ADAPT AND PRACTICE (The Bonus Post!)

From Mark Whitwell's introduction to T.K.V. Desikachar's The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice

"Yoga is a systematized body of knowledge and a practice. There are many reasons why a person might choose to practice yoga: in broad terms, the purpose of yoga is to reduce disturbance and return an individual to his or her inherent power. To be successful in the endeavor, yoga must be adapted and practiced according to the needs, capacities, and aspirations of each student."

So, there we have the yoga of writing again. (And hopefully the actual practice of yoga again.)
I think doing a little writing reduces my angst and "returns me to my inherent power." Or maybe I'll  find out that writing isn't my inherent power, but something else is ...

And so, I continue to examine my capacities and aspirations in writing. But what would my "needs" be? (Could this be related to procrastination? I need a clean desk and roasted vegetables?)
This Week's Sutra:

Chapter IV.26 And their clarity takes them to their only concern: to reach and remain in a state of freedom.

Pronounce the Sutra (MP3 format) Tadakamudra is the asana of the week. I think this is one I can handle.

NEXT BIGGEST/NEXT SMALLEST?

I have been thinking about the questions my commentator asked. And as it has been almost a month, I was sort of checking my progress again. On day one, I quoted what Ravi said at the retreat:


Practice itself cleanses our motivation.

I know where I am going by going.

Another comment on a later post, my same friend said

I encountered a great concept in learning to program. Basically it says there are only two things to be thinking about/working on at a given moment: the next biggest thing and the next smallest thing.

And now I am wondering if during writing practice/yoga practice that thinking about the next biggest thing and the next smallest thing take you out of observation/being of the now? In the writing practice/yoga practice the now IS what you are working on, no?

And then, I don't exactly couch my musings and practice as "problems."

—TION

First of all, I understand the link from Friday's post didn't work. It must be seen. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE.

It brings tears to my eyes every time I watch (or even listen to) it. It might have to be included on the "sure to cheer me up" list of listening. (Largely Aretha Franklin at this moment.)

Does that joyful singing take you out of the moment or more solidly in it?

At any rate, back to my current musings about the writing and the yoga ... intention, attention, retention?

My first purpose was to examine and  practice the disciplines. (Intention)

Second, practice everyday or often enough so that it is as common and natural as cat-petting and pizza-making, something I do with verve, joy, wisdom, and focus. (Attention.)

Third, that the experience, knowledge, and grace I gain from practice infuses and guides other aspects of my life. (Retention.)

Writing is becoming more of a conscious and unconscious part of my brain. Still not doing the physical part of yoga. But I think I am working on the spiritual part.

And so to bed (after a little more Aretha).

SHOWING UP IS STEP ONE

So here is a comment on yesterday's post, so that you don't have to go look it up.


What is it you are seeking? Is this practice for something with a longer development cycle? Or is posting daily the only goal? Either way you are doing fine, but isn't there something more you want out of writing than this? Is it a forest for the trees kind of thing?

From what I understood this blog was practice, a way to get into the routine of daily writing. It is doing scales, training your hands and mind to be prepared for taking on more involved work. 

Writing and publishing everyday, with no plot, no story curve, how could that not be diffuse? Is it becoming an empty task? Think beyond the blog, write outside of the blog. Dig deeper into the hows and whys and wherefores of writing if nothing else, though I am sure there are other things to write about. You have it started, the seed has germinated, now grow it into something bigger and more complex.


Maybe it is too much information, or exposing a deep weakness, but writing every day, sitting down and thinking of something to say that is at least valuable to me as a moment of progress and attention, is challenging.


I don't see it as an empty task at all. Showing up is step one. 


Reading a little further in Ravindra's Wisdom of Patanjali's Sutras, I find this:


"Whenever searchers engage in impartial self-observation, they recognize that it is difficult to have the kind of steady attention which is needed for any sustained study. The cultivation of a non-fluctuating attention requires a discipline, a sadhana (practice). The sadhaka, the one who undertakes sadhana, needs to have the attitude of a disciple—a willingness to search, to listen, to change. There is a mutuality of relationship between a discipline and a disciple: there can be disciple without a discipline, and no discipline can endure without some disciples. 


Steady attention, sustained study. That's where I am starting. And, so far, that may be as far as I've gotten. I am thinking about writing everyday. And I am making a point of writing every day. 


Who knows when the next step will come?


I may have more to say on this comment tomorrow.

WHO'S ZOOMIN' WHO?

It would certainly be easy to fall off of the "writing wagon" about now. (The "yoga wagon" has a broken axle ;-)) This is not to say that I don't think about it, but even trying to write every day takes lots of intention for me. And for the past twenty days or so, I have managed to let my fingers do some talkin' every day.

I did have a really nice holiday weekend. I didn't see any of my "blood" family, but I certainly saw lots of my soul's family and was in touch with a few more. As previously reported in these pages, the cooking I did was both satisfying and delicious. Tim and I are going to have to write up our maple/bourbon brined and glazed turkey with bacon. My instincts were with me on the cooking improv this weekend. And it feels good to be accomplished. Not to mention it is so much fun to delight folks with food.

But my overall purpose, the writing and the yoga feel ... diffused? That works. Well, perhaps the intellectual/spiritual culs-de-sac are just part of the process.

On the other hand, I am listening to ... Aretha Franklin, Who's Zoomin' Who? Worth a thought about whether I am "zoomin" myself in thinking I am making any progress. Hard to keep your focus and intentions pure. Easy enough to lie to oneself.

As my old friend F. Michael Baker said about a million years ago, "As we get older, it gets easier to believe the little lies we tell ourselves." I think we were in our twenties at that point. Little did we know.

I am still questioning myself, although I am surrounded by dimmer lights, good music, and some nice Torrontes instead of bright lights and hard chairs.

TO MAKE AN OBJECT OUT OF THE CHAOS

"Words bother me. I think it is why I am a poet. I keep trying to force myself to speak of the things that remain mute inside. My poems only come when I have almost lost the ability to utter a word. To speak, in a way, of the unspeakable. To make an object out of the chaos ... To say what ? a final cry into the void?"


Anne Sexton, Letter to Brother Dennis Farrell, August 2, 1963, from Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait in Letters, Edited by Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames.


The book is highly recommended.


Anne was confused and depressed, but she certainly channelled that into some writing of beauty. I wonder if the near loss of speech was a kind of concentration, a burrowing down into herself until she struck such a chord in herself that music poured fourth. I don't particularly think that art requires suffering, it just seems to. (Although I can't see a lot of superficial evidence that Picasso was tortured. One wonders how such a first-class narcissist could have come up with Guernica.)

I could so wander in various musing directions, but I am trying to make an "object" out of "chaos" ... the object being a neater, less distracting apartment. Everywhere I look I see something else I have to "do" which certainly diverts me from the writing and the yoga.

YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES

Determined to write while still in possession of a slightly clearer mind, she sits down to her task before any alcohol or sleeping medication has been consumed. (And thanks for reminding me, I didn't take my anti-depressants, either.) Be right back.

All sane now.

Having not made any progress in the organization of my oasis/disaster, I thought I would return to the scene of last night's crime.

When my best self is operating this meat suit, I do write in my journal (no "journal" is not a verb no matter what Ronald Reagan says) and take notes from books and magazines. And as the years go by and I stumble across these gems, I am always glad I did. Maribeth Fischer's book, The Language of Goodbye has been marked with book darts for several years, waiting for me to transcribe those passages.

"It's almost frightening ... But you see what you want to. Isn't that always the case? Isn't that what allowed people to have affairs and fight wars and get married to begin with? You close your eyes to the stuff you can't handle and you keep going and you keep believing that somehow it will all work out. You pray or you take alternative vitamins or you collect lucky coins or make wishes on birthday candles and falling stars."


"Within" will? (I still haven't figured out "without" will.) On a side note, in French "within" is dans, without is sans as in going without, which is not what I mean really, but interesting nonetheless. I suppose dehors would be closer. Those of you who are fluent, please illuminate me.

All of that little paragraph seems to describe "within/dans" will, but without much consciousness or determination (which is another way of saying "will", no?) ... That sounds like walking the path with closed eyes, which is only recommended (by me at least) when you ARE frightened and that is the only way you can make yourself move forward. You know, like Don Juan telling us to just jump. Or Nike telling us to just do it.

At the Ojai Retreat (see, I am still tying this together), Eric Schiffman said:

"The only force that can overcome fear is wonder."

And Schiffman, and Ravindra, and Hirschfield have all advised me/us about paying attention to things, which is not generally easily accomplished either with closed eyes or with fearfulness.

Now, where is the path? Where is the yoga? (I have the writing going on!)
Miep looks as if she is paying attention.

STEPPING BEYOND WHAT LIES WITHIN

The soundtrack remains the same, Aretha singing I Say A Little Prayer, which is nearly a call to communion for me. I have the sense that Aretha and this song will continue to percolate through this writing.

Still perusing Hirschfield's Nine Gates, this time dipping into the chapter titled Poetry and the Mind of Indirection. Um. Yes, that would be me. I do dearly love to trip around the internet and other places of information just following a wandering path of inquiry.

"Attentiveness, and even craft, are not the same as will. Knowing and not knowing are equal parents to a poem [practicing yoga]; to learn from what lies outside the self requires stepping beyond what lies within."

I'm not yet sure about writing (my poetry is nowhere near this level of subtlety), but I do know that my yoga practice is always better, more emotionally and spiritually rewarding when I am listening to my body, and the energy of my fellow-students, and the instructions of the teacher ... and not stuck in my projection, even nano-seconds in the future, about how it will feel, how much I will be able to do, etc.

In a daily practice or discipline, it is knowing enough to be able to engage in the practice, and not knowing enough to really show up, be fresh, and get what else might be there for you. Stepping beyond your current body of knowledge and expectation.

IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

When we last left our heroine, she was floating down the frozen river on an ice floe, headed straight for the not-so-frozen falls. (Way Down East, not Perils of Pauline.)

Oh wait. That was just me having to drive down the Taconic from Albany today. And it was a lot easier than driving up on Friday night. What a little sunlight will do for you.

Being from California, and a Western girl in my head and heart, I can never get over the wonders of the East. The Berkshires! The Adirondacks! The Hudson River. Trees. Water everywhere! Trees that have leaves that really change color. Farms with cows! Deer hunting! Real colonial houses. Markers for the War for Independence. Honestly, I am still fascinated by almost every country road and apple orchard I see.

So, I did take a longer route, opting not to take the NY State Thruway. This time I managed to navigate over to Route 9 at Renssalear and head down to Hudson. And as I drove I saw lots and lots of cool buildings and monuments. I mean, who wouldn't want to tour Kinderhook and visit Martin Van Buren's home if you happened to be in the neighborhood.

And, even though I had no appointments or actual deadlines, I felt I couldn't stop. I had to keep going.

And I keep thinking "Some other time."

Some other time? "Some other time" I will probably be working and not be able to natter about the countryside contemplating blogging and listening to Aretha Franklin with the fullest measure of my finest OCD attention.

And that brought me to "If not now, when" and how much time we all spend in our bodies being somewhere else, with other people, worried about other things. And there isn't much attention or thought or consideration being paid to NOW.

Just like yoga, before you settle in, and are still thinking about what you have to do after class, why can't you actually get your palms on the floor, why are you such a wreck, how much money IS in my checking acount, etc. Instead of yummmm, that hamstring stretch is delicious. And ohmygod, getting the pressure off my lower back is heaven. And my neck is looser than it has been for weeks. And, I AM SO GLAD I AM HERE.

Um... what was it that Baba Rum Raisin said to us in the 1970s, Be Here Now. Because if not now, when?

(I did not stop to visit Martin van Buren's house, but I did stop at two of my favorite thrift stores outside of Hudson, and at the very excellent JoJo's Pizza, just before you get on the Taconic.)

ODE TO JOY.1

Something has to be done about my addiction to the black hole/rabbit hole that is the computer/internet. Once I turn it on, who knows what will follow.


I've started, by way of diversion, to stop at the stereo on my stumble toward coffee. This rather helps tear me away from the tyranny of the screen (oh, go ahead and blame the inanimate). Yesterday, it began and ended with Peter Gabriel's Secret World Live (mostly disc 2 and n.b. that most of the reviews I have seen GREATLY underrate the musicianship).


Today, it was Aretha Franklin.


Where are all of you? Do you know realize the magnitude of this talent? Come over. I'll school you. There's a moment, actually 2:30 in her recording of I Say A Little Prayer (this isn't that version. I understand that someone else had a hit with this song, but once you hear Aretha's version, you'll know who owns it) that is an/the essence of transcendence.


Let's talk transcendence.

tran·scen·dent

 adj \-dənt\

Definition of TRANSCENDENT

1

a : exceeding usual limits : surpassingb : extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experiencec in Kantian philosophy : being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge

2

: being beyond comprehension

3

: transcending the universe or material existence — compare immanent 2

I'm with Kant here. Aretha's voice, her joy, her command of her voice, her piano, that band all combine to take my being away from the mundane experience of my life.  And shit, it feels so good. Nirvana. (A place or state characterized by freedom from or oblivionto pain, worry, and the external world.) When Aretha sings that note, that's where I am.

I am at Home with her. (I wonder if Aretha practices yoga.)


More on this.

IN WHICH WE START WITH EMILY DICKINSON AND DETOUR THROUGH SHAKESPEARE TO VAN MORRISON

I am Home—home to Myself—that region from which one must begin if one is to find any sort of real Life at all.
Barbara Dana, A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson


How is this different from the opening of Hamlet's soliloquy?
To be or not to be?


And what is it that you, one, whoever is being?


And why does contemplation of this make my heart pound and make tears spring to my eyes.


Do you know this one, In the Garden,  from Van Morrison? (Don't watch the graphics, such as they are. Just listen.)


The fields are always wet with rain
After a summer shower 
When I saw you standin' 
Standin' in the garden 
In the garden

Wet with rain

You wiped the teardrops from your eye in sorrow
And we watched the petals fall down to the ground
And as I sat beside you I felt the
Great sadness that day

In the garden

And then one day you came back home
You were a creature all in rapture
You had the key to your soul
And you did open
That day you came back

To the garden


Reading those words, "you had the key to your soul/and you did open" makes me weep. Every time.


Well, I guess Van is as good as detour as any. Greil Marcus published an uneven (in my humble opinion) book about listening to Van this year, When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison. I disagree (respectfully) with much of Mr. Marcus' assessment of Morrison's oeuvre from 1980-1996 (c'mon Griel, don't review/revile the process of becoming, man). But I do love and agree with other aspects, which, of course, related to yoga, writing ... (get ready for a long quote here)


    "Van Morrison's music as I hear it holds a story—a story made of fragments. There is in his music a kind of quest: for the moment when the magic word, riff, note, or chord is found and everything is transformed. At any time a listener might think he or she has felt it, every glimpsed it, a realm beyond ordinary expression, reaching out as if to close your hand around such a  moment, to grab for its air, then opening your fist to find a butterfly in it—but Morrison's sense of what that magic moment is must be more contigent. For him this quest is about the deepening of a style, the continuing task of constructing musical situations in which is voice can rise to its own form.
    'When I was very young,' the late Ralph J. Gleason wrote in a 1970 review of Morrison's album Moondance, 'I saw a film version of the life of John McCormack, the Irish tenor, playing himself. In it he explained to his accompanist that the element necessary to mark the important voice off from the other good ones was very specific. "You have to have," he said, "the yarragh in your voice"—and to get the yarragh, for Morrison, you may need a sense of the song as a thing in itself, with its own brain, heart, lungs, tongue, and ears. Its own desires, fears, will, and even ideas: 'The question might really be,' as he once said, 'is the song singing you?' His music can be heard as an attempt to surrender to the yarragh, or to make it surrender to him; to find the music it wants; to bury it; to dig it out of the ground. The yarragh is his version of art that has touched him: of blues and jazz, for that matter of Yeats and Lead Belly, the voice that strikes a note so exalted you can't believe a mere human being is responsible for it, a note so unfinished and unsatisfied you can understand why the eternal seems to be riding on its back."


Germane for me: ... the magic word, riff, note, or chord is found and everything is transformed. At any time a listener might think he or she has felt it, every glimpsed it, a realm beyond ordinary expression ...


A realm beyond ordinary expression ... or experience. Why that sounds like transcendence! Transcending the you that is uncomfortable and maybe outside of yourself. And the you that doesn't quite know where you are or what to do. And then you feel that deeper parter of yourself.


For me it is the part that responds, unbidden and without thought, when I feel/hear/see/type those words "you were a creature all in rapture/and you had the key to your soul/and you did open." Yes I am crying now. As Van said elsewhere, "straight like a cannonball to your heart."


Transcendence into unification. Feeling like you are one with yourself. At Home. Something is True. Something is Real. You can feel it. You are It.


For him this quest is about the deepening of a style, the continuing task of constructing musical situations in which is voice can rise to its own form.


Right. Perfecting his practice. "The progressive freedom to be attained in pursing the yarragh (yoga) is an increasing freedom not for myself but from myself." Am I stretching too far here? Van's music, his successes and mistakes make me think not. 


In my first post of this blog, I quoted Ravindra "...the central question of our life: How can we become a suitable instrument for the Truth to be expressed?"


Here's a bit from an interview with Greil Marcus.

“I think the difference is that Morrison has a different kind of musical gift from Dylan,” he says. Morrison “has this rich expansive voice”, he says. “Elvis Costello was talking about Van Morrison recently, and he said that he couldn’t sing like Van Morrison even if you put him up against a wall and threatened to shoot him. It’s not physically possible. And that is true. Dylan works with far more limited natural musical abilities, and maybe because of those limits he has to create in a much different manner.

“Whereas Morrison can take this table and sing about this table, and the table suddenly begins to change shape and begins to smile. It can give you a dirty look; it can fly up to the ceiling. And so it is very different. Morrison’s transformation of all this stuff around himself is different because, at its deepest level, you can barely be aware of it and you can’t trace anything back to its source."

Van's working it. He is changing the world with his regard, his attentiveness. 
He helps me get Home. (I think our addresses are similar.)