Hers: Reflections on Last Days

One of the last photos taken on our trip out west this summer...
the end of one adventure brining us into the beginning of another.

First days are exciting and last days are bittersweet…the last day of school, the last day of a job, the last day of a yoga training, the last day of sitting down with my husband to review his last self-created yoga sequence (we’re not quite there yet, but we will be some day!), the last day of my metta practice experiment…

 

...Today’s practice began like any other in these past 54 days. I woke, I flossed and brushed my teeth, I made my way into our yoga room, and I took my seat...

My metta phrases flow easily. I sync them with my breath. Inhale. (May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be well.) Exhale. (May I be peaceful and at ease. May I be happy.) Over these days what began as about an 18 minute meditation has turned into about 23 minutes. My breathe has grown longer, my phrases drawn out. Often, Gary joins me. He sets a timer for 20 minutes. We begin our practice with three short bells; he ends his practice with two short bells. But I continued on, repeating my phrases until I come to my last bead.

From what I understand, there is a Zen tradition where a firm slap on the shoulder with a long, flat, wooden stick is used to bring the meditator back to the present moment. These bells that signal the end of sitting practice for Gary have become my sharp slap bringing me back to the moment for the last few repetitions of my metta phrases. I’d like to say that I don’t need them, that I am able to stay present with each phrase, but alas, I cannot.

Today though, on this last day, with my phrases and breath flowing easily and my focus single-pointed, I finish before the bells. I sit in total stillness, total silence, and feel the effects of my practice. I feel the calm, I feel the openness of heart, I feel glad to have completed my goal.

Has it changed me, these days of metta practice? Am I different from when I started 54 days ago? I don’t know. I’ve had some amazing experiences, some small insights. But they are so fleeting…I learn something and then it’s gone. I have some small realization, surely meant to change my life forever and then it slips away. What if everything we learned was like that?! As in, yesterday I learned how to tie my shoes; today I forget how. But, I suppose that's the way it is for a small child. And perhaps that is what we, who are on this path, are like, small children – learning more and more each day, yet repeating the same mistakes over and over, until one day, finally, what we learn sticks and our lives change just a little bit; we grow just a little bit. And so the adventure continues...

Today is the last day of this designated experiment, but not really. It's also the beginning of the next. Each day a first day, each day a last day.
 

Hers: Challenging Adventures and Realizations

New Adventure #1:
I woke lazily today. No alarm, no set plan for the first few hours of my day. I languidly slid out of bed at 7:30 to brush my teeth. Gary and I decided to walk downtown and check out the farmer’s market. Ahh, but no. “I can’t leave yet. Let’s sit first. Let’s not disrupt this newly formed habit.” Gary often sits with me, but not today. He took a pass. With my jeans and t-shirt on, I went into the yoga room, pulled out my beads and took my seat. I truly believe this is the first time I’ve ever sat in jeans. I’m usually in what I consider my pajamas or maybe yoga pants, or sometimes even a lounge-about skirt, but never jeans.

New Realization #1:
I started just as I usually do – directing loving-kindness thoughts toward myself. It’s almost like warming-up before a good run. I start slowly, focusing on myself, sensation, breath. So many days into my practice, almost near the end of my experiment, I’ve come to realize the importance of starting with myself. I’m not only wishing thoughts of love and kindness toward myself – that I may feel love, that I may feel kindness, but, and maybe more importantly, I’m cultivating the open-heartedness to direct these thoughts toward others, to behave with loving-kindness in all my relations. May I be filled with loving-kindness has become May I be filled with loving-kindness toward others.

New Adventure #2:
I mentioned to someone recently, “It’s been too easy.” I’ve learned over the years and through experience that as I set out to “work on” something, the universe has a wonderful way of presenting opportunities for me to practice whatever it is I’m working on. And it’s been too easy. Until this past week that is. Nothing crazy, nothing life threatening, but challenging experiences nonetheless. No need to go into detail, but suffice it to say, the universe has come through.  And more than once. Lucky me, I got to practice over and over until I got it (almost) right.

New Realization #2:
Each challenge that presented itself made its way into my practice. Really, it’s the presenter of the challenge who's been getting my attention. After warming up by directing loving-kindness toward myself, I bring to mind the image of my challenger. (I think of two opponents stepping into an Ultimate Fighting cage!) I then direct and direct and direct: May they be filled with loving-kindness. May they be well. May they be peaceful and at ease. May they be happy. Over and over. Minutes pass, the image fades, but on I go. When I really feel as though I’ve lost connection to my intention, I return to myself. Then back to my challenger, and on it goes until I finish. And I think it’s over. A day goes by, another, and then a new challenge…The entire process begins again. The thing to know is that these experiences, these challenges, they stay with me. There’s a reason they even make their way into my practice. It’s because I have yet to let them go. I feel bad. I am directly loving-kindness toward another in order to make myself feel better. 

New Adventure and Realization #3:
My most recent challenge occurred only just yesterday. And I think I'm getting the message. Loving-kindness doesn't just happen on the cushion in meditation practice. It happens, must happen, ALL THE TIME. In each moment and with every opportunity that is presented to us. It makes no sense to continually react to situations from a place of fear (read anger, defensiveness, antagonism) and then go home, meditate, and some send loving-kindness thoughts to someone after the fact, expecting never to be challenged again by them or anyone else. We've all heard the cliched definition of insanity....The only way I'm going to get different results is by behaving differently in the moment. And the only way I can behave differently in the moment is to actually be present in that moment. Present and available to whatever challenge is set before me. Present with each challenge or challenging person that is sent my way. Can I treat them with the spirit of loving-kindness in that moment? When I do, there's nothing to feel better about later. Can I see their suffering and respond with love? When I do, I can then direct loving-kindness thoughts and energy with ease and from a place of truth. I've had many opportunities this past week to do just that. Some of the times I failed, some of the times I didn't. But with these new realizations, I'm looking forward to my next adventures....

Hers: BatGrrl and Day 21 of Metta

 

When I was younger, I used to write. Lots. Journaling, poetry, prose, unfinished short stories, nonsensical musings, and all kinds of whatever flowed easily from my pencil. I never did much with it. I’d get ideas about doing “readings” or putting together performance pieces. But nothing ever really came from those ideas. That is until I met BatGrrl (name changed to protect identity). BatGrrl was a writer – what I considered a Real Writer. She’d published a couple of things and even put out her very own zine that was sold at the local hipster thrift-and-not shop. She wrote every day and always had something new to share, something fabulously funny or culturally relevant. She was smart, informed, creative, hysterical, and spontaneous. But best of all, she read my writing and liked it. She liked it enough that she put some of my pieces in her zine. She liked it enough that she encouraged me to keep writing, encouraged me to read what I’d written to others, to share it. More than she probably ever knew, BatGrrl was my greatest support. If she thought I could, then I could.

Until, one day…

We unintentionally yet explosively broke each other’s hearts, ending a friendship that maybe did, maybe didn’t need to end…A few years went by and those years seemed to heal the pain. We came back together only to break each other’s hearts again in a much more subtle way. Or maybe they never really healed. The how’s and why’s of that first heartbreak are irrelevant now. We were both doing what we thought we had to do.

It’s the second heartbreak that interests me today. Mostly because I don’t even think we knew it happened. It showed up in the time that passed. In the life changes, the moves, the loves, the loss, all unshared. For me – it showed up in the writing that stopped coming. And the irrational fear of reaching out. It’s been more than 9 years since BatGrrl and I first reconnected – a connection maintained only through the modern miracle of Facebook - more than 9 years since we’ve spoken. Almost as many years since I’ve written with any seriousness.

And then, day 21 of my metta practice comes along...

Everyday I’ve been sitting; I’ve been cultivating and realizing the open heart and compassion of loving-kindness. Almost every day, I’ve been writing, writing about my experience with the metta practice, writing about my relationship with my husband, writing about whatever comes to mind.

When we practice metta, we are open to the truth of our actual experience, changing our relationship to life. Metta – the sense of love that is not bound to desire, that does not have to pretend that things are other than the way they are – overcomes the illusion of separateness, of not being part of the whole. – Sharon Salzberg, Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness

And here on day 21, open to the truth of my actual experience, open to the truth of life, I receive a message from a dear old friend. A hand reaching out from years gone past. A hand seeking and offering forgiveness. It seems to me that loving-kindness and compassion are the seeds from which forgiveness grows, forgiveness toward others and forgiveness toward ourselves. Someone somewhere and everyone everywhere once said there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that on day 21 of my metta practice, day 21 of a newly rediscovered and loved writing practice that BatGrrl reaches out of the darkness of our past and says hello and I say hello back...

Hers: UPDATE: Regarding His and Teacher's Voice

So there we were, sitting at our dining room table with this printed sequence in front of us…

I'd been looking forward to going over Gary’s sequence. Been waiting days really. I was a bit nervous, a bit excited. You see, Gary and I learn from each other every day, but we never really sat down in such a formal way. Except maybe when we were learning to sail – and that didn’t always go over too well. I seem to remember myself threatening to take sailing lessons from a sailing school on more than one occasion… But sail we did, and create a safe and intelligent sequence we will.

Now, I do this kind of thing all the time. It’s part of my role at the studio, The Yoga Sanctuary. As Director of Teacher Development, I mentor new yoga teachers: review their sequences, go to their classes, and give them feedback. So, this is like any other day…except…this is my husband…and I pretty much think he's the smartest guy in the world and that everything he does is stupendous.

But what if this isn't? Would I be able to tell him?

So there we were…

"Okay, what’s your intention here?" I ask, "What’s your focus?”

"Trikonasana, triangle pose."

"Great, you're starting in a cross-legged seat. Perfect. Then you're moving into Virasana. Okay...Why? And how do you plan to do that?

"Why are you talking like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're using teacher's voice."

"Ummmm, I'm not sure how else I'm supposed to talk. I guess I'm being a teacher right now."

"It sounds like you're talking down to me."

"Oh. I don't mean to."

Teacher’s voice…We stopped there, stopped reviewing the sequence that is, and instead reviewed this idea of teacher’s voice. For Gary it was all about the tone, the way I was saying what I was saying, it had an affectation. I was taking on a role; telling, not showing, as he would say. For me, after some thought, I realize that this teacher's voice comes from a place of insecurity and self-doubt.

[UPDATE: As I re-read this, I see something is missing....What is this insecurity and self-doubt? What was happening that made me take on the big-serious-all-knowing-teacher's-voice? Well, as I said, I generally think Gary is the smartest guy in the world - read: smarter than me. Now, this is NOT to say that  I don't think I'm smart. I am. But as my good and sweet friend Christina (of we are revival and more) has said, "I always knew you needed someone smarter than you." So with that...I'm sitting down with this guy who I think is super smart...
And then there's the yoga practice. This is a centuries old tradition; knowledge passed from teacher to student, teacher to student, teacher to student ad infinitum. The great yogis practice(d) in ways that are beyond my understanding. Who am I? Who am I, as I sit here with a Sam Adams Porch Rocker, to say what is a balanced, safe, and intelligent asana (yoga posture) sequence? Granted, I didn't have the Porch Rocker then....but still. Forty-five to sixty minutes of meditation and asana practice a day a great yogi does not make me. I mean we were in the same training together...
So there I go, with the self-doubt. This isn't the first time it's come up and it won't be the last. Part of me even thinks it's one of the things that keeps me on my game. It keeps me real, knowing that I have so much more to learn, I've barely begun.....]

The Yoga Sutras refer to this as one of the nine antarayas or obstacles that distract. These obstacles distract us from our practice – which in this situation we'll call life. My self-doubt was not allowing me to be truly present or authentic in my interaction with Gary. Instead, I was telling him that I am “teacher.”

In our summer Prajna training we received a handout with excerpts from Parker J Palmer’s The Courage to Teach. Palmer writes:

In a culture of technique, we often confuse authority with power, but the two are not the same. Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out….Authority is granted to people who are perceived as authoring their own words, their own actions, their own lives, rather than playing a scripted role at great remove from their own hearts.

This is my practice, my svadhyaya or self-study practice. With Gary as my mirror, I'm able to see myself more clearly.

In every class I teach, my ability to connect with my students, and to connect them with the subject, depends less on the methods I use than on the degree to which I know and trust my selfhood – am willing to make it available and vulnerable in the service of learning.

Do I know and trust my selfhood?  

Gary and I made it back to the sequence, as can be seen by the notes and scribbles. (Quick FYI: most of those are his!) And like any other practice, asana, meditation, once I let go of my idea of what should, could, or would be, it just flowed spontaneously - question, answer, thought, idea, give, take, all of it merging into one. That's when I know that I know and trust my selfhood.  

I'm sure that self-doubt isn't gone for good, the sutras say it takes time and diligence, but it's not a bad start.