For the first time on this staff week I went to sleep on time and woke up ahead of the alarm. Ahead by 20 minutes not 4 hours. Day 10 of the yoga course, adding the locust pose. I thoroughly recommend the Hittleman 28 Day Exercise Plan. It’s dated, but it’s clear, precise, and builds day by day. The emphasis is on the ‘housewife’ but what he says applies to us all, but it’s not preachy or idealistic.
Today is the last day of the retreat, and our group has no chores to do. Looking out at the still dark morning, I see we’ve had a few cm of snow at Hawkshead Hill overnight. After breakfast:
After lunch and before supper I watched 127 Hours. You all know by now that he has to cut his forearm off. But that’s at the end of over five days of very little food or water, with cold temperatures each night. You know it’s coming but when the cutting comes it’s bloody and gnarly. All those nerves and tendons and stuff that enables me to type right now. How to keep yourself cutting? Premonitions of a son yet to be born to a wife he doesn’t know. When he finally got out I cried and cried at the sheer relief of his return to human contact. The guy is a bit of an adrenaline berk, and the soul searching isn’t particularly deep but it’s enough to add some depth and humanity to his somewhat self-imposed predicament. And it being a Danny Boyle film there are excellent cuts into fantasy and hallucination. Don’t be screamish, watch it.
Today was the ‘deepest’ day of the retreat, with a video this morning of an intelligent inquiry into nothingness, and the dialogue this afternoon continued with a similar depth. This evening after a supper we each spoke, if we wanted about how the week was for us. It’s nearly always hard for me to speak to a group, and today feeling shoddy after the sugar in the meal, and the crying at the film I didn’t think I’d be able to say anything. But I did. It’s been a really valuable week on many levels. Some questions I’m left with right now:
What is the generator of thought?
Will thought, and identification with a continuous self, do absolutely anything to survive?
What does it mean for thought to be at the end of its tether?
Do we only know ‘near the end’ and so look forward to ‘the end’ as frightening?
How secure is our security?
Each year during the staff week we have a day for hiking then go out for a meal in the evening. After some thought, Gary decided it was too dangerous to take us up the the snow and ice, as we don’t have the safety equipment and experience. Instead we walked on the lower fells and valleys, from 0930 until 1600, with occasional breaks and a lunch sheltering from the wind on the low fells. The sun came out:
I’m not exactly sure of the route we took, for once happy to be guided and not be consulting the map to choose directions. We started directly from Yewfield because of black ice, James and I enjoyed slides on the driveway while people got ready. Do groups ever manage to leave on time? I don’t think I have ever experienced it. This time people coming down at the leaving time then fussing over laces and gaiters. From Tarn Hows we headed to Holme Fell (I think it was):
Fine views to Weatherlam and The Langdales and east towards Hellvelyn where someone died this week:
We passed by these camouflaged hairy friends:
And Colwith Force:
Then back over High Arnside and to Yewfield before dusk:
Here are all the hikers, near the start of the walk. About two thirds of the staff who came to Yewfield hiked:
This evening we went to Zeffirellis in Ambleside – for me mushrooms then vegetarian rissoles. Why do restaurants feel the need to put sugar in almost everything? The bread with the mushrooms was too sweet and so was the tomato sauce with the rissoles. Sugar is good for no one. But the company was good, sitting with Christine, Adrian, Mark, Mo and Fran.
Review day on the yoga course, so 14 different postures with variations to work through. Somewhat rushed as the alarm woke me from deep dreams and I couldn’t quite get up. Another night of great energy and not very much sleepiness until late.
Quiet meeting for half an hour, watching the dawn from the window, and the fire. DVD about listening and relationship to the students and is there any if we have images/can’t listen.
Another great walk, from Tarn Hows down to Coniston Water, climbing back up the valley.
Some very icy conditions, making me slightly concerned about the high level walk tomorrow. Not for myself but for those less steady and without good boots.
Tired all day, and I was much more relaxed during a fairly quiet dialogue this afternoon
My point in the dialogue this afternoon is this: do we need to spend quite so much time on teaching curriculum subjects? A lot of effort goes into teaching a multitude of subjects and yet we state academics are not really the main focus of the school, but rather to bring about a different human being, one free from fear, who is able to question. So, couldn’t and shouldn’t some of the time that is given to studying the world in all the subjects be handed over to the radical inquiry of the human condition?
…
Instead of a hike quite a few of us went into Ambleside for the hiking gear sales. It’s a small town but there must be at least twenty outdoor equipment shops, most with sales on. I got a merino wool base layer top to replace the synthetic one I was given a few years ago. It’s made by Red Ram. ‘Base Layer’ = posh name for thermal underwear. I wanted to get some Teko socks – organic merino wool, recycled plastics, made in a wind-powered factory – but they didn’t have any of my size. On the way to Ambleside the minibus slid on the icy road and we skidded into the verge. Luckily we were able to push it back to road.
…
It’s warmer in the house now, and very cosy sitting by the open fire.
Last night I began packing for the Lake District staff week. So far: ice skates. Then lay down and listened to music until sleepy, again lots of energy coursing through my body. It doesn’t make me jump and twitch and shake like it used to; the channels are clearer. Following a beat, a refrain, a melody took me on many journeys. Just stay with it and music can be magical, not just a distraction or entertainment.
Yoga this morning, a review day of the eight postures learnt so far in the course. The first four days of sustained practice are very familiar to me – the loosening up of the body, unwinding tensions, increased energy, greater awareness. It’s now that things get interesting and less predictable as these trends continue. While sitting I searched for the sick feeling of the last few days but only sensed traces of it. Often as thoughts ceased there was an immense presence of now, a pervasive energy tangible yet non-personal.
Back at work my lower back feels much stronger and I am sitting straighter. I feel it loosening up, too. I firmly believe yoga is the best prevention for back troubles. After all, most back pain is initially caused by weak back muscles. Look after your back – stretch. Gently.
WordPress are promoting postaday2011 (or postaweek2011). Today’s theme is: Share something that makes you smile. This works for me every time (although I do feel a little sorry for him, poor little blighter):
Perhaps even better, the remix:
Right, on with the packing, and laundry. Hoping for more anti-zap.
Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself —
And there isn’t one.
~ Wei Wu Wei
Again some mighty weirdness during the night. Does anyone really understand what happens to consciousness during the night?
I definitely need to sleep longer during the winter; the 0730 alarm felt like 0530 and that’s after going to bed around 2200. After a wash and brushing teeth I continued with the 28 day yoga course. The addition of supine twists and standing hip rolls brought the emphasis to the waist and lumbar spine.
Sitting afterwards it is clear that awareness doesn’t need ‘doing’, and any direction, choice or purpose in the awareness prevents natural occurrences unfolding and expressing. The prevention of this is what I have been trying to do all this time and limits existence, but seems safer that way. In sitting quietly, the subtleties of this controlling become apparent and can be understood.
Some snow in the air this morning and a few flakes falling as I walked to lunch. The school is still very quiet, with less than ten people eating pizza at the kitchen the table, quite cosy. The scrap metal man gave us a pack of beers as a thank you. I guess he doesn’t know Brockwood very well. Or maybe he does. Some more snow in tiny flakes this afternoon, like dandruff from hair clouds.
Before work in the afternoon, reading an article in the New York Times, as the Bank of America braces itself for possible postings on Wikileaks. They haven’t been mentioned by name, but when Assange said he has evidence to ‘bring down a bank or two’ it is suspected Bank of America is involved:
That Mr. Assange might shift his attention to a private company — especially one as politically unpopular as Bank of America or any of its rivals, which have been stained by taxpayer-financed bailouts and the revelation of improper foreclosure practices — raises a new kind of corporate threat, combining elements of law, technology, public policy, politics and public relations.
“This is a significant moment, and Bank of America has to get out in front of it,” said Richard S. Levick, a veteran crisis communications expert. “Corporate America needs to look at what happens here, and how Bank of America handles it.”
I am working on the transcripts of Krishnamurti and David Bohm in 1975, a series of twelve conversations they had together. Bohm does well to draw out precise meaning from K, while the two of them explore deeply the questions of what is truth, actuality, the limits of thought and the nature of desire. Bohm has the tendency to describe while K tends to unfold and both of them together sustain a serious inquiry into the most important subjects. I am on the last transcript now; here’s some extracts:
David Bohm: Desire includes belief and hope. That is, belief amounts to accepting something as correct because you desire it to be so – because otherwise you have no proof, you see – and hope is just simply the belief that what you desire is going to be realised. So all three are one and the same. I think belief is in some ways more deceptive than plain desire.
…
DB: Self-deception: I believe that I am the same as something greater because I feel better.
…
DB: The point is that we can’t go on with desire [leading our actions]. I mean, if we do our society will be destroyed.
…
DB: Thought tends to think that consciousness is a manifestation of a being or an entity who is deeper.
K: Yes.
DB: Who is not only thinking, but thinking correctly, more or less, and who is also seeing, who is perceiving, his thinking is describing his perception, and who is also experiencing, you see. I think that’s important. That gives a sense of reality that this being is the experiencer who is experiencing the sensations.
K: Quite.
DB: And all that makes the thing very real, a reality independent of thought. If all that were not present then the sensations would not be regarded as all that important by thought. Thought is now trying to produce a better set of sensations in order to make you feel better, you see, the state of…
K: Yes – better sensation, more sensation.
DB: More and better. It doesn’t want worse, you see. (Laughs)
K: (Laughs) Yes.
DB: Now, you see, that’s an inherently crazy activity, because the only point or function of the sensations is to give you some factual information. And if thought tries to make them better it can no longer give you any information, you see. And the whole thing anyway is self-contradictory because that very attempt cannot be kept under control, and so on.
…
K: So we come back to the point: the content of one’s consciousness is the product of desire.
DB: Well, in general.
K: Yes, apart from the knowledge, functional knowledge, the rest of it is the movement and the accumulation of sensations and desires.
DB: Yes, it’s some sort of imprints which contain the records of all that and the instructions to produce them again.
K: Yes, yes – again. Memory.
DB: Yes. It gets stronger and stronger.
K: Yes. Now, can that movement of desire come to an end? Should it come to an end?
DB: Well, it seems from what we have said that it should.
K: But I mean, all the religions though they say this, yet they become monks in order to identify – you follow?
DB: But I think that’s the self deceptive nature of desire. You see, one thing that happens when the brain begins to see the destructive nature of desire, it begins to think, ‘I would rather not have desire.’
K: Yes.
DB: But it begins to desire a state of non-desire, you see.
K: Yes, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right. Desires a state of non-desire.
DB: And therefore the whole thing is silly, you see.
K: Of course.
DB: And desire has this self-deceptive nature – I can desire not to be conscious that I have desire, you see, and therefore that will vanish from my consciousness and I will have no desires. (Laughs)
K: So our question is: can desire, which brings illusion, self-deception, and all the complications of objective, changing desires – can the root of the desire be dissipated? I think it is only then that you see what is truth.
DB: Well, I mean, that is very clear to me. As long as there is desire nothing can be done.
K: Nothing can be done – absolutely. You see, sir, but it’s very difficult because most people think desire is necessary to live.
DB: Yes, I know that. That’s part of our tradition.
K: Now, is it possible to eliminate altogether desire?
…
Unfolding the laundry from the tumble drier, it was mega-charged with static. A little fluffy pad that somehow got in the laundry leapt from C’s hand to the clothes. I then tried to video it as a magic trick but it didn’t turn out like that. We discovered ‘anti-zap’!
Was full of energy last night and wasn’t sleepy until after midnight. I then slept until gone 0900 with some drama filled dreams of which I can’t remember. It’s rare that my dreams don’t contain trouble of some sort. Last night’s were tinged with the remnants of Winter’s Bone.
We spent the morning on another driving session. Again, a big improvement. C felt like a driver rather than a learner, and I didn’t do much of that pressing on the floor when I feel out of control in the passenger seat. We stopped at Sparsholt, out the other side of Winchester to take a walk in the countryside, passing through the grounds of Lainston House, a fine country house built in 1700. It’s now a hotel, it’s residents including Ricky Gervais and Sting (who maybe shared a suite).
Veggie stew for lunch, then a little sleep. Skimmed through The Magicians from last night’s TV. This street magic trick with Mr Banjo of Diversity had me wondering:
I suppose the bench isn’t really a bench, or he’s lying on a ledge behind the back rest. Or it’s just, even more boringly, videoshopping and stooges. On the whole the programme made Derren Brown look like a sublime genius.
Imagine the whole of France and Germany flooded – that’s what’s happened in Australia. Worse floods on record. This is why they call it climate change not global warming. Weather patterns are getting more and more unpredictable and extreme. More to come no doubt.
Yoga around 1700 for an hour, with 15 mins sitting. A basic class with Triangle, chest openers, cobra, seated forward bend. During the sitting I felt a sick dizziness close by that seemed to be generating the ceaseless thinking. I went towards this sickness and was engulfed in a kind of drunk haze, yet was somehow surprised to find that I was still sitting still and straight.
Watched some of Countryfile for the part with the Severn Bore, a small tidal wave that channels up the narrowing estuary on the spring tide. The record for riding it continuously is 7.5 miles, but the daft presenter only manages a little surf.
Later, watched Salt, in which the lady with the big eyes, pouty lips and cutest nose prevents nuclear Armageddon in a rather brutal and twisty manner, with a hint of Bourne.
Woke in the night when C made a sound like a small cry in her sleep. Stayed awake for a few hours listening to music on shuffle. A few spine releases like used to happen ten years ago, and on and off since. I felt tense and troubled, which eased as the night went on. Drifted back into sleep as I stayed with any sharpness I felt in my consciousness and awoke after light.
A leisurely new year’s morning. Watched some online videos including:
C’s third driving session with me was much improved, her nerves holding as we approached trickier and unpredictable situations. I think she has a good chance of passing later in the month.
Home for reheated homemade wheat free pizza for lunch, then watching Everest youtubes about the 1996 disasters. That South African team were nuts, right? The participants in the film were talking about the same storm as the Into Thin Air book, as well as other incidents on that deathly year.
Had a snooze, read some Word magazine then some yoga on my new prAna ECO mat. Thought of starting the 8 week Rodney Yee course but suddenly preferred the same Hittleman one I began last year with. Was glad to be on the mat again but it’s hard to ‘stop’ and simply stretch. Afterwards sat for 15 mins and breathed.
Played some Draw My Thing using C’s graphics pad but got bored playing against probably 10 year olds. Had some smoothie with yoghurt and oats and granola then some peppers and aubergine C fried up.
Watched Winter’s Bone which was compelling and tense and desperate yet full of integrity. Then a little Robert Anton Wilson on reality tunnels and quantum physics. That’s the sort of media I’d really like to interact with this year. (See other post)
I look at the keys. I don’t know what to write.
They are not keys. They are lights on a screen.
Early morning. I wanted to stay in bed.
After two snoozes, some yoga.
Why are snoozes always nine minutes?
It’s interesting to do some yoga despite the reluctance.
Mostly in yoga I have gone with the reluctance.
But yoga is long-term, requiring a little regularly.
Some pratapana, some standing poses.
Warrior.
I don’t feel like a warrior.
My name means ‘brown celtic warrior’.
That’s funny.
Why do we divide life into the thing called good and the thing called evil? Is there not actually only one thing, which is a mind that is inattentive? Surely, when there is complete attention, that is, when the mind is totally aware, alert, watchful, there is no such thing as evil or good; there is only an awakened state.
A sense of inclusion. The stresses, the thoughts about the week gone and what might be to come. The urge is to push them away, to think later, to feel later. Later. And yet there they are, thoughts, feelings, tensions, wanting to express. After all, they don’t come from nowhere. Are they even a ‘they’? Are they not me too? So: a sense of inclusion. Include it all.
The world is always close to catastrophe. But it seems to be closer now. Seeing this approaching catastrophe, most of us take shelter in idea. We think that this catastrophe, this crisis, can be solved by an ideology. Ideology is always an impediment to direct relationship, which prevents action. We want peace only as an idea, but not as an actuality. We want peace on the verbal level which is only on the thinking level, though we proudly call it the intellectual level. But the word peace is not peace. Peace can only be when the confusion which you and another make ceases. We are attached to the world of ideas and not to peace.
Feeling a little sheepish, I am returning to starting work later. The shifts are about discovering an optimum way of living, the way I want to live, fitting time for all the things I love during the day. With the very early work starts, yes I got the office hours out of the way but then I was drifting through the afternoons, not inspired to do anything much. And way too much time making silly faces on Chatroulette.com. So, today, still waking early – at 0600. Five-anything just seems like a step to far, at least at this time of the year. Six allows for a shower, an hour or more of stretching, time to write a little blog, then to morning meeting or work for 0800. This leaves only two hours in the office in the afternoons. Sorted. So, that’s probably enough writing about bedtimes, morning times and this kind of obsessive thing. But it’s an inquiry, an investigation into what works for me.
What do we mean by idea? Surely idea is the process of thought. Idea is a process of mentation, of thinking; and thinking is always a reaction either of the conscious or of the unconscious. Thinking is a process of verbalisation which is the result of memory; thinking is a process of time. So, when action is based on the process of thinking, such action must inevitably be conditioned, isolated. Idea must oppose idea, idea must be dominated by idea. There is a gap then between action and idea.
Before waking, the feeling it must be time to get up soon. And it was. 0530. Dark. Hot in bed. We’d left the heater on. That’s a year of switching lights off blown right there. Sun salutations, half dressed, to a sun still hidden by the earth. Rain outside. Wash face, dress fully. Washing on. Sitting at my desk wondering why. Why am I up? Why have a job looking at a screen? Work for an hour then make fruit salad breakfast.
Later in the morning enjoying a job looking at a screen. The morning flew by. Talking about creativity. What is it? Something absolutely new. Also why I object to ‘creative people’? As if they have found some kind of answer. For as long as I can recall I’ve hated any kind of show off. Realising it is up to them.
Thinking next week of 0730 work starts, not 0600, and doing yoga before work. I’m missing that kind of in-touch start to the day.
Only when one can go beyond the bundle of ideas – which is the “me”, which is the mind, which has a partial or complete continuity – only when one can go beyond that, when thought is completely silent, is there a state of experiencing. Then one shall know what truth is.
Further experimentation meant arising at 0540 for 3 round of sun salutations, (left/right x3) before work at 6. I don’t know if it’s crazy to start at that time – probably – especially as I woke at 0130 and listened to a) yogapeeps.com podcast b) Yoga Nidra by Maureen Lewison c) a whole bunch of music. We’ll see how it goes. But I like it there in the early morning, no one else around, hardly anyone awake at Brockwood, doing the verification work for the first three hours in the office. I take a break each hour, else it’s 7 hours straight at the computer and that’s no good. At 8 it’s the morning meeting at the school which I can now go to again. Where is everyone for that? The hall is only one third full. Sitting quietly for 10 minutes is just too much for many people. So now I am ready for a deeeeep sleep. Alarm for 0530 tomorrow…
Why do ideas take root in our minds? Why do not facts become all-important – not ideas? Why do theories, ideas, become so significant rather than the fact? Is it that we cannot understand the fact, or have not the capacity, or are afraid of facing the fact?
A new experiment: getting up at 0545 to start work at six. That means I’m finished by lunchtime. (Yes, Sunday is the start of my working week, laughing at blasphemy) After a long post-lunch kip, I didn’t even know what day it was, and thought I had to work again. The rest of the day spent lounging around on the bed, which is in the living room right now, further causing disorientation. So, just a short sleep in the day. I liked the first hours at work, just me as the sun rose. By the time the work day had properly started, I was already three hours in. Standing in the bathroom at 0550 it was soooo tempting to go back to bed. The warm bed…
Started Om Yoga proper today – the start of my week. Today: Sun Salutations, the best known of all the vinyasa flows. Sun salutations in the afternoon? Yes, it was a disorientating day all right.
To escape from that fear- that fear of emptiness, that fear of loneliness, that fear of stagnation, of not arriving, not succeeding, not achieving, not being something, not becoming something – is surely one of the reasons, is it not, why we accept beliefs so eagerly and greedily? And, through acceptance of belief, do we understand ourselves? On the contrary. A belief, religious or political, obviously hinders the understanding of ourselves. It acts as a screen through which we look at ourselves. And can we look at ourselves without beliefs? If we remove these beliefs, the many beliefs that one has, is there anything left to look at? If we have no beliefs with which the mind has identified itself, then the mind, without identification, is capable of looking at itself as it is – and then, surely there is the beginning of the understanding of oneself.
Woo! A new yoga book Caroline bought me. I like yoga books; I have many. This one is nice and simple: Om Yoga by Cyndi Lee. It has crayon drawings by the author and sets out a daily practice for every day of the week, according to the tendency of that day. As Thursday is my Friday, I started with that day. A backbend-emphasis session. I like her straightforward style, with very clear diagrams. This book will be my guide for a while. Practicing along with someone – a teacher, a friend, a book, a DVD, an audio – always teaches me something fresh, a new approach. I also like chanting Om. It’s not a religious, or spiritual thing, it’s just an Om.
Cyndi Lee:
Relax your face and your opinions
Krishnamurti:
The stronger the beliefs, the stronger the dogmas. And when we examine these beliefs- the Christian, the Hindu, the Buddhist- we find that they divide people. Each dogma, each belief has a series of rituals, a series of compulsions which bind man and separate man. … We consider belief in God, the belief in something, as religion. We consider that to believe is to be religious.
I began the morning not with asana but with yoga nidra and then awareness meditation. The true value of gentleness. Gentleness – not you being gentle so much as gentleness itself. Why be hard on yourself or on others? Hardness restricts, gentleness allows.
Book of Life, 3 Feb:
If I am stupid and I say I must become intelligent, the effort to become intelligent is only a greater form of stupidity; because what is important is to understand stupidity. However much I may try to become intelligent, my stupidity will remain. I may acquire the superficial polish of learning, I may be able to quote books, repeat passages from great authors, but basically I shall still be stupid. But if I see and understand stupidity as it expresses itself in my daily life … then that very awareness brings about a breaking up of stupidity.
If there is becoming, there is pain. It’s a law. But I pretend it isn’t. The subtle levels of changing, of striving, of becoming. I pretend I don’t know what I am becoming, so pretend that I am not doing that. And yet this law seems in the face of the world, society, which is based on becoming something you are not now, or ridding yourself of the things you don’t want in your life. Get richer, get fitter, get more popular, be a better person – it’s normal, right? It seems natural. Society is based on progress, achievement, changing. And yet it is clear that if there is this desire, urge, striving, goal there is inherent pain. No wonder no one seems very happy. And those involved in teaching ‘change’ seem very stern. It’s not that we shouldn’t look after ourselves. It’s that the pushing causes pain (which causes more pushing). Strive and strife are one.
Krishnamurti:
Life as we know it, our daily life, is a process of becoming. I am poor and I act with an end in view, which is to become rich. I am ugly and I want to become beautiful. Therefore my life is a process of becoming something. The will to be is the will to become, at different levels of consciousness, in different states, in which there is challenge, response, naming and recording. Now, this becoming is strife, this becoming is pain, it is not? It is a constant struggle: I am this, and I want to become that.
And so January draws to an end. A month of re-establishing the relationship with my body in daily asana practice, a month in which I realised a daily practice needn’t be feared, a month in which I turned 39, a month in which the relationships in my life began to find their right place again, a month in which I taught my first yoga class, a month in which I felt the possibility of instructing on a regular basis, a month of deep cold and snow to start with, clear bright cool days to end. On we go…
From Jan 30:
You and the world are not different entities with separate problems; you and the world are one. Your problem is the world’s problem. … We are one; we are one humanity, though the artificial frontiers of economics and politics and prejudice divide us. If you kill another, you are destroying yourself.
…
We have an intellectual knowledge of this unity but we keep knowledge and feeling in different compartments and hence we never experience the extraordinary unity of man.
From Jan 31:
Self-knowledge is not according to any formula. You may go to a psychologist or a psychoanalyst to find out about yourself, but that is not self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, comes into being when we are aware of ourselves in relationship, which shows what we are from moment to moment. Relationship is a mirror in which to see ourselves as we actually are.
A: Yeah, but I mean like how did you, how did you finally get out of the dream? See, that’s my problem. I’m like trapped. I keep thinking that I’m waking up, but I’m still in a dream. It seems like it’s going on forever. I can’t get out of it, and I want to wake up for real. How do you really wake up?
B: I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m not very good at that anymore. But, um, if that’s what you’re thinking, I mean you probably should. I mean, you know, if you can wake up, you should, because, you know, someday, you know, you won’t be able to. So just, um… But it’s easy. You know. Just, just wake up.
…
Krishnamurti, Book of life, 29 Jan:
…the state of creative emptiness is not a thing to be cultivated – it is there, it comes darkly, without any invitation, and only in that state is there a possibility of renewal, newness, revolution.
And that’s it! Four weeks of early(ish) mornings, daily asana, continuing when in the past I have given it a miss. Previously, I could find any excuse not to do yoga. Any excuse will do. But for four weeks I have listened to the excuses, the reluctance and resistance and done it anyway. That’s not to say one should force oneself to do it if there is a real feeling that it’s not the right thing. But yoga can be incredibly gentle and done no matter how fragile or tired one is feeling. If I’d made an excuse and not been there on the mat, it could take days and sometimes weeks to get back to it, knowing I was missing something but not sure what. The feeling of yoga can’t really be remembered, but when it’s back, you know it. It’s like your life is happening again. The beauty of it is ‘doing it’ on the bad as well as the good days. I heard of ‘fair-weather meditators’, who only sit when they are feeling pretty good, and never have a hard sit. The real learning takes place being in touch, whatever one is feeling that day, that moment.
So, to continue a daily practice without the model of a 28-day plan… here we go! And why not?
So, for the last time, a quote from Hittleman’s Thoughts for the Day:
You will discover that your body will never allow you to go for more than a few days without performing the exercises, because it will know intuitively that this is what is required for you to feel you are functioning at your best.
To observe and see the fact, the actual, the what is. If I approach it with an idea, with an opinion – such as “I must not,” or “I must,” which are the responses of memory, then the movement of what is is hindered, is blocked; and therefore, there is no learning.
Falling Awake 