Month: August 2012

Okay, okay, so I’m sure that Patanjali was not actually referring to dating angst when he orated about kaivalya – the ultimate state of aloneness, or detachment, from worldly sensory objects.  However, embracing aloneness isn’t just for yogis meditating in caves.  It’s also essential for our adventures in relationship.

The Insane Mind

The merits of kaivalya became clear to me awhile back when I was trying to meditate.  (Let me stress – “trying.”)  As I sat, I watched in growing horror and bemusement as my mind trampolined incessantly about a guy that I’d recently met.  Despite every intention to focus on my breath, my mind kept returning to its increasingly paranoid chatter.  What was he thinking?  Was he going to call me?  Did I want him to?  Had I made a mistake.  Aaaarrgh!

Eventually, I gave up trying to control the gong show and just watched it all unfold.  I seriously needed a path out of the insanity.

Aloneness as a path out of crazy

When the crazy voices start, it’s time to take a breather and reflect on the merits of really being alone – and take a hard look at the fears that are keeping us tied to our distractions.

Rather than pitch our identity into the maelstrom of someone else’s (usually a stranger’s – for the love of god!) good opinion, we can step back and see the mind’s churning for what it is: an attempt to regulate our ego’s safety in an uncertain situation.

Watching the rolling of the mind in any situation (job crisis, personal change, yoga class, or yes – dating) is a profound opportunity to question what is real: are the thoughts real, or can we anchor ourselves to something deeper and more steady?

To summarize the first few yoga sutras (a 2000-year old yoga text): “Yoga is the restraint of the fluctuation of the mind.  Then you rest in your true nature.  Otherwise you think you’re all the crap that you’re thinking.”  When we can observe our thoughts rather than getting caught up in our drama, we are able to identify with the unchanging Purusha (Consciousness) rather than with our mind’s tempestuous swings.

The compiler of the sutras, Patanjali, says that the ultimate state of liberation is kaivalya, which is usually translated as “aloneness.”  While this concept initially seems sort of, well…lonely…there is a difference between being “alone” and being “lonely.”  Resting in our aloneness, we no longer need someone else to fill the gaps in our self-perception.  Connecting to a deeper sense of ourselves allows us to be fully present in our uncertainty, fear, and excitement so that we can observe these sensations come and go without attaching our identity to them.

Aloneness as a path to freedom…and intimacy

Being comfortable in aloneness not only helps us negotiate the dating jungle, it is also essential for maintaining a healthy relationship.  When we are okay being alone,  we can be fully present with our partner without needing them to play a role in our own drama.  Without our ego clamoring for self-affirmation, we can drop our agendas and be in relationship more compassionately, honestly, and bravely.  In short, since we have the power to leave, we can make a free and clear choice to stay.  We can communicate without fear of being abandoned, because we are already intrinsically whole.   Instead of serving our need for psychological safety, our relationships become the field for mutual growth.

Practicing Aloneness

Whether you are single or in a relationship, embracing aloneness will nourish your self-love and support your intimacy.  Here are some ways to practice:

1. Meditate for 5 minutes.  Become an observer in order to distance yourself from the stories of your mind.
2. Take yourself on a date – by yourself.  Set aside two hours a week that are just for you.  Follow your own fascinations.
3. Go for a long walk by yourself.
4. Have an electronics-fast:  No cellphones.  No ipads.  No computer.  No tv’s.  No facebook.  Rest in the quiet of being totally unplugged and unreachable.

Ultimately, practicing mindful aloneness is the antidote to “lonely,” as we cultivate our capacity to act from a place of intrinsic wholeness.

“You are the sky.  Everything else – it’s just the weather.”  – Pema Chodron

 

 

Oh, Anticipation…

Bass Coast was my first music festival and the possibilities were exhilarating.  The venue was spectacular (imagine: campsites nestled in the Squamish mountains at the foot of a sweeping, glacier-fed river), the stages were stunning, lineups were killer, and the festival folk were both open-heartedly friendly and wildly costumed.

We danced, we frolicked, and we stayed up much too late under a banquet of stars.  It was glorious.

Reality…

But the bubble of possibility cannot expand infinitely.  As the vendors packed up and the stages were dismantled, everyone slowly realized that their three-day adventure was over.  Reluctantly and painfully, the starry-eyed (now bleary-eyed) hippie ravers began to pack up their camps and stagger home.  In the light of the third day, everyone was haggard, dusty, and wrung out.

What ensued: exhaustion, depression, deflation.

The highs must lead to the lows.  Expansion always leads to contraction.

Spanda

Spanda is the essential and divine vibration of the Universe.  What expands, must contract.  Which then expands again.  This ongoing vibration is intrinsic to everything we experience: the turning of the globe, the seasons, the tides, your breath, your heartbeat.  Big Bang.  String Theory.

I love hanging out in expansion.  After all, expansion seems to be where the party is: it embodies possibility, limitless potential, and creative expression.  When the circle starts to collapse in, I want to avoid the discomfort and sadness of reality and resist “coming back to earth” or “getting real.”  Some part of me is afraid that if I go to that smaller place, I will be stuck there forever.  Oh no!  But it is precisely this capacity for coming back to the center that allows for a fresh rebound into possibility.

Filling our cup

Rather than run from this discomfort, can we accept that contraction – in whatever form it may take (disappointment, rebound, loss, sorrow, envy, sadness) –  is the fuel for the expansion trampoline?

While we have a natural tendency to prefer life’s sweeter pleasures, being human means having the opportunity to experience the entire spectrum of sensation, emotion, and psychology.  When we acknowledge that life’s darker tones are just as intrinsic to fully lived experience, the texture of contraction becomes as potent, rich, and satisfying as the exultation of expansion.

Relationships and Spanda

Dating (even more than music festivals) is a virtuosic yoyo of spanda experience.  Through its heady up’s and down’s, we constantly vibrate betwixt the polarities of possibility and disappointment:

• The anticipation of the first date!  And…we’re splitting the bill?
• His linked in profile looks awesome!  Oh my GOD, he can totally see that I just checked him out.
• He texted!!  Wait…now he’s not texting.
• The amazing first sleep over!  Then, not being called the next day…or the next…or the next…..

These bounces tend to be pretty frenetic in the early dating days, as our ego relentlessly tries to stay on top of the up’s and down’s of our hormonally charged emotional roller coaster.  But relationship spanda remains potent as the partnership continues:

• A glorious three-month anniversary!  Then having the first real fight.  Seeing something ugly.
• The intensity and comfort of earned intimacy.   Using that intimacy to push each others’ buttons.
• Seeing the darkness in our beloved.  Cherishing them anyway.

Relationships are constantly changing.  Rather than resisting the difficult moments, accepting these challenges is an opportunity to stay present honestly and with integrity.  Like the seasons, relationships bud, blossom, wither, transform.  Accepting that death is a part of the cycle allows us to resolutely (and finally, please!) dismiss the common fantasy that relationships should be conflict-free, challenge-free, and easy and instead lets us open to the dance that unfolds when intimacy occurs.

Riding Spanda

How do we keep our cool on spanda’s trampoline?

In the space between expansion and contraction, there is a stillness.

Practice:

• Find a comfortable seat.
• Bring your attention to your breath.
• Settle in the pause between the inhalation and the exhalation, and rest there briefly.
• Do this for 5 breath cycles.

Did you experience the quiet moment of the in-between?  Did you find yourself wanting to rush into the next breath or quitting early (are you a spanda-junkie?)  When we rest in this stillness, we practice rooting ourselves down into the quieter layer of our being beneath the heady waves of spanda.  Imagine the ocean: even as the boat bobs on the surface, the hefty drag of the anchor in the deep water keeps the boat stable.

When we can tether part of our consciousness to this stillness, then we can surf the waves of expansion and contraction with more perspective and freedom.  We can relish the high of the music festival or the “honeymoon” phase of our relationship – even while knowing that they will end.  In fact, we will enjoy them more.  And we can dare to fully experience the darker shades of sorrow, disappointment, and emptiness – because we can trust that these colors will eventually shift.

Self-inquiry:

• What change are you now resisting?
• What are you holding now that you need to let go of?
• What keeps you steady and “in yourself” when you’re at the edge of your experience?
• Can you enjoy all the sensations of this moment right now?  And now?  And now?

 

On Joy and Sorrow
 Kahlil Gibran

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater thar sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.