Fourth Form of Madness

I love yoga but for most of this year I have pretty much had to force myself to do it. I’m going through my “I can’t be arsed” phase and believe me, my extra 10kgs highlights this fact nicely. So off I go this morning to hot yoga. 37 degrees which actually when you are moving feels more like 50 degrees. I haven’t always done hot yoga. In fact to be honest my mind used to shutter just at the thought of it. My favourite saying was “you live in Australia, go do yoga outside”. But then my favourite yoga teacher installed infra red heat at her studio and a gentle flow sequence and I trust her instinct so off I trundled. I wouldn’t say I embraced it to my heart the first few times, in fact, there was a lot of soul searching done on whether it was for me. The first few times I felt like the wicked witch from the east and as I stood there in a puddle of my own sweat in warrior 1 it was hard not to scream out “I’m melting, I’m melting…..”.

However, if yoga has taught me anything it has taught me to persevere, one breath at a time. I was reminded of this fact the other day when I was cleaning out my bedside drawer and came across and old journal I had started writing in a few years back when I was going through probably the worst time in my life. A melt down in hot yoga is one thing, a complete melt down of your whole life is quite another. I think the moons must have aligned and it was just my time to endure the agonising process of self development. This period seemed to kick off with a neck and shoulder injury that was extremely painful and made it impossible for me to continue the Mysore practice that I had fallen deeply in love with.

At first I would still try to go to practice and then endure days of suffering and not being able to sleep due to the pain. Finally, I listened to my body and reluctantly changed my practice with a broken heart. However, on I worked with what I had. I adapted everything and started to home practice a lot. I never practiced anything that caused any pain. I monitored and wrote in my journal what caused my injury to flare and go into tightness or spasm and what opened up my body. I wrote my thoughts down that I had during the practice and what my mind felt like. Reading back over these journal entries I realised that this was probably the first time in my existence I had stood by life, no matter what it held and worked with it rather than against it. This prepared me to do the same with other issues that were also starting to arise in my life. I realised my heart was never broken only that my love of yoga had just changed as everything must in life and I had developed a new dimension to myself that I never appreciated before – I was a stayer, a sticker.

Once a friend had told me a story from her life that left me emotional and full of respect for her. She hadn’t gotten into the dream course she always wanted to do in life after school, photography it was her passion. This didn’t phase her, she simply went to the school on enrolment day and struck a deal with the school that if someone didn’t turn up to accept their enrolment that day, she could have their place. So there she sat all day, long into the afternoon, watching all the students come into enrol and watching them leave all signed up. On she waited, on a little chair in the hall, patiently. Finally, well into the afternoon, one of the course co-ordinators came out to give her the news that someone had indeed not enrolled and she could have their place in the three year course. She seized this opportunity and ran with it, becoming a most talented and beautiful photographer. I remember looking at her when she was telling me this story and being in awe of her determination and perseverance and realising I really didn’t possess these qualities. Today through a practice of yoga and with the help of life and all it throws at you, I think I have been given the chance to develop my own perseverance and determination skills and with these I pay homage to my beautiful friend.

I recently restarted personal training because my employer is generous enough to offer this service to it’s employees (even contractors) and I love to support generosity! Other than that I actually immensely dislike the training itself. It involves running and, as a fellow employee pointed out, I run like a wounded hippo. I think his exact words were “Wow I thought with your yoga and all that you would be a really fast runner but man you are slow slow slow!” It’s true I’ve alway been at the back end of a pack in running and throughout my high school years would ensure that I never had to compete in running events. One year I specifically scheduled a foot operation to fall over the carnival period so I could do nothing but barrack from the stands waving one crutch in the air to egg on my fellow classmates. Yep avoidance behaviour started very early in me.

So last Monday, I find myself running up and down the city concert house steps. The chorus in my head is screaming “Give this lunacy up”! Then I am lunge jumping, push upping and burpeeing all over the place. All the time the training is screaming at me “Get those knees up, get that chest down to the ground, go deeper in the knees, come on sprint beat the person in front of you, beat them”. I did point out at this stage, so as to spare her vocals, that I’m a yogi, I’m not competitive and I definitely don’t care if someone runs, jumps, lunges deeper than me, but this was to no avail. I admired her persistence. And I admired mine as well. Even though I was the slowest and probably the least conditioned to it, I persevered. I was reminded of one of our neighbours from a few years back who was a captain in the military police who advised me that the only way she got through the tough physical component of her path was by putting one foot after the after and so on.

So I did this. I kept plodding along even though I was the shade of a beetroot and I was a tinsey winsey bit concerned I might be on the verge of a heart attack. I began to watch my thoughts, my resistance, my avoidance, I watched myself work up to a eminent dummy spit and then let it all pass over. I was reminded that your free to think anything but you don’t have to act on it. This is the beauty of the freedom of thought and it’s a far greater beauty than the freedom of speech. Life can push you in all sorts of directions and it will, and your mind will always chase after it, but the rest of you doesn’t have to follow, the rest of you can just keep putting one foot in front of the other, or as I like to say, taking one breath after the other.

So back at work as I sat at my desk in all my beetroot glory, I scheduled in Monday and Wednesday lunchtimes for the continuance of my training sessions. I’m looking forward to working with the trainer and the rest of my fellow employees towards more aerobic fitness and building stronger work relations. However, what I am most looking forward to is the continuing work with myself, my thoughts, my reactions and resistance to become aware how I have chosen to construct this side of myself. Wish me luck, I’m going to need it!

I had an exam this week. I wasn’t that stressed about it. I did my usual thing of studying past exam papers and noticing the questions that came up the most over the years and based my studies around those questions. My husband has often said if I spent as much time actually studying the subject as I spent trying to work out what would be the questions in the exam I would smash the exam anyway. I’ve always loved my husband’s clear, rational, realist logic. Loved it, but for a dreamy, irrational, idealist like me, I just can’t follow it. Anyway, in this particular subject the past exam papers were basically the same over the last seven years. Jackpot! All I had to do was pick three questions, study them in depth, write 3 essays, turn up at exam and write furiously for 2 hours and then go home safe in the knowledge that I had passed.

So there I am on exam day, hanging out with my fellow external students from all other courses, laughing with the exam supervisors, buying free range eggs (and this people is why I love the uni I study at – what other uni sells free range eggs at exams) and arranging the thirty pens I have bought to the exam on my desk in artistic patterns. I still haven’t quite shaken free of the fear of my pen stopping in an exam but hey I’m not alone on this one, at every exam I am surrounded by Bic pen hoarders rolling them back and forth on their desk in nervous anticipation prior to the exam. I’m doing a quick check in my head that I can remember my essays on Nietzsche, Heidegger and Kierkegaard appear to be all there. I’m signing off my attendance sharing a joke with the supervisor, thinking life is good, things are controlled and running smoothly. And then it happens. Reading time begins and I am allowed to turn my exam page over. As my eyes run over my paper, I wonder why my Professor had to have a mid-life crisis this year, this semester. He had not only changed every single question on the exam but made them obscure! I’m the only external student for this unit this semester and the only student of the unit that takes an exam as I don’t get to sit tutorials. This is personal, he wanted me to actually learn something damn it!. I wondered briefly if my hubby had secretly called said Professor and arranged the new exam, then dismiss this idea and realise this is a fine example of the divine comedy of life and I chuckle to myself, which does raise a few concerned looks from the supervisors.

So there I am in my 10 minute reading time chuckling to myself about not having prepared for a single question. Actually this is pretty much my worst-exam-ever-scenario that I play out in my head prior to stepping into an exam, the one in which between hyperventilating and sobbing hysterically, I write my name on the exam booklet and then leave after the 10 minutes reading time is over. But back in the exam room, there are no tears, no hyperventilating, just me chuckling to myself. So I decide to use the 10 minutes to relax and take stock of what I do actually know from the past six months and the remainder of my life. I open my muesli bar (yes how cool you are allowed to eat and drink in exams as well at this uni, I think this is because they got sick of people passing out from hunger in 4 hour exams) and stared at my free range eggs for inspiration. Mid muesli bar the creativity gods smiled upon me and I began jotting random ideas down for the best 3 questions I had picked on the paper. Suddenly quotes came back that I could still use from the other essays I had prepared. By the time the official exam time commenced I had the outline of 2 essays and thought I would just let my brain work on the other as I finished those. On I scribbled and scribbled and scribbled. One idea fell into another and even though I thought I didn’t understand the question, I did seem to somehow construct a reply that I felt answered it sufficiently.

It came time for me to answer the third question. The third question involved Albert Camus. I love Camus and luckily I had done one of the semester assignments on him. The fact that I had actually got the bit wrong in my essay that this question was specifically asking me to explore didn’t dampen my confidence. I had reviewed my Professors comments on my semester essay so I knew what the answer should be, I just had to justify my answer and show how I had arrived at the ending. I did send a silent word of thanks to my Professor for this small sign of mercy and commenced scribbling on. As I did my final full stop, I looked up and realised I was the only one left in the exam room, well me and my free range eggs and one exam supervisor who looked like he wanted to leave 30 minute ago. My hand ached but everything else felt wonderful! For once in an exam, I had been forced to think, forced to create and forced to get over my fear of not being prepared. As I wandered out into daylight, keeping a watchful eye out for snakes (and that would be the thing I am not to fond about at my uni), I really felt I had learnt something. I learnt that control is futile, you never have it, you stress yourself out about trying to be in control and all the time you are chasing an illusion, chasing the dragon. I learnt that thinking on your feet is really enjoyable as it opens the floodgates of creativity and life loves creativity. I learned that you never can be “prepared”, life is random, let it flow and you learn to flow with it. Oh yeah and most importantly I learnt the best place in town to buy free range eggs is my uni!

This week I was very fortunate to be involved with Homeless Connect, a day held in Russell Square in Northbridge where all the services a homeless person could require but may not usually be able to access are there, in one spot with the service providers attention focused solely on meeting their needs. The company I work for was a major fund raiser for the event this year and also put together a band of volunteers to help on the day. They also set up a one stop beauty shop in one of the buildings opposite the park. It was a very popular stop as each person could get access to a shower, a haircut, a facial, their nails done, reflexology and reiki.

Much to my surprise I volunteered to offer reiki to anyone that was interested. Originally I was down to just help with packing up after the event. That’s very much my style, stay in the background, be quiet and watch. However, when I found out one of the other ladies I work with was going to be giving reiki at the event but couldn’t make it until 12 noon, life just gave me a push and before I knew what I was doing I was signing up for the day of reiki. I have always given reiki a bit of a wide berth, not sure why but I always had plenty of resistance there. To be fair, I guess it is my beliefs about what a spiritual path should be about, you know all hard work, learning, contemplation (hee hee hee) that got in my way of just going with it. But leave it to the universe to keep bringing to you what you need to learn about and embrace. About six months ago, a girlfriend and I booked ourselves a private retreat down south and were taught reiki from someone who has been about the reiki traps, so to speak.

The whole time I was thinking I’m just going along with my girlfriend on this one, it’s not my thing but I will go along with it to at least learn something. Well the weekend was quite the experience, for some reason reiki just hit something in me that fought back. I still remember the drive back me driving, saying loudly and clearly that I don’t think much of reiki and that it doesn’t do anything and then proceeding to spew out all this stuff from my childhood that any other sane person would have forgotten by now. Up it came, on and on I ranted, until I caught my friend’s expression and humbly conceded that perhaps the reiki had worked on unloading a lot of stuff I had squashed down around my heart. However, my reiki practice since then has pretty much been on myself, my much appreciative pets and a very unimpressed and doubting husband (poor love he had to endure my hot rock massage phase as well – not good for his bjj street cred).

Anyhow there I was with my table set up, my yoga music going, my sweet smells burning and the fluorescent lights off standing in the doorway of the very clinical room I had been allocated watching all these people flock to get haircuts, their nails done, their feet massaged but no reiki takers. I needed a better promoting point. I learnt that day if you give something a title/label, however well meaning, you will alienate people and segregate us into the knowing and the not knowing. That was what was happening that day. If I said “hi would you like a reiki session” I could see the shutters go down, the shields go around their minds and the resistance rise in their hearts. I’ve been there with reiki, I know the signs. Just as the carpet started to wear thin from so many hasty retreats out of my room, I finally said “hi there would you like to join me for 10/15 mins of relaxation?”. Everybody loves and needs to relax, no matter who you are and what your life circumstances.

I was reminded of the time I was asked to give a yoga class to children living with cancer. The theme of the class was tactics for dealing with stress. You could not find a better tool than yoga for this. As well as asanas, I focussed on breathing, nothing fancy but effective. I chose a long relaxation and yoga nidra at the end. I was nervous when I came to give it as I thought the kids were going to think I was crazy (crazier than they already thought I was). You should never pre-empt anything. At the end of the 20 min relax I asked them to gradually start to move and to become seated in their own time. Nobody moved, not a muscle, not even the four camp guidance counsellors who had come to do the class. I repeated the instruction – still no movement. After what seemed like an eternity there was movement at the station and I breathed a sign of relief that I hadn’t comatosed 30 odd people. We had a little chat and then I kept saying ‘thank you, it was lovely to work with you, I’ll see you again sometime”. No-one got up, I stared out across the 30 odd faces, a little lost as to what was expected of me. Everyone stared back with spacey smiles. Then one beautiful youth said “I’m so mellow, I don’t think I can move”, there were ripples of laughter and it got the energy moving again in all our bodies. I sat their in total love and awe of the power of yoga. These kids face the very real fact that they might die, very soon, way before their parents and other siblings. That must be a very anxious and frightening thought and it was lovely to be able to share the art of yoga with these amazing beings to help them cope with all that this existence had in store for them.

So back in my little room at the Homeless Connect day, I began to have a steady flow of takers for a relaxation session. The sessions touted as 10/15 mins stretched into 30-40 mins. Many fell asleep and I was lulled into a state of total relaxation by their soft rhythmic breathing. Some shared with me some stories and history before or after the session and I listened to their stories be told from their own mouths. I was struck with how after every session their was such a connection between us, like both of us stood together unseparated by the usually social restraints. Often we hugged or shook hands and I felt like I was learning more about living than I had in the last forty years. One man stood out in particular. He just didn’t look like the person who would embrace a “relaxation” session. Once again you should never pre-empt. He lay down on my table and the minute I lay my hands on him, I was overcome with a feeling of softness and gentleness and beauty. I was quite overawed with his essence. The session was for him but I would be lying if I said I didn’t get more out of it than him. I felt an amazing peace with him and as he slowly woke up at the end, gathered his things together and shook my hand and said thanks, I held onto his hand with both of mine and thanked him for working on me today. As I watched him leave, I was reminded that we are all students and all teachers. What you have to learn in life, usually doesn’t come with a fancy title or alienating label, it just comes with the flow of life, the experiencing of it with an open attitude and fearless heart, and lots of love, crazy, maddening love.

This week my husband jumped out of a plane. Totally willingly he flung himself out of an aircraft and proceeded to free fall towards the earth, all the while chanting instructions to himself and running several checks. Prior to him jumping, he performed a little demo of this falling instructional routine in our lounge room. It was really beautiful watching him go through his routine with memorised precision and joining him in “hard arch” once or twice. However, when he jumped, he jumped alone. Falling through the air with just a bag packed of material and routine performed earlier in the lounge room. Well maybe not completely alone, fear jumps with you, even if you have to stand on its head to get out of the plane. Of all the amazing aspects of the jump, I think this aspect, the working with fear, interests me most, because it applies to each and every one of us. Even us non jump out of plane types.

Fear. Whether it be over spiders, flying, work, public speaking or just plain being, we all live with some shade of fear. I caught myself in one of my old favourite’s last night at the movies. There I was settling back in my comforty chair, sipping my beverage and mindlessly shovelling popcorn into my mouth (and lap) when an advert for superannuation came on. Hit the panic buttons!!!! One of my biggest fears is ending up, old, poor and desolate on the streets. It’s always been with me since as young as I can remember (umm there’s a clue, childhood, maybe I learnt it there). Anyway back in the cinema my hand tightens around my drink, my breathing escalates to one step off hyperventilating and suddenly I can’t swallow my popcorn as my throat has tightened. In fact, my whole body has tightened, my chest, my stomach and my face, and believe me I can’t afford to be tightening my face, I don’t need anymore wrinkles. My mind races over what I own, will it be enough, I make a mental note to ring my superannuation firm tomorrow and see what I can do about building my retirement fund. I’m practically on my way to the foyer to text my superfund, why wait to call tomorrow with all this fabulous technology, when I catch hold of myself.

Whoa girl! Take a breath. See the fear, and by see, don’t just look at it, really see it. Understand the friends it is travelling with. The old voices from the past that educated you about their beliefs and values and didn’t leave any room for you to shape your own beliefs and values from your experiences of the world. Time to open a window, let a little fresh in and do a little bit of “unlearning” – my favourite kind. So as I sat there with a death grip on my soda watching my fear, I began to feel like my free falling husband. Only this time, as I free falled with my fear, packing awareness as my parachute, instead of chanting a routine full of instructions on how to be and get through this, I was watching to see where this routine of fear’s originated from. I wanted to know its nature, it’s origin, so next time when it came to visit I could say “hello my old friend, pull up a chair, this is going to be a long fall”.

In May this year I spent a month in France. I went there as I study philosophy and I wanted to be in the place where the existentialist movement birthed back in the 1940/1950’s for my fortieth birthday (let’s just say my new beginning). I love the existentialists, all that you are who you choose to be radical freedom stuff just speaks to my soul. I’m not so keen on the “god is dead” branch as I have a fundamental disagreement with that notion but then my ideal of god probably differs from most folks. Actually I have a real soft spot for the outcast of the existentialists, Camus. Now there was a thinker and although, through his theory of the absurd and “no appeal” I should find myself at odds with him, I don’t. Life is intrinsically meaningless, those looking to a god like a child looks to a parent to make sense of something, to make it meaningful and full of absolute values, are appealing to nothing, to make something of nothing. Those that look to themselves to find meaning where they essentially know there is none (no absolute rights or wrong) can still believe in god. If god is not the definer of right or wrong or instigator of what happens (this is you through choice, you are what you are by continually choosing) then god can exist within Camus theory. If god say is more like an indiscriminating energy that doesn’t care if you pass your math exam or if you conceive or if you don’t catch an STD from the latest casual fling and definitely is not passing judgment, and still lets you feel all the anxiety of living a life that is objectively essentially meaningless whilst still striving for personal meaning , then god and Camus get along just fine.

Anyway whilst in France meandering through the history museums, the French revolution came up once or twice. Also being a sociology student, I was really intrigued by the French revolution. In my mind, I couldn’t comprehend how the aristrocacy in France couldn’t see a revolution coming when people were literally starving in the streets. Eventually not even religion is able to placate the people down from revolting. The few had so much and the many so little. This felt familiar. Looking at the present day world there are actually many places where this is true. On my return home I became very interested in researching the current financial crisis, and in my mind, what I consider to be the start of it (or at least the visible start of it) with Enron. I was enraged and I must say a little incredulous at the fact that there hadn’t been a revolution in America. The time is ripe – so many with so little, and so few with so much. Coupled with the visible inequalities in access to education, health care and ultimately power to change things and people you have a revolution on your hands.

Which is why, and I am not afraid to admit it, my heart is bursting with pride, love and respect for the American people who are part of the “Occupy” movement. It has rejuvenated my faith in my brothers and my sisters to feel what is unjust, even in an upside down world that has long forgotten what true justice is. Any world that allows a CEO to walk away from creating a global financial crisis with a $284million dollar handshake whilst a large portion of middle America starts sleeping in the streets, is no world that I want to actually chose to be apart of. We must all chose against these outcomes for them not to keep occurring. Choice doesn’t start at the polling booth, not anymore. Choice starts in your heart, in your mind, in your being. You chose what you will and will not be a part of. Even in times of oppression and injustice, you can chose. This is true freedom, not the watered down external version of freedom. Only once this freedom of your inner is established will you truly experience freedom in any sense in the outer.

This financial fraudulence is not just occurring in America. I bushed shoulders with some powerful and knighted men who always offered a friendly hello. The same men who a few years on brought the bank and its shareholder’s to their knees for their dishonest and possibly fraudulent deals. They looked like ordinary people, they had families, took holidays and talked about the weekend sports. I guess at one point they were regular, ordinary guys (though I think even I might be being to generous here) but somewhere in the hustle bustle of making million dollar deals, the good press, the private jets and the opulent life of high status living they stop choosing to care about Others or least how their decision would affect Others. How do people get this back once it is lost? Hard question, but to be sure it doesn’t come from a quiet, accommodating public. It must be stimulated by a loud, unhappy, united public that shows, through shear numbers that it can oppose the will of the few, albeit powerful, and will hold them accountable, each and every time they stray. I firmly believe that this must be in a peaceful process. We must chose to be peaceful in facing our opposers. Violence is a choice that shapes our future in ways that we can never fully restore. The choice of violence will always from then on be with us, as a lived possibility. Best not to travel down that road.

The whole world is struggling against the greed and dishonesty of America’s political and banking/stockbroking system and my heart, support and thoughts/actions are with everyone fighting this struggle. Through our existence we are one, let’s unite to make a fairer more opulent existence for every being.

Yesterday, in the early quiet morning hours, the world said goodbye to a most wonderful warrior. Taken suddenly and very unexpectedly from all that loved him and learnt from him, his passing has left great sadness and heaviness. However, his legacy of teachings lives on in each of his students and in everyone of them, his face shines through. I was fortunate enough through my husband’s association to know this man. I can only describe my gratitude to his contribution to the world that he selflessly gave through his bjj club. To watch him work with the children who came to the club and what he promoted and established in these beings was to me, the true beauty of the club and to a larger aspect of life. He helped install respect, not only for themselves but for others, perseverance even in the face of the impossible and love, not only for the sport but for themselves and others. Who could ask for and live up to a better life calling.

Troy we will miss you and the world will miss you. However, we are comforted by the beauty of your life you built and the legacy of knowledge you left in each of your students. Long live the warrior!

Since I was 19 and read “The unbearable lightness of being” I’ve been wondering if I would ever know what the hell that book was about. I’ll be honest, I read it so I would have plenty to talk about whilst hanging out around the trendy, arty coffee places I used to frequent between clubs. I may have had plenty to talk about discussing Sabina’s hat, Tomas’s adultery and Theresa’s big child like eyes but I didn’t realise there was a whole different conversation going on in that book, one I couldn’t hear. However, the title stayed with me and intrigued me over the years.

I am always amazed what depths of passion awaken in me when I read philosophy. I liken it to the feeling I get when I am on the mat. Philosophy and yoga seem to decipher this world, this existence to me in a language that speaks directly to my subconscious, a land of strong symbols and mythologies shared by all of us, that does not ask our permission to be members of it. Enter my latest philosophical unit, “Existence and Freedom”. I have been waiting a very long time to do this unit. I have purposely not read Sartre as I wanted to be a place where I really understood what he was writing about and not merely reading words and hoping to pass a unit. I think over the years my life education, yoga and reading hindu philosophy had brought me to the bottom of a staircase, ready to take the first step up his body of knowledge.

Anyway, before Sartre comes Soren Kierkegaard. SK and I go back a long way. I was pulled to his writings when I was an atheist, to be fair I was just an intellectual atheist, my heart was never in it. I was lazy and it was always easier and trendier to argue that God didn’t exist than to take a leap (that’s borrowing from SK) and have faith and argue for God’s existence. Now I don’t want to get into the nitty gritties of what is God? I don’t want to know the unknown, I just want to love it and have faith in it. Whether you believe there is a kindly elderly being up there that hears your personal prayers and choices to favour you over and above the rest of humankind, or you see God as a impersonal almighty force, and energy that isn’t really bothered about your personal whims or fancies but rather what energy you are contributing to the collective, I don’t really care. It’s how you arrived at that belief that I am interested in, what backs it up. And here I don’t mean only the thinking behind your decision, as you will never arrive at these truths by purely thinking your way there. Thought must at some point, take a leave of absence and let nothing replace it.

But how does all this come back to “The unbearable lightness of being”, which I watched again today in film form. SK gave us a beautiful description of the stages of life (there are several) but here we will focus on the aesthete. The lover of pleasure and art, the seeker of fun and frivolity. At all costs avoiding responsibility, commitment anything that would weigh them down, bring weight to their soul. Tomas in unbearable lightness of being is a beautiful example of an aesthete (I’m not just guessing here Milan Kundera said that he modelled Tomas on SK’s aesthete). Tomas could continue with his aesthetic lifestyle, his lightness until Teresa came along. A woman that admitted to finding life heavy (ethical) and who demanded to be loved with such weight. Throw in a dash of Friedrich Nietzsche, who had a theory that life is eternally reoccurring that is every joy and every sorrow, every moment of your life just keeps on repeating continuously though out time for ever more. Nietzsche used this as a gauge to how you had created your own life, own person. If you shuttered at the thought of your life repeating, then you weren’t living out your own goals and desires, if you didn’t then you were. To me now, Kundera seems to argue in this film that even if life is a straight line and not reoccurring it is our decisions our choices that bring weight to our lives and that the unbearable lightness of being in this context is that if you continue on as an aesthetic and never develop to the ethicist stage, that is truly choosing as the aesthetic never choses they always go with what they like, life is unbearably light not because it is by nature but because it is by lack of choice.

If I learn nothing else in this unit, if I fail to understand Sartre, at least I got to finally get a chance to delve deeper into understanding this haunting title, “The unbearable lightness of being” . I’m happy with that……for now.

For the last three weeks I have been suffering with a dodgy eye. I have a flickering eye lid. Okay so maybe that isn’t the correct name for the condition but it feels like my eye lids is continually flickering. I keep on hearing myself explain to people that I am not winking at them but have this condition. Eventually this week I went to the doctor as it was starting to drive me mad. The appointment restored my faith in natural alternative medicine.

I haven’t been to keen on “modern” medicine for a while now. I suffered a neck and shoulder injury that hung around for 2 or so years. At first I was perplexed by the pain that I couldn’t get rid of. I couldn’t sleep, walk, sit or breath without pain. This was a whole new ball game for me as nothing had ever caused me such discomfort before and changed the activities I could and could not partake in. I went into a bit of a meltdown as the pain started making me reflect on various aspects of my life and being. During this time, I visited various doctors, specialists, physiotherapists and had a battery of tests done. All of them focused on the symptoms but not the cause. All of them treated me like a physical problem to be solved not as a holistic being enduring the many trails and joys of life with a psychological and spiritual side that are also susceptible to damage. I’m not even sure they may have considered that there may not have been solely a physical cause to the symptoms presenting. I felt a big disconnect between what modern medicine was offering and what I needed.

Returning to my present dilemma, I arrived at the doctors with my eye flickering in all it’s glory and after I gave him a detailed account of how long it has been going on for, how my eye feels weird like there is some kind of pressure problem, the fact that I have a reoccurring eye condition that attacks my eyes and causes damage if not treated immediately and effectively, he goes “Do you look at a computer screen?”. I wanted to say, “Of course I do, 99% of us look at a computer screen at some point in our day”, but my continuous flickering eye had worn the sass out of me so I said “Yes”. “Great” he says “That’s what it will be”. I started to express my concerns again about my eye but the look he gave me thinly disguised the fact that he thought I was a drug seeking crazy lady making another attempt to score. I snatched my $60 bill and made a dramatic exit by not saying “thank you”.

Then yesterday I was given a beautiful session of reflexology by a friend. My eye was still flickering but as I found myself relaxing into the session, I found my eye flickered less. This session was followed up with gong therapy at the Quiet Cone. I love gong therapy. There is nothing like lying back in a teepee, covered by snuggly blankets with the odd crystal or two strategically placed on the body and absorbing the beautiful vibrations and sounds of the gongs. There were big gongs, small gongs, deep gongs, high pitched gongs and gongs that sounded like crystal bowls. As the vibrations lapped against my body I found myself in a deep state of relaxation. Occasionally my body twisted and jumped of its own accord. My knees seemed to keep spontaneously spasming upwards. I was too relaxed to care and it was dark so I was guessing no one else in the teepee cared either.

Driving home that night I was amazed that all these memories kept coming up that I hadn’t thought about for over 15 years. The real amazing thing was that I felt exactly like I had at the time of the memories, the feelings were like the situations that the memories were based on had only just happened. I began to wonder if I had been carrying around these feelings/memories stashed somewhere out of the way in my psyche for all this time. Only problem with stashing memories/feelings is it is like listening to music with ear plugs in. If you don’t hear it, you don’t eventually get sick of the same old tune and turn the damn thing off! So on the way home, there was no need to play the radio to keep me awake. I had a whole bundle of repressed memories and feelings to acknowledge and to keep me awake on the long road home. That and my flickering eye, which amazingly isn’t flickering today.

I’m a people watcher, always have been. I loved observing people, people just being people, their actions, reactions and quiet moments. I remember in my final years of high school, when the guidance counsellor asked me what I wanted to do, I said if it was left up to me I would sit in a park, on a street, in a shopping centre, or where ever and watch people interact. He said there was no such job and recommended teaching! I do often wonder why he never mentioned being a sociologist or a philosopher but I guess I found that path myself. Anyway, the other day on the train I looked around, looking at the faces, the body postures, the tension each of us holds in the various parts of our body and man, we were not a happy crowd. Everyone looked exhausted (with good reason it was 6am), lifeless and like they had all just lost their iPhones.

Now I know life isn’t all about the good times and kicks and giggles but on that train that morning we all collectively seemed to be only connected to the never-ending struggle. To be honest, life is hard. Life is the abyss, the unknown, the uncontrollable, the never ending roller coaster that takes a lot of strength and courage to experience the ride. But what if life is not about the external but more the internal. What if a constant could be reached where no matter what happened externally you were able to maintain a constant state of being within. No not as a zombie but as a fully functioning, aware being that still sees the reactive states but actively choices not to partake in them. Full participation in life including exercising your choice to react or rather interact or dance with life in your selected manner. Take for example anger. Someone does something you don’t like, you feel a fire begin in your belly, a tightening of our throat and buzz in your head. Your thoughts start thinking of a million witty or cutting things to say that will engage you with this person (or with life) in a dance of anger. Usually these things spill out of our mouth, or through our actions and we feel vindicated or validated or whatever for whatever amount of time. Rewind back to the feelings that first started to arise, by becoming aware at this point of what you are creating, you can pause, examine the feelings and thoughts, pause some more, maybe do a little breathing, and see these arising feelings, thoughts, emotions as creations. Intangible creations. Not concrete, not absolutes but just creations. Then you have a choice. Act out your anger, or contemplate it, breath, work your way past it as you see it as a self made creation, and move on. There is nothing to resolve or control in the external world, only the internal and that’s a relief because trying to control the external world is as futile as trying to touch the sky.

Not always easy. One major road block stands in our way and it’s a big one! Ego. I’m not sure we all fully grasp what ego is. It’s such a misunderstood unseen yet always present significant part of you. Ego is kind of your friend and guide and kind of your Judas. One minute it will be saying “Yeah go this way, it’s the way to go if you want to be significant” and the next it kissing you on the cheek and revealing to you what an unauthentic being you have become by following the status quo. Tricky business, yet ego has usually stood up well before anger is felt in your stomach or your throat. It is the one leading your mind to the statements that will rip apart your opponent and it is ego who whispers seductively in your ear that you need to strive and compete with other beings. Yet by it’s very presence it is highlighting areas that you need to look at within yourself and thus is your guide.

Life is a process of learning this stuff and it’s continuousness. It’s a process I guess of becoming more conscious of your inner life and then letting the outer life flow. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t get it all the time. My journey involves many many missed opportunities to exercise my own advice. Just ask the lovely ladies I went to lunch with the other day. I was stressed at work and I proceeded to snipe and whinge and hold my angry space rather than choice not react to it and fully enjoy their company. As I said life is a process of learning. Being open to the learning is a start.