Wednesday 28 June 2006
Short posting because I've neglected the blog. I'm feeling a bit guilty.
But I have a good excuse. My mind has been completely preoccupied with deciding whether or not to apply for this.
Should I or shouldn't I?
Am I wasting my time?
Well, I figure I won't get chosen anyway so it doesn't matter. It's been an interesting exercise pondering the questions on the application form and confronting my aversion/discomfort/paranoia at the prospect of coming face to face with a video camera.
Facing and overcoming that fear would be reason enough to go through the motions of applying.
No attachment whatsoever to the outcome. It's true, the process is all that ever matters, not the product.
'We do what we can to the best of our ability and then leave the rest to God.'
My morning Ashtanga practise is now teacherless. From this week, the morning shala people are on their own for 2 months while our teachers are doing stuff overseas. Last week the shala was full almost every day but this week, on a good day, there's been between 2 and 5 people wrapping their practice around the oil heaters. Who's a dedicated Ashtangi now???
Probably not me...I'm still armless. My right arm sort of hangs limply off my shoulder, but I refuse to give in so I've stubbornly developed a practise that works around it. Yesterday I did a great practise, missing only Kurmasana and Supta K. I can now lift my right arm (albeit limply) about three-quarters of the way up now before the shoulder joint catches, so I guess that's SOME improvement. Trouble comes more towards the end of practice with all those poses that bear weight on the shoulders as the joint's very tender. Shoulderstand is bearable but Supta Konasana, Halasana and the layback position of Ubhaya Padangustasana aren't. Chakrasana would be instant death.
Urdhva Dhanurasana takes quite a few breaths to get into properly because my shoulder is so weak, but I can now finally get back up into a good deep backbend without my right arm giving way beneath me. Handstands and dropbacks are on hold.
Today I wasn't anywhere near as energetic or focussed as yesterday, so my body was stiffer and all those tweaky bits that I can open up with extra care in a good practice (right shoulder, lower back, right hamstring attachment, right knee in the Padmasana poses, blah blah list goes on...) were extra resistant to coersion today.
Who cares. Life is beautiful.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Short posting because I've neglected the blog. I'm feeling a bit guilty.
But I have a good excuse. My mind has been completely preoccupied with deciding whether or not to apply for this.
Should I or shouldn't I?
Am I wasting my time?
Well, I figure I won't get chosen anyway so it doesn't matter. It's been an interesting exercise pondering the questions on the application form and confronting my aversion/discomfort/paranoia at the prospect of coming face to face with a video camera.
Facing and overcoming that fear would be reason enough to go through the motions of applying.
No attachment whatsoever to the outcome. It's true, the process is all that ever matters, not the product.
'We do what we can to the best of our ability and then leave the rest to God.'
My morning Ashtanga practise is now teacherless. From this week, the morning shala people are on their own for 2 months while our teachers are doing stuff overseas. Last week the shala was full almost every day but this week, on a good day, there's been between 2 and 5 people wrapping their practice around the oil heaters. Who's a dedicated Ashtangi now???
Probably not me...I'm still armless. My right arm sort of hangs limply off my shoulder, but I refuse to give in so I've stubbornly developed a practise that works around it. Yesterday I did a great practise, missing only Kurmasana and Supta K. I can now lift my right arm (albeit limply) about three-quarters of the way up now before the shoulder joint catches, so I guess that's SOME improvement. Trouble comes more towards the end of practice with all those poses that bear weight on the shoulders as the joint's very tender. Shoulderstand is bearable but Supta Konasana, Halasana and the layback position of Ubhaya Padangustasana aren't. Chakrasana would be instant death.
Urdhva Dhanurasana takes quite a few breaths to get into properly because my shoulder is so weak, but I can now finally get back up into a good deep backbend without my right arm giving way beneath me. Handstands and dropbacks are on hold.
Today I wasn't anywhere near as energetic or focussed as yesterday, so my body was stiffer and all those tweaky bits that I can open up with extra care in a good practice (right shoulder, lower back, right hamstring attachment, right knee in the Padmasana poses, blah blah list goes on...) were extra resistant to coersion today.
Who cares. Life is beautiful.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sunday 4th June 2006
Insult to Injury
What I thought was a little tweak in my right shoulder gradually worsened as the tissues became inflamed. It’s a familiar injury – a tear in the rotator cuff, very painful. Had it a while back in the left shoulder I think. No way can I raise my right arm up to get my clothes on over my head or even to turn a door handle.
But despite the shoulder AND the still tender lower back, I was unusually determined to get to the shala in the dark early hours of Sunday morning to do a solitary self practice. With David overseas now, Angie’s the only reliable soul dedicated enough to practice on Sundays. And Angie was in full force this morning. I’m glad I put my mat down a good distance away from her. My practice was painful. I should have been resting this decrepit body, not tormenting it more, so it was a case of modifying almost every pose.
For the first count of the Surya Namaskars (ekam) my hands stayed in prayer position and I just arched up my head and chest. For the Catvari count, I kept my arms straight, replacing the bent elbow Chaturanga Dandasana position with the straight arm Plank pose and sliding into upward Dog from there. For Surya Namasakar B I had to bring my hands into prayer position for the Virabhadrasana A (Warrior) position instead of raising them above my head. The first and last position of Surya B (Utkatasana) was an awkward one - I couldn’t come up with any spontaneous creative substitute other than keeping my hands in the prayer position and that just felt completely wrong in the deep squat. Will have to think a bit further outside the square for that one.
A limp arm resting on the side of my body replaced the normal raised arm in the standing poses and I had to wimp out of Parsvottanasana quickly as it fired a double whammy, stressing both my lumbar and my shoulder.
And so it went on.
I reached the seated poses, doing the first few of them but only bending forwards about half way because I then hit the brick wall of the no-go zone. That’s my measuring stick- getting half way down safely in a forward bend means my lower back has now improved about 50%.
These are times when the mental and emotional pain of injury, lurking back there in the shadow of denial, can sneak up from behind and take over the steering wheel. If I’m not aware enough to be operating in the higher regions of consciousness and not able to stay present and observant of my fluctuating state of mind, the psychological pain of dealing with injury can become denser than the actual physical pain.
My mind hurts me more than my body!
Over and over I have to come back to the universal teaching of letting go. In this case, letting go of the desire to be somewhere I’m not (‘somewhere’ being a state of super fitness and shining with purity and health).
One half of me (dull, reactive, small minded person) gets real pissed off with being injured. The other half that aspires to great heights and is aware of the hidden meaning and lesson behind all of life’s events, actually enjoys meeting the challenge of being at peace with what is.
Really I’m blissfully happy and excited about where (I) am, what (I'm) doing and where (I'm) going, and increasingly enraptured with this wonderful life, though you probably couldn’t tell from the way I go on about the most trivial aspects of it. Blogging is kind of my whinging forum where I can get it all off my chest, where I can spew out all my petty grumbles and clean them out of my system.
Then I get back to the real stuff of life, the mysterious, the mystical, the Absolute Reality that is so big it nullifies any attempt at expression.
"The fully developed and completely conscious human soul can open as an anemone does, and know the ocean in which she is bathed. This act, this condition of consciousness, in which barriers are obliterated, the Absolute flows in on us, and we, rushing out to its embrace, “find and feel the Infinite above all reason and above all knowledge."
Here’s another excerpt from Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill that will help anyone blindly treading a path towards an invisible, unknown but very real destination:
Here, then, is the classification under which we shall study the phases of the mystical life.
(1) The awakening of the Self to consciousness of Divine Reality. This experience, usually abrupt and well-marked, is accompanied by intense feelings of joy and exaltation.
(2) The Self, aware for the first time of Divine Beauty, realizes by contrast its own finiteness and imperfection, the manifold illusions in which it is immersed, the immense distance which separates it from the One. Its attempts to eliminate by discipline and mortification all that stands in the way of its progress towards union with God constitute Purgation: a state of pain and effort.
(3) When by Purgation the Self has become detached from the “things of sense,” and acquired those virtues which are the “ornaments of the spiritual marriage,” its joyful consciousness of the Transcendent Order returns in an enhanced form. Like the prisoners in Plato’s “Cave of Illusion,” it has awakened to knowledge of Reality, has struggled up the harsh and difficult path to the mouth of the cave. Now it looks upon the sun. This is Illumination: a state which includes in itself many of the stages of contemplation, “degrees of orison,” visions and adventures of the soul described by St. Teresa and other mystical writers. These form, as it were, a way within the Way: a "moyen de parvenir", a training devised by experts which will strengthen and assist the mounting soul. They stand, so to speak, for education; whilst the Way proper represents organic growth. Illumination is the “contemplative state” par excellence. It forms, with the two preceding states, the “first mystic life.” Many mystics never go beyond it; and, on the other hand, many seers and artists not usually classed amongst them, have shared, to some extent, the experiences of the illuminated state. Illumination brings a certain apprehension of the Absolute, a sense of the Divine Presence: but not true union with it. It is a state of happiness.
(4) In the development of the great and strenuous seekers after God, this is followed—or sometimes intermittently accompanied—by the most terrible of all the experiences of the Mystic Way: the final and complete purification of the Self, which is called by some contemplatives the “mystic pain” or “mystic death,” by others the Purification of the Spirit or Dark Night of the Soul. The consciousness which had, in Illumination, sunned itself in the sense of the Divine Presence, now suffers under an equally intense sense of the Divine Absence: learning to dissociate the personal satisfaction of mystical vision from the reality of mystical life. As in Purgation the senses were cleansed and humbled, and the energies and interests of the Self were concentrated upon transcendental things: so now the purifying process is extended to the very centre of I-hood, the will. The human instinct for personal happiness must be killed. This is the “spiritual crucifixion” so often described by the mystics: the great desolation in which the soul seems abandoned by the Divine. The Self now surrenders itself, its individuality, and its will, completely. It desires nothing, asks nothing, is utterly passive, and is thus prepared for
(5) Union: the true goal of the mystic quest. In this state the Absolute Life is not merely perceived and enjoyed by the Self, as in Illumination: but is one with it. This is the end towards which all the previous oscillations of consciousness have tended. It is a state of equilibrium, of purely spiritual life; characterized by peaceful joy, by enhanced powers, by intense certitude.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Insult to Injury
What I thought was a little tweak in my right shoulder gradually worsened as the tissues became inflamed. It’s a familiar injury – a tear in the rotator cuff, very painful. Had it a while back in the left shoulder I think. No way can I raise my right arm up to get my clothes on over my head or even to turn a door handle.
But despite the shoulder AND the still tender lower back, I was unusually determined to get to the shala in the dark early hours of Sunday morning to do a solitary self practice. With David overseas now, Angie’s the only reliable soul dedicated enough to practice on Sundays. And Angie was in full force this morning. I’m glad I put my mat down a good distance away from her. My practice was painful. I should have been resting this decrepit body, not tormenting it more, so it was a case of modifying almost every pose.
For the first count of the Surya Namaskars (ekam) my hands stayed in prayer position and I just arched up my head and chest. For the Catvari count, I kept my arms straight, replacing the bent elbow Chaturanga Dandasana position with the straight arm Plank pose and sliding into upward Dog from there. For Surya Namasakar B I had to bring my hands into prayer position for the Virabhadrasana A (Warrior) position instead of raising them above my head. The first and last position of Surya B (Utkatasana) was an awkward one - I couldn’t come up with any spontaneous creative substitute other than keeping my hands in the prayer position and that just felt completely wrong in the deep squat. Will have to think a bit further outside the square for that one.
A limp arm resting on the side of my body replaced the normal raised arm in the standing poses and I had to wimp out of Parsvottanasana quickly as it fired a double whammy, stressing both my lumbar and my shoulder.
And so it went on.
I reached the seated poses, doing the first few of them but only bending forwards about half way because I then hit the brick wall of the no-go zone. That’s my measuring stick- getting half way down safely in a forward bend means my lower back has now improved about 50%.
These are times when the mental and emotional pain of injury, lurking back there in the shadow of denial, can sneak up from behind and take over the steering wheel. If I’m not aware enough to be operating in the higher regions of consciousness and not able to stay present and observant of my fluctuating state of mind, the psychological pain of dealing with injury can become denser than the actual physical pain.
My mind hurts me more than my body!
Over and over I have to come back to the universal teaching of letting go. In this case, letting go of the desire to be somewhere I’m not (‘somewhere’ being a state of super fitness and shining with purity and health).
One half of me (dull, reactive, small minded person) gets real pissed off with being injured. The other half that aspires to great heights and is aware of the hidden meaning and lesson behind all of life’s events, actually enjoys meeting the challenge of being at peace with what is.
Really I’m blissfully happy and excited about where (I) am, what (I'm) doing and where (I'm) going, and increasingly enraptured with this wonderful life, though you probably couldn’t tell from the way I go on about the most trivial aspects of it. Blogging is kind of my whinging forum where I can get it all off my chest, where I can spew out all my petty grumbles and clean them out of my system.
Then I get back to the real stuff of life, the mysterious, the mystical, the Absolute Reality that is so big it nullifies any attempt at expression.
"The fully developed and completely conscious human soul can open as an anemone does, and know the ocean in which she is bathed. This act, this condition of consciousness, in which barriers are obliterated, the Absolute flows in on us, and we, rushing out to its embrace, “find and feel the Infinite above all reason and above all knowledge."
Here’s another excerpt from Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill that will help anyone blindly treading a path towards an invisible, unknown but very real destination:
Here, then, is the classification under which we shall study the phases of the mystical life.
(1) The awakening of the Self to consciousness of Divine Reality. This experience, usually abrupt and well-marked, is accompanied by intense feelings of joy and exaltation.
(2) The Self, aware for the first time of Divine Beauty, realizes by contrast its own finiteness and imperfection, the manifold illusions in which it is immersed, the immense distance which separates it from the One. Its attempts to eliminate by discipline and mortification all that stands in the way of its progress towards union with God constitute Purgation: a state of pain and effort.
(3) When by Purgation the Self has become detached from the “things of sense,” and acquired those virtues which are the “ornaments of the spiritual marriage,” its joyful consciousness of the Transcendent Order returns in an enhanced form. Like the prisoners in Plato’s “Cave of Illusion,” it has awakened to knowledge of Reality, has struggled up the harsh and difficult path to the mouth of the cave. Now it looks upon the sun. This is Illumination: a state which includes in itself many of the stages of contemplation, “degrees of orison,” visions and adventures of the soul described by St. Teresa and other mystical writers. These form, as it were, a way within the Way: a "moyen de parvenir", a training devised by experts which will strengthen and assist the mounting soul. They stand, so to speak, for education; whilst the Way proper represents organic growth. Illumination is the “contemplative state” par excellence. It forms, with the two preceding states, the “first mystic life.” Many mystics never go beyond it; and, on the other hand, many seers and artists not usually classed amongst them, have shared, to some extent, the experiences of the illuminated state. Illumination brings a certain apprehension of the Absolute, a sense of the Divine Presence: but not true union with it. It is a state of happiness.
(4) In the development of the great and strenuous seekers after God, this is followed—or sometimes intermittently accompanied—by the most terrible of all the experiences of the Mystic Way: the final and complete purification of the Self, which is called by some contemplatives the “mystic pain” or “mystic death,” by others the Purification of the Spirit or Dark Night of the Soul. The consciousness which had, in Illumination, sunned itself in the sense of the Divine Presence, now suffers under an equally intense sense of the Divine Absence: learning to dissociate the personal satisfaction of mystical vision from the reality of mystical life. As in Purgation the senses were cleansed and humbled, and the energies and interests of the Self were concentrated upon transcendental things: so now the purifying process is extended to the very centre of I-hood, the will. The human instinct for personal happiness must be killed. This is the “spiritual crucifixion” so often described by the mystics: the great desolation in which the soul seems abandoned by the Divine. The Self now surrenders itself, its individuality, and its will, completely. It desires nothing, asks nothing, is utterly passive, and is thus prepared for
(5) Union: the true goal of the mystic quest. In this state the Absolute Life is not merely perceived and enjoyed by the Self, as in Illumination: but is one with it. This is the end towards which all the previous oscillations of consciousness have tended. It is a state of equilibrium, of purely spiritual life; characterized by peaceful joy, by enhanced powers, by intense certitude.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
