Community and Family

thoughts on how we fit into the web of community, family and society

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    “There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio…” (and DCLAW)

    ByElizabeth

    Last night, at the invitation of my massage therapist, I attended the third DC Ladies Arm Wrestling tournament at the American Legion Hall on Capitol Hill.  For those of you who know me–or suspect from reading my blog that you know me to some degree–going to the American Legion Hall for an evening of betting on arm-wrestling might seem just a teensy-weensy bit out of character, perhaps even something beyond anything I could have “dreamt of in my philosophy.”  Not so into wrestling or costumes or betting or bad beer or anything loud.  I am, though, completely into norm-bending, outrageous manifestations of spirit, of which this certainly and rollickingly is one.

     

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    “Magic Carpet Ride”

    ByElizabeth

    As I was hefting my heavy day pack over my shoulder to get ready to leave for the airport, I said to my roommate for the week, “now is the time I wish I could just take a magic carpet ride.”

    “It would be pretty windy,” he replied.

    What I wanted from the magic carpet ride was not to have to sit in traffic to get to the airport or deal with the security check in and boarding and potential delays, etc.  The fact that the plane can get me from one climate to another in two hours is pretty magical.

    I decided to play “Magic Carpet Ride” on my ipod while I was waiting for my flight to send it magic carpet ride energy–on time boarding, no problems with the plane, a smooth and comfortable ride, which it turned out to be.  Usually I listen to quiet music or recorded teleseminars for my studies with Paul Muller-Ortega when I am traveling.  Yesterday, I decided to see what ipod’s “genius” function would come up with following “Magic Carpet Ride.”  First came something by the Clash, not a bad segue. I wasn’t sure that fit my mood, but decided I would go with it until the plane took off.

    To my shock, because one would expect a series of rock and roll songs, the next track was an invocation to Lakshmi–kind of rocked out, but still, not what I would have expected.  That was followed by a series of chants to Siva intermixed with three different versions of the maha mrityunjaya mantra.  “Ah,” I thought, “genius knows I have been practicing yoga all week and then celebrating mahasivaratri.  How very extraordinary sometimes the interplay of the subtle energies and technology!”

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    When We Choose the Pleasure of the Beautiful (DWTD)

    ByElizabeth

    When we choose a tantric path, we choose to experience pleasure as an expression of spirit, rather than seeking to transcend such experience as would one who is on the classical renunciatory yoga path. The choice to remain engaged, to honor mind and body as divine, comes with great responsibility.

    When we choose engagement, we choose to experience the divine reality not just of pleasure, but also of pain. The true tantric path does not turn a blind eye to ugliness and suffering. Just taking the pleasure without recognizing its opposite is not authentic practice. If the pleasure of the sunrise is “real,” then the garbage on the beach is just as real.

    Recognizing the reality of ugliness and pain as part of the play of the real does not mean, though, that it should diminish our joy in the beautiful and in the dance of the play of opposites of life.

    Rather, it is our delight in and engagement with beauty that invites us to serve as best we can to alleviate suffering, to try and clean up the garbage where we can. In other words, as we recognize that ugliness and destruction are part of the play (lila), we seek to be heart-full rather than heart-broken when we witness the suffering from violence to others or our living planet. If we let our hearts break, we become blind to the beauty. Like those who only see what brings pleasure, those who only see the painful are also not experiencing all of the real.

    As I head back to the world inside the Beltway, I bring the deepened and replenished sense of beauty and the dance that I always get from collective study and practice. I will try to share the privilege of having this experience by doing my best to clean up what garbage I can, while still dancing and loving in the light.

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    “I See It Every Morning” (and Jnanam Bandaha) (DWTD)

    ByElizabeth

    When I walked out of the back of the hotel through the pool area just after day break, one of the pool side assistants was out getting things ready for the guests. “Windy,” he said, as I was wrapping and knotting my meditation shawl around my neck into the face of a strong breeze coming from offshore. “But look,” I replied, pointing to the sun rising over the ocean, “it’s so beautiful!”

    “I see it every morning,” he answered, partly with a shrug of weariness and partly with a grin of delight. I guessed he was in his mid 50s–hard for me to tell, his skin was so leathery from the sun. Probably an old stoner surfer was my thought, and the shrug of resignation was for the fact that taking care of the lounge chairs and umbrellas for endless legions of tourists was what he needed to do to eat and still be with his dearest love–the sea and the sun. The smile was for the sun and the sea itself and to be able to share their beauty once again with someone who is seeing them with fresh delight.

    During the course this week of study, we spent time discussing the Shiva Sutras. The second sutra–jnanam bandahah–literally means “knowledge is bondage.”

    “Why do we automatically assume bondage is a negative?” John asked us at one point. Any time we make a choice, we are to some extent binding ourselves because we are, by making a choice and being limited by space and time as we are in this human form, forgoing other possibilities.

    The Sutras also say that knowledge is freedom. Though the sanskrit words are different for the knowledge that binds (limited knowledge) and knowledge that leads us to freedom (highest knowledge or knowledge of the divine), using logic equations, one could say that if knowledge is bondage and knowledge is freedom, then at some level, bondage, too, is freedom.

    If the pool side attendant regards himself as being utterly beaten down by his job, feels stuck with drudgery because he had nothing else he could do to survive, and then forgets about the beauty surrounding him, that would be an example of knowledge constricting or limiting us, putting us into bondage that takes us away from spirit.

    If, on the other hand, he looks at the ocean each morning with joy in his heart and recognizes that he chose his job to be able to be with the ocean and sun every day, that would be knowing that bondage can actually free us (in our limited form) to dwell in and from the heart.

    What the tantric yoga and meditation practices that come out of such teachings as the Shiva Sutras are designed to do, is to help us find the freedom in our limitations, to make choices in our associations and actions — our bindings — that lead us to love and wonder rather than disappointment and fear.

    What do you choose?

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    A Different Perspective

    ByElizabeth

    This view is always there, we just do not always get to see it from our habitual place on the ground.

    Sometimes people ask me how I can sometimes still feel unworthy or get depressed or be edgy with all the committed practice that I do. A friend said recently that an answer to that question might be to suggest what I might have been like if I was not doing the practices.

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    “Relaxing Into Optimal Alignment” This Saturday, February 26th (Web version of E-Newsletter)

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends ,

    What could be better with the topsy turvy weather and the pace of our town these days than to spend a delicious afternoon relaxing into optimal alignment?

    This month’s workshop theme will explore the second line of the Anusara invocation:  satcitananda murtaye.–roughly meaning being, consciousness, and bliss embodied.  We will spend two extraordinary hours inviting ourselves to go into each pose fully present and aware to the possibility of bringing ourselves into complete bliss by aligning through the Anusara principles.

    Or you could just think it is relaxing and lovely, while listening to great music, to lie in a series of supported poses that realign the physical body to help release tension and invite a sense of ease.  The thing about restoratives is that they offer much on many levels.

    If you sometimes think that restoratives are not for you because your mind has a tendency to race, please come join us, ask a question about what to do when the mind races, either privately before, or with the whole group when I ask for questions.  I have offerings from my teachers and my own experience that have proven for me to be incredibly helpful, and I love to pass them on.

    Cannot come this Saturday, please mark your calendars for March 19th (Yoga for Gardeners to Benefit the Washington Youth Garden) and March 26th for the final workshop in the “Relaxing into Optimal Alignment” series.

    Hope to see you soon.

    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

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    It’s a Fine Line Between a Grimace and a Smile (and satcitananda murtaye)

    ByElizabeth

    The New York Times just published a blog entry on the perils of faking happiness.   The first problem with the article was that I could not get to the study to see if I agreed that the actual premise was that “faking a smile” was what led to a deterioration in mood or feeling unduly pressured by a need to do so regardless of what was going on inside was the problem.  The second is the definitional problem of what it means to “fake” a smile.  I think it not unlikely that contorting the face into a fake smile (i.e., grimacing) because one feels one has to do so does not improve mood when one is in physical or emotional pain.  According to the little cover blog, though, those that made an attempt to smile from the inside by thinking a positive though–even though it was a conscious effort– did experience an improvement in their mood.

    Any good method actor will tell you that to make an outer expression believable, one has to cultivate inner thoughts to go with it (though that is still “acting”).  Having been taught by my mother by age six in preparation for my first school play performance, that to act I should try to “be an apple” a la Stanislovski, I disagree that intentionally putting a smile on your face cannot help improve your mood. It’s all in how you fake it ’til you make it.  I have long advocated to my yoga students, based on my personal experience with the practice of smiling whether I think I mean it or not, to try smiling on the outside improve mood.  Even leaving aside the inner experience, just walk down the street with an open posture and a smile on your face and see how people respond, though I caution to do this at your peril in New York.  When you smile at people and be polite, they generally respond in kind.  You are then much more likely to feel good than if you are scowling and rude and people respond back in kind.

    What on earth (or in heaven’s name) does faking a smile until you feel one have to do with satcitananda, you may find yourself asking yourself at this point.  The second line of the Anusara invocation is “satcitananda murtaye.” Murtaye, from the same verbal root as murti or statue, here is usually translated as saying that Siva (from the first line) embodies the characteristics of satcitananda, being (what I like to call is-ness), absolute consciousness, and bliss.

    Another way of looking at this phrase, though, is that when we open to the possibility of discovering our siva nature, which is the reason we practice yoga, and when we use the principles of alignment to help do so, then we discover how to be, if even for a moment, simply present, fully conscious, and blissful with the consciousness of the ultimacy of being.  In a word, when we soften and look within, using the knowledge and experience of our teachers and our practices, a smile of recognition lights us up.  If we start out having a bad day, feeling stressed or anxious or in pain, or just plain grumpy from reading the news, we just have to practice with more depth and sincerity to find the smile and not beat ourselves up if we are struggling to find the smile despite our desire and the intensity of our practice.

    Is that faking a smile or being the smile?  Does trying to smile when we are feeling blue really make us more unhappy?  I think it is all in how we do it.