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Stringing Baby Seed Pearls (and “Opening to Grace”)

ByElizabeth

Last night I sat down at my kitchen table to string baby seed pearls for a mother-of-pearl charm I had gotten from Manoj a few years ago.

When I took the pearles off of the thread they came on and put them on my jeweler’s mat, several challenges were revealed:  even with the lights on bright and my reading glasses, it was almost impossible to see the bead hole; if I touched the wire other than on the hole, the pearl bounced; if I tried to hold the pearl still, the hold was obscured by my fingernail. Using a needle was not a viable option because the holes were too small for a wire-threaded needle.

At this point, since I was doing this after a long and frustrating day at the office, the tendency was to get more frustrated. Should I just give away the pearls? Get stronger glasses or a loupe? Try to return them?

Instead I softened. There was no mandate I get the pearls strung. I was doing this solely for enjoyment.

In softening, I discovered — to mix philosophical underpinnings — the zen of baby seed pearl stringing. If I grouped a bunch of pearls together, not only was it easier to see holes in certain pearls, but the others around it held the pearl in place for the wire to pierce the pearl. By softening, it occurred to me to use the technique of cutting the wire on a bias (and repeating it every several pearls strung), which gave me a smaller, sharper point, making the threading much easier. Most important, though, I stopped trying so hard. I let the wire and each pearl meet each other instead of my trying to force the meeting. When I did that, the openings were revealed, and I entered a quiet and serene meditative state during which the project completed itself through my agency.

It is for discovering, experiencing, and always being able to engage this essential and blissful merging of being and acting that I meditate and practice asana. We practice the Anusara principle “opening to grace” so that we can experience grace itself (whatever grace means to you) doing our acting, both on the mat and off.  As such, “opening to grace” is both the primary and ultimate activator of this merged state of being that is yoga--union..

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    Late Spring Greetings–Making Time and Space (Web Version of E-Newsletter)

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends,
    I hope you are thriving to the greatest extent possible under your current circumstances in this outrageous Spring and weathering (pun intended) the wild fluctuations between apparent late winter and seemingly already mid-summer.  My garden has been uncertain at several moments, but partly due to careful attention at strategic points and partly out of love and luck, it is thriving–providing lots of herbs and greens and promising lots of tomatoes and peppers and beans.

    I write this letter a bit later than might have been desirable, as the summer session at Willow Street has already started, and my partial sabbatical from yoga teaching evidently has begun.  In practical terms of time and space this is the first time in almost eight years that I am not working weekends (first Saturdays and then Friday evenings) and commuting out to Takoma Park from Capitol Hill to teach.

    It took much contemplation to come to this partial sabbatical. Being a part of the Willow Street Community has been and continues to be important to me, and I have learned an incredible amount from the opportunity Suzie Hurley, and Joe and Natalie Miller, gave me to share my enthusiasm for the practices and the teachings with the fabulous variety of people who come to Willow Street as students.  It was an honor and a continuing source of inspiration and focus to be able to study with so many fine fellow teachers over the years.  And change can be hard for me.  It also is hard to let go of something that has been profoundly important.

    For my optimal health and well being, though, there just was not enough time for me to work full time and go where my heart is currently leading and also continue to teach on Friday nights or Saturday mornings.  I had to make a shift or start fraying around the edges, becoming less happy with everything.  Better to make some space to breath and feel and think without pressure.  Freeing my weekends fully will give me some of the space and time that I need at this crossroad in my life.  I am moving, I hope, towards a phase where there is more emphasis on nurturing self and relationship more deeply and exploring other creative pursuits with more seriousness.   To be able to work intelligently and with good will as a civil servant at this time and to continue to engage in our society that is in so much upheaval, leads me, for my abiding health and expansion, to the garden and the cat and my own practice and the growing and very special relationship that began on the trip to India (no value judgment implied by the order).  It also will be lots easier for me to study; going to a weekend workshop will no longer require my getting a substitute to cover my absence–expect to see me as a fellow student at the Friday nights of weekend workshops at Willow Street.  New ideas and opportunities for teaching will likely come, but not for the moment.

    I continue to lead the all levels yoga practice at William Penn House on Tuesday nights where you will be warmly welcomed by the regulars whatever your age or ability level and will be sure to enjoy the fruits of my new and varied explorations in yoga and other practices, while still keeping to the fundamental structure of class influenced by Anusara methodology.  Please join us.  A portion of each student’s payment supports the work of William Penn House.  While there is a suggested amount, if funds are a challenge, just pay what you can.

    Feel free to e-mail me if you are a more experienced practitioner who is interested in the Wednesday night practice or if you are interested in arranging private sessions or semi-private practices with your own small group.

    I look forward to seeing those of you who are local on a Tuesday night or at a workshop around town or in the neighborhood and also continuing to share photos and contemplations on this latest phase of my yogic (yes, I know that isn’t a real word) on the blog.

    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

    clouds

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    “This confused war”

    ByElizabeth

    My dear friend from college, Dan Harper, just posted the following on his website.  I feel fortunate to have a friend who inspires me to me more learned and more concerned.

    Martin Luther King would have been 80 today. On February 25, 1967, not long before he was killed, he spoke about the Vietnam War and its effects on our country. The following excerpt from that speech could easily be delivered today, with just a few minor changes:

    “This confused war has played havoc with our domestic destinies.

    “Despite feeble protestations to the contrary, the promises of the Great Society [anti-poverty program] have been shot down on the battlefield of Viet Nam. The pursuit of this widened war has narrowed domestic welfare programs, making the poor, white and Negro, bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home.

    “While the anti-poverty program is cautiously initiated, zealously supervised and evaluated for immediate results, billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. The recently revealed mis-estimate of the war budget amounts to ten billions of dollars for a single year. This error alone is more than five times the amount committed to anti-poverty programs. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Viet Nam explode at home: they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

    “If we reversed investments and gave the armed forces the antipoverty budget, the generals could be forgiven if they walked off the battlefield in disgust.

    “Poverty, urban problems and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession. When it is not our security that is at stake, but questionable and vague commitments to reactionary regimes, values disintegrate into foolish and adolescent slogans.”

    Full text of the speech on Stanford’s Web site. Crossposted on PaxPac.

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    Awake in the Middle of the Night (Recollection of an Invitation to Remember)

    ByElizabeth

    Last night at around 2:30, I found myself very aware and wide awake for no apparent reason. I got myself readjusted for going back to bed and then sat in my bed in the dark, wrapped in my favorite shawl for meditation. I got myself sweetly settled into a practice intended to invite in the sweet support of the satguru (see my previous post on variations of what that might mean for you), which serves well to help a return to sleep on a wakeful night.

    After I had been practicing for about five minutes, a slew of emergency vehicles wailed down the street. The emergency was not on my block, but based on the timing of the sirens, it sounded like it was not far away.

    I marveled that I was already awake and meditating in a delicious place when the sirens sounded rather than having been jolted awake out of some dreaming. There were enough vehicles that I am sure many if not most people other than the soundest of sleepers for blocks around were woken by them.

    In thinking about the auspiciousness of my state, a memory came to mind. Friends Meeting of Washington. Where I often attend Quaker unprogrammed worship, is just west of Connecticut and Florida Aves., NW. Being on such a busy street, even on Sunday morning there can be a lot of traffic noise and having an emergency vehicle drive past with its siren blasting during meeting for worship happens from time to time.

    It is, of course, somewhat jarring to be deep in meditation and silence and have a siren start wailing and not pleasant to be woken from deep sleep. One time several years ago when a series of siren-sounding vehicles sped down the street outside the meeting house, a friend stood in meeting after the sirens were gone and said that for him, whenever a siren interrupted his worship, he used it as a reminder to hold those in need in the light. In sharing this reminder, he took us all back from however we reacted to having been loudly interrupted to a grace-full place. I remember having moved back into the depths of silence, offering its healing light-filled energy to whomever had needed the emergency vehicle, those driving the vehicle and attending it, devoting their lives to serving those in need, and to others in my life who were struggling or in pain.

    In recalling that beautiful teaching last night, as I also wondered whether at some level I had woken and started practicing to be ready for the event, I thought that what had been so special about the message was that the reminder was not a criticism of whatever reaction might have spontaneously arisen to such a disturbance, but rather an invitation to respond in the best light. The speaker clearly had been reminding himself of his own teaching and sharing with the rest of us how much it helped him.

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    Unsolicited Advice or Helpful Guidance

    ByElizabeth

    The other day I was visiting with a friend who finds themselves with sudden responsibilities that are complicated and challenging.

    As is my general inclination, especially when talking with those who are around the age of children I might have had and who have asked for input in the past, I gave some suggestions for things to read and possible strategies for some aspects.

    As the conversation continued, my friend mentioned the unnecessary quantity of unsolicited advice being offered. Oops, I thought, and checked to see if my suggestions had overstepped the mark.

    They said what I offered was helpful and not like the advice that was troubling. I just offered techniques that might be helpful for navigating the circumstances more effectively. The unwelcome advice offered said what the outcome/choices should be.

    I think about this fine balance and how that applies to sharing and leading practices.

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    New Toy (and Samskaras)

    ByElizabeth

    The guy in the Apple store in Georgetown who showed me why I really wanted to walk out of the store with the IPad 2 had never heard the song “New Toy.”  The year it came out, I was in London studying and being tragically hip; he was a year old give or take a few months.   I suggested he find it on ITunes.

    Three days of Ipad 2 ownership later, “New Toy” kept running through my head.   Oh my god, and then I started hearing Nina Hagen infiltrating from the past.  Was I really in New York when this song came out and kind of out of my mind?  Yes I was.  Does anything we experience ever completely fade away?  Probably not, which is why the great yoga masters advise us to be careful what we bring into our consciousness, lest we establish new samskaras that draw us away from the light.

     

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