about identity, trust, compassion or workplace gossip. It is about letting go of the braintangle. In other words, if you are still reading this, you would be well advised to come.
DOWN TO EARTH YOGA: Restorative Yoga & Singing Bowls for Thinkers and Feelers
YOGANOW GOLDCOAST SATURDAY MARCH 14, 1pm-3pm
$30(Students, seniors, hippies and lay-offs ask about sliding scale if you're in need.)
This workshop is a must for overactive hearts and minds. Join me for an afternoon of grounding, stabilizing practice to soothe your mind, open your heart, and balance your body. An extended Restorative Yoga practice will combine gentle Iyengar-style postures with the cleansing and balancing sound healing of chakra-tuned singing bowls, uplifting flower essences and guided grounding meditation for deep healing, cleansing and renewal. Restorative Yoga is not vigorous, and requires no strength or flexibility - it is especially suited for those in recovery from injury, surgery, trauma or drama. All bodies are welcome.
We're going to lay around on pillows and get over ourselves, basically. Please come. It'll be lovely.
Sign up online if you want. (click on Workshops)
YOGANOW GOLDCOAST SATURDAY MARCH 14, 1pm-3pm
$30
This workshop is a must for overactive hearts and minds. Join me for an afternoon of grounding, stabilizing practice to soothe your mind, open your heart, and balance your body. An extended Restorative Yoga practice will combine gentle Iyengar-style postures with the cleansing and balancing sound healing of chakra-tuned singing bowls, uplifting flower essences and guided grounding meditation for deep healing, cleansing and renewal. Restorative Yoga is not vigorous, and requires no strength or flexibility - it is especially suited for those in recovery from injury, surgery, trauma or drama. All bodies are welcome.
We're going to lay around on pillows and get over ourselves, basically. Please come. It'll be lovely.
*yes, that is an apology from me to you.
Comments