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a little crunchy, but hear me out...
Jan. 28th, 2008 11:12 amYou know, real life never really happens in stop action sequence. The Godfathers really oversimplified things with their cry of birth, school, work, death. Rather, life is constantly shifting. One door closes as another opens. The sunset of one love leads to the rise of another. Good dj's beat match some sort of a fade in while the hit of 4 minutes ago fades out. Emulating the sun, we constantly shift. The light at 6am is even different from the light at 6:15am. We age during the day. We change in maturity level and in cellular level. We learn and shift our opinions. Even decisions that seem sudden and crazy come from a lot of internal processing. No one ever just wakes up a different person. We become different persons slowly; science suggests that we are entirely different on a cellular level every 7 years. We constantly regenerate and replace, one cell at a time.
It's funny then to think of how our brains work. It's almost as if the computer of our brains seek comfort, some anchor in the realm of constant shifting. Our minds are so advanced in pattern recognition that they seem to have some difficulty shifting with the times. We hold people from the past in our minds as unchanging. We even set ourselves up in resistance of that old person's definition, ready to propagate that old sameness with our usual lines of defense.
I know, for easy instance, that when I speak with my mother - I speak from years of knowing her. I am ready, with my usual line of self-righteous justification, for any argument. Knowing how much I have changed since we last spoke, knowing how much my life has changed even over the course of this last weekend (it did!!!), shouldn't I allow her the room to have changed, as well? Shouldn't we always try to operate on a slate that is somewhat clean?
I'm putting this out there to remind myself that we all change. All the time. Life is always exciting. The husband you see after work at 7 isn't completely the same as the husband who left at 9 this morning. Your best friend has been through a lot since you spoke last week. That white noise and neurosis of processing that you hear in your mind is also present in everyone else's mind. We're all thinking, we're all shifting. Everything is a little bit newer as it gets a little bit older.
***
I had a meditative breakthrough in my yoga workshop yesterday. This isn't saying a whole lot, I'm not so great with meditation. Just a year ago, you could hear me saying that meditation wasn't for New Yorkers (and neither, for that matter, was any concept of god or a holy spirit). But for me, yesterday, I got it for a minute. The blue-violet light came, I thought, "omg it's the blue light!" and with that thought everything zipped back to me and my neurosis. Still, that light is there, that elusive still is there, and that's new and changed for me. I thought a lot through the 4 hour yoga practice about change, grace, health, beauty, and being thankful. I feel myself changing with fluidity, and vowed to try and acknowledge and appreciate how much all the people I love are changing too.
During the really tough moments in the physical practice, I dedicated the pose to someone I was having difficulties with and found that that dedication would, for instance, keep me away from getting crazy or panicked about being inverted for 5 minutes. Not falling, for the sake of someone else, was a pretty magical experience. I also experienced my meditation breakthrough when I was asked to concentrate on the people sitting next to me, to help them deepen their mediation. With this in mind, I remember a quote:
"Whatever Joy there is in this world all comes from desiring others to be happy. And whatever suffering there is in this world, all comes from desiring myself to be happy." (Shantideva: A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life)
***
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billetdoux is going to say that Seattle is getting to my head. I don't care. I honestly would have paid this much attention in NYC if I'd only had the time.
It's funny then to think of how our brains work. It's almost as if the computer of our brains seek comfort, some anchor in the realm of constant shifting. Our minds are so advanced in pattern recognition that they seem to have some difficulty shifting with the times. We hold people from the past in our minds as unchanging. We even set ourselves up in resistance of that old person's definition, ready to propagate that old sameness with our usual lines of defense.
I know, for easy instance, that when I speak with my mother - I speak from years of knowing her. I am ready, with my usual line of self-righteous justification, for any argument. Knowing how much I have changed since we last spoke, knowing how much my life has changed even over the course of this last weekend (it did!!!), shouldn't I allow her the room to have changed, as well? Shouldn't we always try to operate on a slate that is somewhat clean?
I'm putting this out there to remind myself that we all change. All the time. Life is always exciting. The husband you see after work at 7 isn't completely the same as the husband who left at 9 this morning. Your best friend has been through a lot since you spoke last week. That white noise and neurosis of processing that you hear in your mind is also present in everyone else's mind. We're all thinking, we're all shifting. Everything is a little bit newer as it gets a little bit older.
***
I had a meditative breakthrough in my yoga workshop yesterday. This isn't saying a whole lot, I'm not so great with meditation. Just a year ago, you could hear me saying that meditation wasn't for New Yorkers (and neither, for that matter, was any concept of god or a holy spirit). But for me, yesterday, I got it for a minute. The blue-violet light came, I thought, "omg it's the blue light!" and with that thought everything zipped back to me and my neurosis. Still, that light is there, that elusive still is there, and that's new and changed for me. I thought a lot through the 4 hour yoga practice about change, grace, health, beauty, and being thankful. I feel myself changing with fluidity, and vowed to try and acknowledge and appreciate how much all the people I love are changing too.
During the really tough moments in the physical practice, I dedicated the pose to someone I was having difficulties with and found that that dedication would, for instance, keep me away from getting crazy or panicked about being inverted for 5 minutes. Not falling, for the sake of someone else, was a pretty magical experience. I also experienced my meditation breakthrough when I was asked to concentrate on the people sitting next to me, to help them deepen their mediation. With this in mind, I remember a quote:
"Whatever Joy there is in this world all comes from desiring others to be happy. And whatever suffering there is in this world, all comes from desiring myself to be happy." (Shantideva: A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life)
***
billetdoux is going to say that Seattle is getting to my head. I don't care. I honestly would have paid this much attention in NYC if I'd only had the time.
