Fourth Form of Madness

I’m sitting here with my cat trying to write this piece but she is continuously rubbing her face up against the screen of my laptop that I have tentatively balanced on my lap. I don’t have the heart to end her enjoyment so I am tolerating her behaviour and patting her intermittentedly hoping that I can capture some of the joy she is obviously experiencing. I’m flat lining. It’s my own fault, I decided last night I was going to have a few G&Ts and anyone that has experienced one of my G&Ts, knows I am heavy handed with the gin. That and the fact that I don’t drink more than one drink at a time now has left me feeling revolting.

I dreamt of zombies last night (very symbolic to a philosophy enthausist). This is my second zombie dream in as many weeks. I’m sure its got deeper mythological and symbolic meanings (infact many but that is another blog I can bore you with), but sticking with the literal, I woke up this morning and felt like a zombie. And the fun didn’t stop there. Went to yoga and I felt like I had put on the wrong body for the day. Whose was this body? I had no energy. My body started shaking the first ten minutes of the class and the nice effortless practice that I have, dare I say it, become attached to said “see ya, have fun in the remaining 1hr and 20mins of agony”.

I was just about to do the same, to roll up my mat and grab my handbag and say “See ya, I’ll be back when it’s easier” but thought that possibly there was a lesson, or two to be learned here and that perhaps it was a good time to start learning. Firstly, where was my sense of responsibility? I knew I was going to yoga on Saturday morning, why did I suddenly get gripped with the urge for G&Ts on Friday night and give in to it? Further, after committing to the G&T path, where was my responsibility to my actions. I drank myself into this state, I should at least stick around and bear the consequences of my actions. Be there for the situations I created, even the crappy ones.

Secondly, by following this action path and it consequences, I feel confident that I can make an informed choice next time when the Friday night G&T crazies seize hold of me again. I can say to myself “Shall I have these delicious, mood altering, mind fogging and ultimately soul destroying drinks” (sounds attractive put like that doesn’t it) or shall I give myself the best shot at being the best I can be both on and off the yoga mat tomorrow? After today, I know which choice I will go for, and it doesn’t come with a slice of lemon or a swizzle stick!

This week I fell down a flight of stairs. It was quite a shake up for me. I had just spent the night teaching yoga to friends and then sharing a delicious meal and a few laughs. When I stepped out in the chilly night all prepared in my ugg boots, I hadn’t considered the water on the brick stairs and the slippery rubber souls of my well worn uggs. Before I knew it my feet were where my head used to be and my butt was falling towards a big wet puddle on a stair.

Luckily I was holding bags in each hand and they prevented me from sticking out my hand to break my fall (see sometimes baggage is good for you). It’s funny though as the whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. One moment i realised my foot had slipped and then I was staring at the stairs as my feet flew up in the air and I knew I was going to land there and everything in me just relaxed and accepted the destination. I landed bumped down a few steps and then thought “Oh that wasn’t so bad”. I remember hearing my husband who was behind me telling me not to move but I knew I was okay and so I preceded to collect my bags and croaked out a humble “I’m okay”, picked myself up and poured myself back into the car.

In the car I did a better scan of myself. Right side of head and jaw tingling, right wrist and elbow tingling, right buttock aching slightly and mental state in some state of shock. Actually the shock might have been more pronounced than I thought as it wasn’t until I got home that I realised I had been operating in some sort of robotic state when all I wanted to do was crawl up in a nice warm bed. All in all, not a scratch or a bruise on me. When I do yoga I notice signs of the impact but nothing drastic. My husband and myself can’t believe how lucky I was. However, I don’t know if it is related or not but my energy is so flat I could sleep 24 hrs a day. This morning at yoga I was waiting in my car, feeling the sun come through the window and I felt I could have stayed in that car, in the sun all day recharging.

I can’t help relating this incident to my life and how I have become as I have gotten older and more set in my ways, a tad anxious about life and my existence. Somewhere along the way I had incorrectly learnt that if I worried about something then it would turn out alright, that I could control it. I do not know why I believed this but I did, in every cell. That if I worried enough I could actually prevent it, a plea bargain with life. I have come to see that life is an uncontrollable energy that does not particularly care if you worry or fret or laugh or cry, it will be what it is and run free and untamed. It is not life that must heed to your control, your ideals, your beliefs, but you that must heed and surrender to life.

I haven’t always been good at this (actually I am still in the infancy stage of learning this). I have always feared the fall, clung to the good, demanded only fun times of life. There are many ways this has played out in my inner and outer life. Commonly I never stuck at anything for a really long time. When you are only chasing the good, fun time, you have to keep moving on. In my studies, I have read about Tibetean monks that prayed for bad times and difficult situations so they could learn. These monks who also sat in graveyards, night after night, so they could conquer all their fears by conquering the grand daddy of all fears, the fear of death. I used to think these monks were crazy and I feared them. Now I respect their journey into understanding the nature of the illusion of fear and the freedom that they must have discovered along the way. I am learning that the fall often isn’t that bad and is often mostly in the anticipation not in the doing. I am learning that the “bad” times do indeed teach us more than we learn in the good times and that is, as one of my teachers said the other day, a beautiful process (even if it doesn’t feel so beautiful at the time!).

In my house there hangs a silk screen with Japanese text written on it. It says “Fall down seven times, get up eight”. I bought it for my husband as he had said the saying several times. Well that’s one down……six more to go.

I had an experience on the train this week that left me really aware of the way we have devalued humanity to the point that we don’t even recognise when we are doing it.

I get on the train at the second station from where the train starts off. I go in so early that I am one of the lucky ones that always gets a seat (or is that unlucky one cause I go in so earlier?). On this particular morning, there were a few more people than usual so I sat down to a lady who had also got on at my stop. There was a lot of huffing and puffing as she removed her gym bag off the seat that she had put it on and I was beginning to sit down in. There was a long hard glare at me which I deflected by fussing around with my ipod and being oblivious to her anger. As usual as the train journey progressed the train reached its capacity and people were standing in the aisles. I had convinced myself during the journey that I had imagined her anger, why would she be angry over me sitting on a seat that was essential free (once she had removed her gym bag)? However, when I stood up to get off in the city, the huffing, puffing and glaring started up again as she aggressively put her gym bag down again on the seat I had vacated. She must really love that gym bag, maybe she was smuggling something precious within it, to have evaluated its worth over that of a living and breathing being?

The whole situation would have been laughable if it didn’t allude to a more serious problem that runs through our society, the objectification and devaluation of human life. In Western society where we now have been sufficiently conditioned to value money and external goods as marks of who we are and how successful our lives our, the measure of a good life is no longer internal. Often now you are not evaluated for how you live your life, how you treat people and for what you give back. Now we consider people successful if they have a big house, fancy car and money to spend. The makings of a good life seems all to be external and easy to purchase.

I guess the internal good life is being drowned out by big businesses because they can’t sell it to you. It is not in their interest to tell you that doing a totally selfless act or refraining from drinking yourself into oblivion every night is going to lead you to a richer inner life. It is in their interests to advertise in a manner that will make you associate success and feeling good about yourself with their product. But when did external things ever replace or even emulate inner happiness, inner peace? External things only produce happiness when they are obtained, when they are present. Inner happiness is always there provided you are truly present, and you are the only necessary ingredient required to uncover it.

The fact that the most valuable thing about being human lies within us, makes as all innately extremely valuable and precious. And it makes us all deserve a seat on that train over a bag.

A couple of months ago I brought an iPhone. I didn’t want one and kept resisting my husband’s pleas with me to buy one. I was comfortable on my soap box protesting how certain new forms of technology are making us more anti-social. I had watched the morning commuters never lift their heads from their phones barely acknowledging the person sitting next to them even when they moved to get off. Then I brought my iPhone and I joined those head down commuters into a world that is surprisingly social. Within 5 mins into my first train journey with it I was on youtube watching clips of surprised squirrels and sloths and laughing with every abdominal muscle and I never go on youtube! I felt more destressed and light than I had in ages.

It opened me up to iPhone scrabble which I now play with a few friends, who pretty much beat me even when I am using descrambler (a free app that advises what words you can play with your tiles). I know it borders on cheating but I have justified it’s use with my survival of the fittest clause (which Darwin never actually said though he is coined with the phase). Maybe I should just go back to relying on my own ability. See how much this device is teaching me about life.

I also download movie of the week, which sometimes develops into movies of the week and watch these on my train journey in. Nothing breaks a stress cycle better than simply hoping on the train, plugging into the old ipod and watching a movie and letting go of that harmful neural pathway you have locked your mind into. My recommendation this week is 127 hours. I met a wonderful random person on the train one journey home that had just been to see this film and he kept urging me to see it and saying what a wonderful philosophical film it was. I was smiling and nodding on the outside but thinking on the inside what the hell is philosophical about cutting your arm off whilst pinned under a rock. I couldn’t have been more wrong. See the film, they have managed to capture the essence of living and learning on film.

I discovered iTunes and went to download more yoga music which I am fond of listening to but instead gravitated towards the more classical and downloaded Canon in D. I love this piece of music. I find myself listening to it over and over and something in it just makes me melt away. I do house work to it, walk the dog to it and yes, have even started doing yoga to it. When I do yoga to this it is like my body just responds to the rhythm and flows freely with it as part of it. I think to me if life could be represented in sound, this would be how it sounds, Canon in D. The ups and downs, all the joys and all the sorrows are there in this piece together with a surrender, and an acceptance that this is the consciousness that we call life.

Now I’m off to play a word on scrabble that I have thought of by myself and to download some more surprised squirrel videos.

I’ve heard it said that the enjoyment of life is all about managing your expectations. That all experiences are pretexted by your hopes and desires and influence the actual perception of the experience. I like to think big in terms of where humanity is heading, I’m an idealist, the kind of person that after I deliver my thoughts on a subject I hear “uh huh, sounds great, and when you return to real world drop me a line”. I don’t mind, I love the way I see the world and how it could be if often we just shift our way of thinking or release our death grip on our opinions being universal truths. However, it is also a way of being that can leave you feeling crushed by disappointments of your hopes and dreams for yourself and humanity if you attach to the anticipated outcomes.

Then yesterday at yoga I found myself in a wonderful conversation with a interesting soul and devotee of yoga and heard myself say “Life and yoga are not about results or goals”. I have read something similar many times in countless yoga publications. I have heard many wonderful teachers say it, but this time it came from a place within me that knew it in every part of my DNA to be innately true. It’s not what you achieve in life that is important, but the way you live as a being, the decisions you make about living your life and how you treat other beings, the knowledge that you gain about yourself that is infinitely important, to your existence and to all beings collectively. This knowledge comes not from an intellectual knowing but from an existential knowing and it feels very authentic and something you can really base your approach to life on.

For the last year of my practice, I have felt competition drop away and instead a love and concern for my fellow beings has taken it place. A capacity to forgive has emerged which kind of took me by surprised because for so long I had cultivated bitterness and revenge against all who have wronged me, even for situations I had pretty much imagined. If someone had only just told me about the sweetness and freedom that forgiveness brings I wouldn’t have wasted so many years living in anger and closing my heart off from the world. They should teach this stuff in all of our schools forget algebra you’ll never use it, but forgiveness, now there is a tool for life! All of this came from practicing yoga, not focusing on the results, not caring if I achieve a pose or not but from showing up to practice and letting go. My husband has always had the saying “Life is 99 percentage about just showing up”…. I am starting to see what he means. I practice, I contemplate my existence and I listen to my body and my soul and they respond to the attention and show me the direction I need to grow in. They even invite my mind along for the trip but with some strict ground rules to ensure it doesn’t take over and run the show.

Everyday life is the best university you will ever find and the best thing is it is accessible to everyone. All you need to do is just show up and you start learning. The trick is to pack up or let go of your preconceived beliefs and opinions and anticipated outcomes and just breath in and breath out, totally open to and accepting the day and events as they unroll. This is the tricky part and let’s face it if it was easy we would all be enlightened being with no requirement for therapy or alcohol and/or chocolate. But I can say yoga is definitely a tool to help you to let go and just be. I don’t know how it works, I just know it works, so long as you practice and not just asana. Yoga is how you live your life on an everyday basis, it’s in every breath and decision you make. Practice, practice, practice and the rest kind of just comes in its own good time.