Creating the Present

December 31.  The last day of 2014 - not that it really matters - it's just another day passing early in the annual cycle of slowly lengthening post-solstice days.  But we mark each "new" year as a holiday, and we got off work two hours early, letting me walk home before the sun went down.

I took the long way around today, walking down to Sligo Creek and then up the path and to the house from the opposite way - adding probably 3/4 of a mile to the trek.

I've been working on how to be more present - how to experience life more fully and deeply - and I've concluded that one key is approaching each experience as if it was brand new.

If I assume that because I've walked the path to and from work several thousand times that there is nothing new to see, my brain will oblige and ignore most of what is happening around me.

If I look for something new, it is always there.

Consciously not letting my past determine my present, I open up to more experience, trying to see it without immediately judging it as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, of use or not.  Exploring, playing, sensing - participating with the world around me in creating my present experience.

Existential Musings for the End of 2014

In a 13.8 billion year old universe, I'm a particular organization of matter/energy that will exist, recognizable though constantly changing, for - let's be very optimistic (and keep the math simple) - 100 years.  0.000000000072 of the age of the universe.

The stuff I am made of is elements forged in the sun a few billion years ago, and recycled since, who knows how many times, though other forms - organizations of matter/energy - both living and non-living.

When I die, my stuff will be scattered and recycled again, and again, until the end of time.

It's quite a peculiarity of my human ego that I think of myself as particularly important - that I imagine that I'm a special being blessed with the means to pass on some aspect of myself to "my" progeny.

It's perhaps even more peculiar that I have the ability to recognize that as the illusion it is - that the more persistent thread of life is the DNA itself - the particular program for organizing the stuff of the universe into me - a living machine of sorts with the function to participate in a complicated, reassorting replication of the program that passes on through time, even as I appear and then disappear, a mere blip in the expanse of time.

Meanwhile, we humans have collectively developed and accumulated a stunning ability to understand and manipulate the basic stuff of the universe - to develop tools that extend the range of our naturally evolved senses to orders of magnitude of largeness and smallness.  We can control the subtle fluctuations of energy fields to the point that we can each have a personal device that extends our ability to connect and communicate around the globe.  We can unleash the power of a sun and destroy a city - or more.

The huge explosion of this ability to affect our world - at macro and micro levels - has occurred within my lifetime - the last 0.000000000072 of the age of the universe - give or take.  It is insane for us to think that we understand the implications of what we are doing.  It is high hubris to think that we will be able to corral, constrain and control the myriad of existential threats to our species that we have, and have yet to but certainly will, unleash.

At the same time, these abilities have, from many perspectives, greatly improved our lives.  Do we have the collective ability to sort out the things that will sustain us from the things that will destroy us?  To succeed at the former, and avoid the latter?

The answer to that will likely come, if it is consciously known at all, from a future particular organization of matter/energy that is not us.

Waking

I returned home yesterday from a week-long holiday trip to Colorado and Oklahoma, visiting relatives.  While I enjoyed the trip, it wasn't particularly restful.  I had only a couple of days in one place, then another trip to the airport.  The last night, I flew from Oklahoma to Denver to connect with Pam.   That flight was late, so it was after 10 pm before we got to the hotel, and we had to get up at 4:30 am to catch our early morning flight home.  We were both very tired when we arrived in the early afternoon.

I went to bed at 9 o'clock last night, and got up a little after 8 this morning.  I noticed something different right away.  Usually, when I first get up, I have a short period when I need to find my balance, gather my mind, and finish waking up as I stumble out of bed and into the bathroom.

This morning, my feet landed on the floor, I stood up, and felt wide awake, in complete balance, and ready to go.  Was this because I'd slept 11 hours, letting my body, not a schedule, decide when to rise?

A Day, A List

I committed to a very busy schedule this fall, with work, yoga teaching, and one weekend a month in an intensive workshop.  Hard to believe that in September I was waiting to start my first scheduled weekly class.  Now I have three, and have been subbing for other teachers - one or two classes most weeks.

A result of being busy is that little things that I used to keep up with have piled up.  Mail to look through, and other accumulations of things that need attention.

Friday ended another busy week and I realized that I had one day to get ready for the holiday trip to Colorado and Oklahoma.  I not only had to get all the things ready to go - I also had to get my mind ready to go.

I woke this morning and began a list of things to do - pack, sort mail, vacuum.  As I began to work, the list continued to grow - haircut, shower, schedule a taxi, check-in online.  I had one more yoga class to teach too, subbing for a Saturday afternoon class that I didn't know.  Making lunch, opening a package that had arrived - then putting the contents away.  Taking care of the end of year charitable contributions.

The smoke alarm downstairs must have known that today was my day to get things done, as it began to chirp it's dying battery alert.  That went on the list too.

The day flowed by.  I worked through the list, checking things off as I finished, adding new things.  I did a few things that didn't make the list.  I simply did them as they came up, and then moved on - making lunch, cleaning up after, turning off the water supply to the washing machine.

Some weeks ago I wrote about another Saturday that I found the flow - was able to ride the current - accomplishing a lot, but with a feeling of effortless and no anxiety or distress.  That was my intention for today, and as I write this post, finishing one of the last items on the list, I am tired, ready to get some sleep for the early morning ahead, but I am also ready to go.

Some Harmony Today

William Harvey is a professional violinist with a big vision.  He founded a non-profit ten years ago, Cultures in Harmony, with a mission to use music to build relationship and connection between people from diverse cultures around the world.  Then he spent several years in Afghanistan teaching music at a school in Kabul, and last year moved to Argentina as concertmaster (1st violin) of an orchestra there.  All the while keeping Cultures in Harmony going.

I took some time off work this morning to ride the Metro down to Columbia Heights and meet William for coffee and a crepe.

You may be wondering how we even know each other - this global citizen Julliard trained violinist and me - a government bureaucrat in marine fisheries, amateur musician, and yoga teacher.  The answer, I think, is a common interest in humanity, being open to possibility, and the miracles of modern communication.

There's a public radio program that features youth performing classical music, "From the Top." Pam and I have listened to it fairly consistently on Sunday evenings around dinner time.  Some years ago, William, who had previously been on the show, was featured on an alumni program, and talked about the organization he had founded, Cultures in Harmony.

I looked at the web site, thought it was a great idea, and made a donation.  A few years later I connected again with him on facebook, and followed his posts from Afghanistan and then Argentina.  So when I recently got an email from him that he would be in Washington this week and was interested in meeting, I didn't want to miss the opportunity.

We had a lively and far-ranging conversation, and I left with an uplifted spirit, glad there are people like William in the world, dedicated to the common good of humanity.

A Day for Clarity

Today was striking in its clarity.  I first noticed the brightness of the moon, stars and planets in the early morning sky.  Clean and crisp, the air seemed perfectly transparent to the light streaming in from thousands, millions, light years and parsecs away.

Later in the morning, the landscape and all the objects in it - trees, houses, office buildings, church steeples - were sharp-edged in the deep contrast of light, and depth of shadow and color.

I watched, over the course of a couple of hours, the slow unfolding of a parade of clouds moving in from the west and floating by under the blue morning sky.  They move slowly enough that a casual glance sees only a static snapshot.  A closer look reveals the subtle, but constant motion that, over the course of some minutes, transforms the scene.

Life passes like that, too.  An hour, or even a day, seems inconsequential, but the flow is inexorable, piling cumulative changes up until we've turned from young to old, and wonder how much we have missed, forever, for not paying attention.

Finding Ease Amidst Effort

Yoga poses move the body in all different directions, and every person's body is different.  What is easy for one person is hard for another, and then, in the next pose, the ease and difficulty may be reversed.

Improved physical condition and ability is a natural result of yoga practice.  Even more important is paying attention and learning the tendencies, flexibilities and restrictions of your own body.

I've learned to avoid isolate effort in yoga practice.  By that, I mean that one particular part of the body is working noticeably harder than the overall body.  This over-effort is counterproductive, though at first it may seem as if the effort will stretch, or strengthen, the body.

I think it's better to find the place where the entire body is in balance - working, but not straining - and with no particular spot standing out, flashing a red light, blaring a siren.

When in perfect balance, with effort distributed throughout the body, I can be working very hard, yet with a feeling of effortlessness.  This is amazing, and wonderful to experience.

Shadows and Being

Walking home from assisting in the Monday night yoga class, I became interested in my shadow.  I watched as it lengthened and shortened, and as it moved from behind me, around to the side and to the front.  Sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right.  Sometimes disappearing, other times more than one shadow, moving independently.  As it moved, and changed size and shape, it also changed in contrast - sometimes dark and sharp edged, other times faded, barely visible.

I thought of how often I had walked this route over the past 11 years, and never paid more than passing attention to my shadow.  Tonight, I watched it in fascination, thinking about what it told me about the sources of light I was passing.  

I also began to identify more and more with the shadow - aware of it as my shadow - its presence a response to my being.  I was watching it grow longer before me with each step, only peripherally aware that it was also growing fainter.  My concentration deepened as the shadow became lighter.  Then, in the next step, the shadow melted into the pavement.  My breath caught briefly as my mind processed this fading from existence, this merging of my presence into the larger world.

Then another step, and another shadow began to emerge.  I began to watch for these fade-outs - the progressive diminishment of my projection onto the earth until, just in an instant, I disappeared.  Every time was a bit unsettling.  A metaphor for the end of life, in a fading shadow.  A phenomenon that has been around me on every night time walk, waiting for me to notice.

Expanding Awareness

All around, all the time, countless things are happening that I am not aware of, not paying attention to.  As one way to expose a tiny bit more, I sometimes close my eyes, take a full breath in and out to focus my attention, then open my eyes and observe, closely, the first thing that catches my attention, observing at least five things about it before my mind moves on.

Anxiety

Yesterday's post got me thinking more about anxiety.  Wikipedia describes anxiety as "... a feeling of fear, worry, and uneasiness, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing.  It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue and problems in concentration."

I recognize that description - it fits well with my experience that I call anxiety - so I have the right word.  All I really know is my own experience, so it is natural for me to think that my experience is "normal," that the way I feel is how everyone feels.  Though that is certainly not the case, it must be a common enough experience that it is defined with a description that I can relate to.

What causes anxiety, and how can I reduce it?  I think it stems from one of two things - either attachment to a particular future outcome - or aversion to one.  That is, there's something in the future that I want to occur, and by being attached to that particular outcome I become anxious at the possibility that it might not be realized.  Or, there's some future condition that I want to avoid, and I become anxious that it might occur anyway.  

I can plan and prepare, thereby increasing the likelihood of the outcome I prefer, but there will always be anxiety until I let go of the attachment or aversion.  There's a yogic teaching that we are entitled to our actions, but not to the fruits of our actions.  That is, we do our best in pursuit of the outcome we prefer, but in the end, we need to accept whatever occurs. 

Relationship to Time

I was off from work today to attend a workshop by yoga teacher Rod Stryker.  I also had a mission to mail a Christmas package to Tanya in France.  I've been so busy with work and teaching that my opportunities to get to the post office were few.

The post office opened at 9, and I wanted to get to the studio by 10.  The workshop was going to be packed and I wanted to get a spot by the door so that I could get out easily - I needed to leave to teach a class - a scheduling conflict created by my not paying quite enough attention to things.  The walk from home to the studio is a bit under 20 minutes, and the post office is perhaps a 3 minute drive away.  So, I had enough time if I didn't get caught in a long line at the post office.   To improve my chances, I left home in time to get to the post office by 8:45.

My mind likes to think of things that might go wrong, and as I backed the car out of the drive and headed up the street, I could feel a little tension in my gut.   What was my back up plan?  If the post office was really slow (and from experience I know it can be slower than you would ever imagine), when would I need to bail out and come home to get to the studio on time?  This question, of course, implied that getting to the workshop on time was more important to me than mailing the package this morning.  But if I didn't mail the package this morning, when would I be able to?  Perhaps I could take some time off work early next week and do it.

All these things went through my mind a time or two before I came to my senses and settled back into the present.  Drive to the post office.  Go in.  Oh, no line.  OK, wait for 9.  And then a few more minutes - I guess opening at 9 really means they start at 9 getting ready to open.  Even being first in line and having the customs form already filled out, mailing a package to France took quite a while, but I was done before 9:15 and made it home with plenty of time to get to the workshop.

Time.  It's everywhere, and in everything.  Things take time to do.  And many important things - the way we organize life - are planned to happen at particular times.  I have expectations about how much time things will take, and that leads to anxiety that things will take longer and interfere with subsequent things, especially important, scheduled things.

There's a lot to unpack in that paragraph.  What makes something "important?"  Are my "expectations" about the time things will take deeper than just an objective estimate?  Are they loaded with judgment and attachment?  What's the source of the "anxiety?"  Why be anxious about something I don't control?  Or perhaps an even better question - Why be anxious about things I really do have a lot of control over?  Even if my post office plan went awry, there was almost no chance that I would miss the workshop, and it would have been fine to mail the package on another day.

Light Show

Toward sunset, the city was covered with a pancake of cloud, dark and shadowed underneath.  Beyond the cloud's edge, to the west and south, the colors of sunset glowed in a thin band.

I watched for a while, and noticed one spot slowly growing brighter.  This, I surmised, was where the sun was setting.   It continued to glow brighter, but the overall scene was unchanged - a flat, shadowed layer of cloud overhead, fringed with a narrow band of color.

Suddenly, the entire sky glowed red, as the sun dropped low enough to cast light on the underside of the clouds.  The light revealed new details in what, in shadow, appeared flat and featureless.   Bands and ripples of cloud glowed in different shades of light and shadow.  

Then the color began to slowly deepen into the longer wavelengths of red with the brightest spots taking a rich, golden hue.  The color stretched from overhead to the horizon to the east, south and west.  An experience of pure beauty - nothing to be done but be present in it.  

Wind

I walked up the street to the shopping district of Silver Spring at lunchtime today.  One of the taller buildings flies a large flag on top.  The day was breezy - at ground level the air swirled around, blowing scattered leaves around.  But up at building top level, the air flow was strong and fast.  The flag rippled out from its pole as if straining to get free and fly with the wind.

When I lived in Alaska, I sometimes walked across the bridge between Juneau and Douglas Island.  At the edges of the bridge, the wind might be barely noticeable.  But out on the bridge, over Gastineau Channel, it would be streaming past, then die quickly down as I reached the other side.

I'm fascinated by the way that air, which we move through so effortlessly when it is still that we don't even feel its presence, can exert such incredible force when it is flowing fast.

Down the street a little ways, where the wind funnels between two tall buildings, a couple of men were playing - stretching out their arms and leaning into the support of the rushing air.  I remember doing that as a kid, in the field behind the house in Kansas, on a particularly windy day more than 50 years ago.

Senses

I've recently clarified something in my mind - one of those things that is perfectly and completely obvious once recognized, but which can hide just beneath the surface of understanding for a long time.

Sensing is always in the present.

I am a complex sensing being.  Sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch - especially touch - not just touch in my hands, but touch from every square inch of skin - the things that I sense, are always what is, right now.

Signals are coming into all of the sense organs all the time.  The mind is very good at ignoring almost all of it.  Bringing awareness back to the senses - opening up to even just a little more of what I am continuously experiencing - is perhaps the quickest path back to the present moment from wherever in the past or the future my mind has strayed.

Clarity

Yesterday was cool, gray and rainy.  The evening was accompanied by the drumming of raindrops on the roof.

This morning though, was bright and clear.  There's nothing like the clarity of a cold winter day.  Everything in the landscape seems closer, more distinct.  The winter sun angles down through the leafless trees, making patterns of light and shadow.

A late falling leaf drifts down through the cold, heavy air.  A gray squirrel, light tickling its thick coat, scurries through piles of leaves.  The water in the creek, also clear, glistens in the light and runs dark through the shadows.

Everything seems to be simpler - more of what it is.  The pure transparency of the atmosphere lets light reflect undistorted forms into my eyes, raising vibrant images in my mind.

Free Form

Teaching yoga has changed my own practice.  I have less time for it, and I spend much of it working out things to teach.  This has been good - I've uncovered new insights by thinking about the details of poses and how to teach them most effectively - but I also want to maintain my own practice.

After work yesterday, I began to practice with the idea that I would do back bends, making my way toward wheel pose (urdhva dhanurasana).   I rolled out the mat and followed my first impulse, making my way to downward facing dog.  From there I brought one leg forward and under, opening up in a side plank variation, then back to dog and down to my belly for the first back bends - a series of cobra poses with the breath, starting with a tiny lift and gradually extending them up to a full cobra.

The next 40 minutes or so I followed my instincts from one pose to another, through more back bends, balance poses, and strengthening exercises, mixing some things I've been teaching recently with things I haven't practiced in months.

At one point my right leg felt noticeably tighter than the left in a hamstring stretch, so I paused to work down that leg with a tennis ball, from the top of the hamstring down to the bottom of the calf.  That helped a lot, as I expected.

Practicing freely can lead to unexpected, interesting things.  After my first wheel pose, I came down and immediately lifted my legs and upper body into navasana (boat pose).  That was interesting.  So I did them both again.  The full back bend of wheel followed by the front body ab and hip flexor engaging boat pose.  It is unlikely I would every have thought to pair those two poses, but practicing freely and instinctively led me to them.

I hope as I teach that I can show students how to go beyond just following my instructions, and develop a practice of their own that lets them follow their own bodies and instincts to interesting places.  

A Container for Your Experience

I taught two yoga classes tonight, at a studio, just opened this fall, that serves lots of new students.  One class was advertised as a vinyasa class - the other as a beginning vinyasa class.  But the reality is, people just come to the class that is convenient for them - that fits their schedule.  And in a place with lots of new students, almost everyone is a beginner.

Vinyasa, the practice of connecting yoga poses together with the breath, is inherently an advanced practice.  Teaching people vinyasa who don't yet know the individual poses well is very challenging.

Tonight, my beginning class was at least as capable as the regular class.  As soon as the vinyasa class began, I knew I needed to modify my expectations about what and how I would teach.  Very valuable experience for me, but not easy or comfortable.

I was reminded of what one of my teachers describes as creating a container for each person's experience in the class.  What more can I do?  Each person experiences their own body in their own way.  I can see certain things and make educated guesses about what is happening, but in the end, only they know.  I can shape the class so that the container is as safe as I can make it, still present them with some challenges, and give them suggestions to focus and heighten their awareness.

I can't do their practice for them, or tell them how they feel in their own bodies.  I can only create a container for their experience.

A Whole Lot of Yoga

I'm having a great time teaching yoga.  I enjoy the process of putting a class together - figuring out new things to teach.  I'm always more energized after a class than I am when it starts.  I've been getting a lot of teaching opportunities between the two studios I teach at, and the fitness center at work.

Tomorrow, for example, I'm teaching one class before work in the morning, and two classes in the evening.  It's been great to jump start my teaching, but I know this pace (15 classes over the past 12 days) isn't sustainable over the long run.

I'll have plenty to do after the first of the year with a regular schedule of 4 and a half classes a week.

So I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to teach a lot this fall, but I need to avoid getting overcommitted.  I also need to get as much rest as I can.  Tonight that means going to bed a bit earlier than usual.  I hope that will charge me up for the busy day tomorrow.

The Love-Hate of Busy

After several months of non-stop busy-ness at work, suddenly performance reviews for the past year and action planning for the next year are done.  My calendar is not full of meetings, my incoming email is stream, not a flood.

I find myself not knowing what to do.  I've been so conditioned to reacting to "important" things being pushed at me, that I've temporarily lost the ability to choose for myself.  Or so it feels.
Part of the feeling may be just the need to settle a bit after an overwhelming period.

There is still plenty to do.  I just have more choice about which things to do and how to do them.  I have to get used to that again.  I can pay more attention to the people who work for me.   I can give some of them a helpful, but needed, push.  I can gather the energy to tackle some of the projects that have languished because of some particular difficulty or complexity.

I can contemplate what it means that this condition - with more reasonable work load, more choice, and the opportunity to be more proactive and creative - seems to me less comfortable than just being busy.

Simply Experience

13.8 billion years ago, or thereabouts, our universe emerged.  It took about 9.2 billion years before our sun and the solar system, including earth, formed.  So we're projecting a measure of time, the time it takes earth to orbit the sun, back across a void of time.  How many years passed, before a year even existed?

It took about a billion years before life emerged on earth.  Many forms of life have come and gone.  Our particular form has come, fairly recently, and has not yet gone, but certainly will.  How disconnected we are from reality?  Each of us views the world from the perch of a little god - imagining we are the center of the universe, feeling our own uniqueness, importance, and individuality.  In reality, we're no more than a single fleeting manifestation of the genetic information and machinery of life that is flowing along with time, constantly changing, recombining, evolving.

How can we think we are the purpose of the universe?  Perhaps we are.  But then so is everything else that exists or ever did - a mountain, a tree, a grain of sand, a star, an electron, a cockroach, a triceratops, a passenger pigeon.  The universe changes, life evolves.  Individuals of all species come and go in the blink of an eye.  Species have a longer shelf life, but also eventually perish either through extinction or evolutionary change.

As the river of time flows, we come into it, ride along for a while, and then return back to eternity.  Our minds can reach back into the past, and can imagine the future, but life is happening only in the frontier of the river of time we call the present.  The present can be experienced, but it can't be held onto, since any experience we cling to instantly becomes past, not present.

The full experience of the present requires that our self importance - that little god perched within us - be replaced by a pure acceptance and openness to experience.  We take in all that is, and take in more and more, not clinging to it or judging it - both things that instantly jerk us out of the current of the present and leave us spinning in some backwater eddy.  We simply experience.