July 3, 2023
CHOICES OVER VOICES
“Don’t SHOULD on yourself. Understand what happened. Let it go. And keep on swimming.” (John Maitland)
The other morning I noticed the above-quoted on a white-board hanging beside my pool lane. I can imagine the swim coach urging his youthful competitors to figure it out when something goes wrong, shake it off, and get back in the water. As an avid swimmer, I find the quote applies both literally and figuratively. There are times when I get seasick, or caught in a current, or suffer a mild case of hypothermia, or get disoriented in the murky pea-soup water off Jericho Beach, and just have to keep swimming until I’m safely back on land.
As with all good metaphors, the quote applies figuratively to daily life, to the times I have to coach myself to keep going despite whatever obstacles I encounter. But I’m shocked at how often the obstacles that I have to overcome are created by my “inner saboteur”. If I understand Trungpa correctly, this inner saboteur is, if not the same thing, then a close cousin of his setting sun mind:
"When we are afraid of waking up and afraid of experiencing our own fear, we create a cocoon to shield ourselves from the vision of the Great Eastern Sun. We prefer to hide in our personal jungles and caves. When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think that we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us. We are so afraid of our own fear that we deaden our hearts."Perhaps it is a function of age, but I encounter this aspect of myself more often than I want. The good news is that I catch it at all. As awareness increases, so too are an increased number of times when I find myself not in my “right” mind. My spiritual readings and practices are all aimed at restoring my inner light or sunrise mind. A very useful tool that I acquired while studying Yasodhara Yoga, is a meditation on light, with light symbolizing the highest and best that I would offer myself or anyone else. In many religions the light is associated with the divine, the sublime, universal intelligence or whatever terms refer to the mystery from which we derive our existence. The following is taken from an article written by Swami Radhananda, past president of Yasodhara Ashram and my spiritual guide of many years, as an antidote to the darkness of setting sun mind:
"This is a meditation on light, to help you expand the limits of your imagination. Only go as far as you can. As you practise you will naturally be able to expand the light beyond your original limitations.
"Sit in a comfortable position with your ankles crossed. Close your eyes, softly focusing them on the space between your eyebrows. Let your body be still and quiet. See a point of light. Concentrate on the point of light.
"See the light expand, filling your body, surrounding you, expanding out and out until it reaches the sky and beyond. See yourself and everyone and everything in the light. See this light spreading as far as you can imagine, and beyond. Then begin to draw the light back to the space between your eyebrows. Stay quiet and still, absorbing the Light."The purpose of focusing on light is that it distracts attention from our habitual identifications and, thereby, our typical way of relating to the world around us. Chogyam Trungpa, Swami Radha, Hillevi Ruumet, Pema Chodron, Sharon Salzberg, Ram Das and a host of other spiritual luminaries recognize this drawback to our growth as “enlightened” beings, this tendency to think and live mechanically — sleepwalking around the planet. Trungpa insists that meditation, the synchronizing of mind and body, is essential to awaken the sunrise mind.
“In the practice of meditation, the way to be daring, the way to leap, is to disown your thoughts, to step beyond your hope and fear, the ups and downs of your thinking process. You can just be, just let yourself be, without holding on to the constant reference points that mind manufactures. You do not have to get rid of your thoughts. They are a natural process; they are fine; let them be as well. But let yourself go out with the breath, let it dissolve. See what happens."Incorporating Swami Radhananda’s visualization on the light with a meditation centered on balancing the breath, engages more senses and enhances the effectiveness of the practice. The better and more thoroughly we synchronize mind and body, the more of ourselves we involve, the more ably we can step away from our inner saboteurs and begin to fulfill our potential.
I’ll buy a ticket to that. Oh. Wait. I already have a ticket to that. Practice, practice, practice!