The Holy Longing

(painting by Akiane)

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,

because the mass man will mock it right away.

I praise what is truly alive,

what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,

where you were begotten, where you have begotten,

a strange feeling comes over you,

when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,

and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter.

Now, arriving in magic, flying,

and finally, insane for the light,

you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

-By Goethe

Translated from the German by Robert Bly

That's all for this month. As I was going through my stuff, discarding most of it, I came across this poem which was too beautiful to throw away. Instead, I decided that in needed to be shared, at some point. It's been sitting in a folder with a bunch of other blog ideas for a while, and frankly I'm super busy this month, so it's good for me to, since it means it's a shorter blog post to write.

Take care, oh children of immortality

Dust to dust, spirit to Spirit

I see one fall to the ground and become dust.
From dust we come, to dust we return.
The dust is cleared from my eyes.
We are not dust, but dust cloaks the silence and gives it form so we may see, touch, hold,
let go

the dust is cleared from my eyes
they blink wetly,
I look with the other eye
he is present suddenly, everywhere
as he always is, always was
a thousand eyes, a thousand hands, a thousand feet

so still and so sweet
perfection is too small a word for this
perfection does not hold my little hands in his, so gently,
knowing my fear and petty attachments
still
loving me with such warmth
giving me, unasked, unanswerable,
worlds,
dreams beyond my dreaming

I fall at his feet, over and over
I place my head everywhere,
A spider plant in a mason jar
a picture on an alter
a keyboard
I place my head
on his feet, which are everywhere,
everywhere

Sense-Control, Drowning in a Dream, Scrapes and Bruises

Saying no to the various desires and temptations that come up in my life is a little like how I handle dreams where I'm drowning or swimming underwater for long periods of time. First there is a panic, an urgency to surface for air, a claustrophobia, then, the recollection that it is a dream, that I can breath just fine, maybe a little poorly if my face is smashed into the pillow. Then I relax and start breathing underwater.



I'm working, it's morning, and I have a desire to do something non-productive, pleasurable, interesting. Get a snack, read an unrelated book, do a no-brain task that I should save for the afternoon surf the web, etc. I decide not to. Immediately the urgency increases. It almost feels like I'm drowning. Somewhere, deep down in an illogical but powerful part of my brainstem is the belief that if I don't satisfy this desire, something horrible is going to happen to me. I need this tidbit of information or I'll make a mistake in the future. I need to do this insignificant errand or I'll forget about it. I need to give myself this bit of pleasure or I will be forever hungry for it, distracted and craving.

Not true, not true. I recall this fact, and start breathing underwater. I keep doing whatever it was I was planning on doing. The call gets more intense, more urgent, but then, I realize, I discover that yes, I can still breath. Life is going on just fine now, without catering to my every impulsive whim. I am not miserable and deprived. I am just...normal. About the same as if I had gratified it.

(The article this picture is from is relevant, link here. The summary of scientific findings is good.)

This underwater breathing is fascinating. This is a new discovery for me, though I can only assume for the majority of people with good self-control, it's common. Well... no, maybe not. I think at least some of people perceived as having "good self control" have it because of abject terror. Fear. They are terrified of not making rent, of being seen as incompetent, of living a worthless life, something along those lines. It then is not really an exercise in willpower. They are going with the current (of fear), not against it. If the external fear was taken away somehow, they would likely revert to a less motivated state.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Most of motivation is not going against the flow, it's using a bit of willpower to set up systems and thought structures that redirect the flow towards where you want to go, so you don't have to use willpower. (The linked article talks about one of many facets of that a little)

I'm sad it took me so long to figure out this breathing underwater, sense-control thing, though. Wasted time.

I think another way to describe it (and I'm trying my best to explain it in a way past-me could understand, so others don't have to take the long route that I did to understanding) is it's like how our thoughts about injury effect our experience of injury.

You can see this especially clearly in little kids. One falls and scrapes their knee, but they're in the middle of a game of tag, and they just get up and keep running. Or, they fall and scrape their knee, look to see if anyone see's them, thinks they'd gone unnoticed, and continue on their way. Or, they fall, scrape their knee, they're sitting there, silent, trying to figure out how they feel about all this, and then an adult rushes over with an alarmed "oh no!" and they start crying loudly.



But it happens with adults too. I used to be terrified of blood tests and shots. cold sweat, terrified. It was an excruciating experience, every time I had to get one. Then, as I got older, I started remembering that every time I got a shot, as soon as it was over, I felt just fine. I decided I wasn't going to be afraid of them any more, and I looked directly at the needle as it went in, noticing with curiosity the pinch-like, minor pain. Noticing with curiosity the remnants of my fear, in my increased heart rate and nervousness. There was nothing about the sensations of the shot itself that was particularly terrifying. It was just a pinch. Stubbing my toe hurt more. It was all my thoughts surrounding the shot, about the meaning, the anticipation, imagining it going into me, that made it such an unpleasant experience.

This sense control/discipline thing is the same way. It is the thoughts I have about denying myself sense-gratification, that makes it so repellant to me, so difficult to get myself to do. The act of doing it, sans the stories about it is a minor discomfort, nothing more.

Point of refinement: this sense control thing is not suppression. More like redirection (which we do all the time with kids, to great effect.) I admit that trying to push down a desire or thought is counter productive. All that energy just gets stored like a spring-snake in a can of mixed nuts, ready to pop out full force at the next opportunity.

We can't stop ourselves from having thoughts and feelings, but we do have the choice of what we put our attention on, and we do have a choice about what actions we do. I think the best thing to do is cordially, respectfully acknowledge whatever the thought/feeling is, accept that it's there non-judgmentally, and then let it go. Don't push it away, just let it go, drop it like it's (a) hot (potato), and put your focus back where you want it. It may come back, like a venturesome fly, but you can just keep doing that process, and eventually it will go away. And if you keep doing that, it comes back less and less frequently, and less strongly. Though sometimes initially it gets more intense before dying down. Kind of like a someone who realizes they're about to be removed, desperately fighting and struggling to stay.

I think this is precisely the practice you do when you meditate: you have a focus, whether it's a candle or a mantra or an image etc, and your job is to keep your focus there, gently. Thoughts come, and you persistently but not aggressively direct your attention back to your chosen focus. Meditation strengthens that mental muscle, which is super useful, but I know a lot of people who don't take advantage of that strength in their normal day-to-day life, which seems like a waste. It happens  passively, but with conscious practice it would happen more often.

Amusing aside and honesty: I'm still a beginner, who makes lots of mistakes: cue two and a half hour youtube aside that started with me looking for images to go along with this post. Stopping once I've accidentally already started is much more difficult. An once of prevention and all that.

Ah well. Dust myself off, get up, begin again.

Teaching as Spiritual Practice

I'm teaching very young children. anywhere from 18 months to 6 years. There is not a huge amount of curriculum, so most of what is being taught is how to be a human being. The soft skills like how to interact with other peers, how to self-regulate, how to focus, how to put on your own shoes and other such self-sufficiency things. I love this stuff. This is the meat of education.  It can go even further, I hope it does go even further, but for now it is really good social emotional and intellectual skills. I want to press ahead with more character building and values, but for right now I'm learning the very basics of it all and that's quite enough to handle without adding anything more. The general ins and outs of management. How do you direct and re-direct other human beings? How should you correct them effectively?

I err on the side of permissiveness and laxity, which I am aware of and am trying to correct, but the problem is the solution is not just to get more strict. Those end up being two sides of the same coin, and it becomes like a passive aggressive person who lets themselves be walked all over until they explode in rage. Not useful, not kind.

What is necessary is a discipline that respects the children and expects a lot from them. Something that gives them the tools to succeed, and allows them to discover discipline for themselves, in a way that generates self-confidence. I'm learning tools, and I'm reflecting on what I've done, and how I might do better. I'm in a really good environment for learning this stuff. Lots of good models, to remind me. I'm learning and unlearning ways of thinking. Ways of thinking are not as easy to change and update as, say, factoids. This is the spiritual practice I'm talking about in the title. The fact that to reform the children I must also reform myself, and the things that bother me or stress me out or frighten me are personal issues and blocks that are my responsibility to work on.

It's a bit like how family and romantic relationships are great for bringing out all our issues. Our triggers and buttons, normally dormant, get pushed, and remind us to stay humble, remind us we still have much work to do, and remind us of what that work is, if we have the patience and awareness to realized it.

It's a lot of work, but I am doing it, and I have confidence I will be able to eventually do an excellent job at teaching, guiding, disciplining. And that's awesome, because it's so important and useful. I of course want to go further, from management to inspiration. I want children who internally, of their own volition, seek peace, seek to help others, seek goodness. Who know about and look up to great human beings like Ghandhi and MLK, rather than spongebob squarepants or the latest pop idol. This is part of my wildly important goal.

To that end, I wish I had a bit more time to focus on learning how to teach. So much of my time is being taken up with what feels like administrative tasks. I feel like I could easily spend half the day teaching and the other half reflecting, reading, and preparing for the next day, and be learning at a super accelerated rate. In my mind I've already started designing a teacher-training course, and this is one of the main elements of it: time to teach, but also time to reflect, to study teaching theory and practice, and not be super stressed out (which my current school is better at than any of the previous schools I taught at). Being over-busy and exhausted, seems to be the norm for both teacher preparatory programs and actual teaching jobs.

I would love to have time to write more of a blow by blow of my learning practice, but right now I don't have the luxury of that reflection time. Such a pity. Focusing too much on teaching first thing, rather than pairing teaching with learning how to teach. I do kind of have that opportunity, with the half days I'm working, but because I've just moved, and because I'm prepping for the summer training and next years teaching and so many other things, I still don't have the time to do this. But I have hope. I think it's not impossible to do this. It's just a matter of managing my time and energy better. I think.

So to end with, I am also working on time management as a spiritual practice. It certainly is. The ability to remain focused on what is essential, to discriminate that, and to let go of sticky, appealing distractions and low priority tasks that are attractive because they give me an easy win... that requires deep awareness and presence and discipline of mind. Ultimately I see that as my adult version of what the kids are struggling with, and I feel it's my duty to walk my talk, doing my version of what I'm asking them to do. And that too is very difficult, and I continually fail at it. But I can feel the failure alchemizing into growth and my eventual success. I've done it enough times to have faith in the process, and that makes the process go faster, because I'm not disheartened by the slow rate of progress.

I think I'll start posting these to facebook as well, since that's the only way people find out about such things, apparently. In case this is the first post you're reading, this is a blog specifically about my spiritual and personal growth musings, and I only post something to it about once a month. It's not specifically aimed at updating people I already know about my life, so it's probably interesting to a smaller audience. But even if nobody reads it (which has been the case thus far) I find it useful, as always, to clarify my thinking by writing it out.

OK, that's this month. One more thing checked off my to-do list ;-)

Mornings, Discomfort, And a No-Fruit Diet

So, I've been experimenting with Morning rituals and routines for several years now. It's been perhaps the single biggest positive influence on my life, but that's kind of unfair, because lumped into it are basically all the best things I do, from meditation to journaling to exercise to walks in nature.

Regardless, it's been a huge boon to my life. I'm continually updating it, tweaking it to make it even better. I've just started adding a more vigorous morning working, adding in a jog and some chanting to accompany sun salutes, and it's fantastic. Spirituality is not about spending all day meditating, it is about balance. All elements of like can be spiritualized and should be spiritualized. To avoid some of them as "non-spiritual" like avoiding taking care of your body, is spiritual laziness. Making convenient excuses to avoid doing things that you don't want to do. You will never achieve high levels of success that way. You will piddle around in meritocracy, until you decide to face the areas of your life that you've been avoiding/neglecting. True spirituality is a balanced life, not lazy, not overly rigid and forceful. Not joyless, not hedonistic.

The things you most vehemently avoid facing are the areas that will offer you the most genuine growth. I'm working on making a habit out of going into those areas, rather than avoiding them. I know, like all reasonable (and many unreasonable) things that I set my mind to, I will eventually succeed in this endeavor, and I'm excited for that time, because the habit of going directly towards your uncomfortable spots is an incredible superpower that will turbo-charge one's growth and ability to make things happen. In addition to this "reversal of desire" as some of my teachers have called it, I am working on a second element, that is kind of the banana to the first elements peanut butter. (that is, they go together really well.):

Not trying. This is not at all laziness. It is more like absolute focus and determination and dynamic, massive action, but with zero attachment to the result. No fretting or striving, no forcing or self flagellating. You do the thing because it is right to do, and leave the results completely up to a higher power. This is the Superior way to practice any spiritual discipline, (the satvik path, as apposed to the rajasic or tamasik path) but also to practice any activity at all, in life. It's difficult and more subtle than just getting really fired up and attached to the outcome, which you could say is the rajasic or fiery way, but it yields better results, both in outcome and in state of being while in process.

Anyhoo, that's what I'm working on for the nonce:

Reversal of Desire
Renunciation of the Fruits of Action

How about you?

Focus, Courage, Respecting Time, Repeated Failure as the Building Blocks of Success

I'm quite busy, and I think I have literally zero people who read this, excepting myself, when I do an editing pass. So; a short post.

I'm working on my powers of focus. My world is distracting. I can  settle some of the chaos down, most of the time, but I move, I travel, stuff happens. I've decided that, when I cannot have a clean and supportive environment, it's not something to get frustrated about, it is a learning opportunity: how focused can I be in a distracting environment.

Also, I'm working on "eating that frog" or, in Phil Stutz's parlance, practicing reversal of desire. I want to make a habit of going directly into the things that make me uncomfortable, and doing them. Over and over, with little time in between bemoaning my failures. Massive, well directed action. Not avoiding unpleasant or scary things that need to be done.

Also, I am working on prioritization: really, this is what is meant by time management, because time is an inflexible quantity. What we can do is choose what we use that time for. There are less important things, and more important things. Why not do the most important thing, all the time. Sometimes that is rest. But rest should be of a high quality. Deeply restful, and with positive qualities to it.

In addition to that, I'm realizing that it's not just about doing the most important things, it's about doing them in the right amount of time. It is easy to take too long on them, and I need to find a way to give them enough time, but not too much time. I can get precious with things, and it does not benefit me or them at all. Much better to do and learn and do some more over and over, than to do one thing and try to make it perfect. That is a slower learning curve. It's the 80-20 rule once again. A certain amount of time is valuable, and more than that becomes wasteful, and if I'm honest with myself,  and able to step back and be objective, I can usually where that point is, approximately.

I am still failing all the time with all of these, but my approach is changing. I am getting much less discouraged by my failures. I'm getting better at having a bad day, and then just bouncing back, and trying to make the next day better, learning from my mistakes. It is incredibly refreshing. Oh how I wish I had known to do this so long ago. All these years wasted, approaching things in such an inefficient and depressing way.

Ah well. Once again, I must simply let go of the past and begin again, from right now.