Writing from the Inside Out (17 page)

The solution to a complex problem will surface at an unexpected moment. Maybe I come home from work one day, and the light bulb burns out as I enter the house. From the circumstance, I get a deep and true glimpse of my life. At that precise moment, as I am standing alone in the dark, everything changes. I give up my current career, something I've worked decades trying to perfect, not because it has to do with light bulbs, but because I have carried the intent with me in the back of my head. In energetic terms, it's just floating around in me as something I'm hanging onto. The moment of realization is a moment of cleared energy, a new perspective.

I should also remember that what holds me back is the limiting belief that the fruit of the practice should be what I enjoy. Instead, I wholeheartedly offer the work itself and give it openly, welcoming whatever it causes me to experience, and allowing those sensations to flow through me, witnessed, without causing me to act based on preference.

Viewing myself as the steward of my energy (rather than the rightful permanent owner of my body) naturally gets me to let go of what isn't right for me at an energetic level. I want my energy to be high and balanced while I'm at work. I want energy to be low when I rest, but within this low energy, the deathless integrity of the internal witness must remain.

 

 

It happens that I can get a pretty inflated ego when working toward my practice. I feel that
I
am on the right path, and that this success glorifies me. Pretty soon, this kind of attitude disintegrates a practice. Just because I can pretend that I know what I'm doing doesn't mean that I have any control over anything.

The same force that sustains my life will one day allow me to die. Practice moves me to experience and enact freedom while I am still in the body. Life is a gift, and life continues to be a gift. Acting accordingly, I set aside my false belief that I'm owed anything, and I can move transparently within the giving, in turn giving by my own nature. A musician plays the accordion, and the world may respond as the ego dreams that the world should respond.

I might be able to make a living with my passion, but in all cases, there will be things about that way of making a living that I don't enjoy, yet are nonetheless required. So whether I'm a tax accountant, an author, or a yoga teacher, I can find some peace knowing that my effort will never be entirely pain-free. Driving that point home as a reality can help calibrate my expectations. The best financial advice is to be free from the concern for money. Feeling this way has huge consequences for how I live and what I do with my time, because it means that, energetically, I'm open.

I don't have the final say. But I can live fully for now, and understand what it might mean to let the spirit move me, and the universe to express itself through me. Liberated or not, I'm still here, and I still have certain characteristics. A liberated father is a better father. A more realized mother and writer is a complete gift to everyone around her.

It's never so clear when we should pretend to know who and what we really are. Innovation meets people where they're coming from. In some cases, the right thing for the advanced yogi to do is start a lavender farm or soap distribution company or a nonprofit organization geared to the preservation of rainforest land in perpetuity. Having been freed and/or achieved any kind of success, I find that the first question to ask myself is whether I'm doing anything to help others. When I look back, I see everyone who helped me along the way.

I went to an acupuncturist to receive treatment for what seemed to be an issue involving the spleen, at least so in Chinese medicine, and both times during the treatment I had the same revelation. I was on the table with a few needles, relaxing, letting the nerves, stimulated, do their thing. It's difficult to describe exactly how it happened, but somehow because of the relaxation I cozied into a place where something — a statement — surfaced and became at once obvious and precious: a revelation.

It surfaced. That is how I describe it — like it was already there, but for one reason or another, wasn't immediately present. It is likely that this surfacing represents something we all know or perhaps sense when our energy — and therefore our thoughts — are balanced in a healthy flow. When the acupuncture clarified my energy, the thought surfaced in the form of a statement. The statement, in turn, produced a physiological affirmation of the energy-work, which led to the statement being produced or revealed. Therefore, the act of giving or articulating one's connection to a transpersonal truth is innately blissful insofar as it stimulates a person's actions with its energetic trigger.

The self disappeared — and it became something I took for granted — mere elements. It became obvious just how often I was turning away from the real object of life work to make sure I was still here, and sort of fussing around with one thing or another. The possibilities for self-concern never have to go away, but I don't have to be attentive to them, because that attention comes at the expense of deeper living. I naturally have a disposition, qualities, skills, a style. These aspects manifest whether I like it or not. Self-work and introspection can develop these things and even make me into something else — sometimes more in line with my will and sometimes just different. But once I've learned the fundamentals of my life's work — as a writer, say — I can move forward.

I can arrive at a place where life is lived in service — without excessive self-regard, loving myself as I am, and more interested in what I can do than what I might be able to act from. In the end, the self dissolves in complete and continual appreciation of life. What one does with that appreciation will happen automatically, because it must, as an open-ended expression, or an offering. It happens through me, from life to all that happens after, and before, and throughout. I get to be the witness, and that is no small thing.

In scenes in the
Mahabharata
leading up to the battle of the
Bhagavad Gita
, both Arjuna and Duryodhana go to Krishna to ask for his help. These two were fighting each other and are now appealing to the same person. Krishna offers one of them his vast and impressive army and the other one himself as an advisor. Duryodhana chooses the army, and Arjuna chooses Krishna as his advisor. The abilities of the advisor, or the internal nonacting witness, are superior, regardless of the numbers.

Arjuna was a kshatrya, a member of the warrior caste. He lived to fight. His bravery in battle was second to none. For twelve years prior to the battle of the Kurukshetra, his mind was fixed on only one thing: defeating his opponents. He practiced extreme austerities. He stood on the top of a mountain in tree posture for twelve years. According to myth, such
tapas
bestow great powers on a yogi. Yet, when Krishna shows him the field of battle, when everything is about to begin, Arjuna becomes terrified — not by the size of the army, but because he sees friends and family out there. He doesn't want to have to leave behind everything. He is terrified of who he would become when the battle is over.

When I write in earnest, I put myself in Arjuna's position, and embrace nothing but the uncertainty, the openness. I cannot be entirely certain that who I become after practice is the same person as before. If it enters a body, a psyche also enters the body's conditioning, along with its dispositions, thoughts, and memories. It seems that I may be the same person. Each moment opens into the eternal.

Before the battle, Arjuna prays, until at last one day he finishes praying and, having fasted for years, goes out hunting and shoots a pig with his bow. The pig is his catch — except that another hunter has shot the pig at the exact same time from the other side. The pig has been shot through the heart simultaneously by two arrows. Arjuna is very hungry and argues with the other hunter, who is just as belligerent as Arjuna. The argument quickly turns into a fight. Arjuna goes at the hunter with every weapon he has, but no sooner does he use a weapon than it is taken or broken by his opponent. Arjuna at last strikes the hunter with his sword, but it, too, is destroyed. In shame and frustration, Arjuna at last brings out a small shrine to Siva and, as an offering, adorns it with flowers, only to find that the flowers have not landed on his statue but on the hunter — his opponent. Arjuna realizes that his opponent is none other than Siva himself and throws himself at his feet. Siva is pleased and rewards Arjuna with a magical weapon.

Siva is the god of yoga practice. When writing, I remember that I may be up against something that can never be defeated. Instead, I know that the further I progress, the more devotion I will feel. We deserve to be happy. To live in a way that makes me deeply fulfilled takes work, often a great deal of work, because I have to be in lock-step with what is required of me.

Doing this work is a kind of sacrifice. Something is calling me to do this work. It's myself, but not my everyday self. Poetry calls me to do work that leads to deep fulfillment. Distinguishing between the two is important. The voice guiding me toward genuine self-improvement, the voice that challenges me toward truth, is who I really am.

Forces within me urge me toward and away from things. Is that really me wanting, or is it just urge itself? Urges are conditional. The body wants to breathe. My cells know this. I exhale, and feel the growing urge to inhale. I inhale, and feel the growing urge to exhale. I crave foods and activities, but what I'm really craving are states of being. The appreciation of other people can feel very nice, but I want to pick and choose what other people like about me. And this feeling, too, changes.

Total freedom is where I keep myself open and do what's actually in my best interest. I am simply in a place where I will do what must be done, forgoing the rest. In the between times, I am patient and forgiving with myself.

The ego wants to pick and choose stories, phrases, and events to support our self-concept. We shy away from the things that threaten us, and we gravitate toward the things that bolster our sense of self. Departure from these two extremes is uncomfortable territory, yet it leads to personal growth, because it means overcoming the limitations placed on who we think we are, making room for who we essentially are.

For the sake of balance, we should rely on others and on social norms. Otherwise, things get weird and potentially do more harm than good. A little bit of freedom can be mishandled in a big way when I believe that my right to be completely free on the inside has much to do with the rest of the world. It is an introspective practice, and so I leave behind everything in society when I'm at work. But returning, I can't forget to pick it back up so that I can — it is hoped — serve the greater good. One truly happy person is a priceless gift.

In the ancient days, when poets lived in huts in the mountains, life was very different. The way we live now, we trust modern medicine, nutrition, and an efficient postindustrial infrastructure. We have high expectations for a life lived in relative comfort, if not luxury. The practice of poetry is still relevant; it helps address quality of life issues by dealing directly with the mindful body.

We owe it to ourselves to take full advantage of the relative ease and comfort we have available to go deep in our practice. Without necessarily renouncing the world and living in a cave, we can devote a substantial portion of our lives to writing practice. Also, we can integrate that concentrated, focused time into our daily lives, hopefully with a good handle on our ego urges.

With life itself there is a strong urgency to do the impossible, which is to live forever in this body. If death presents us with a monumental challenge, even just facing the idea of it, and if death itself will be a great challenge, why not do everything we can — now — to overcome its limitations on how fully we live?

What's wonderful about practice is that I don't need to die to benefit from the lessons given by death. I can face my reflection of death; I can overcome it each day, so that whenever my time is up, I will greet it as inevitable, not as something to be avoided.

I ask myself: Do I enjoy life as much as I could if I transcended the aversion to death and lived with complete detachment and total freedom? And I seek deathless truth.

 

 

You suddenly find that you are forming into twins. From this moment on, there's no more “you.” Now there are two identical people. They're standing at a fork in the road waving goodbye. One chooses to devote his/herself entirely to the deepest internal practice possible at any given moment, spending as much time and energy as he/she can in deeper and deeper states of practice. The other chooses to devote his/herself as much as possible to succeeding in the world: being regarded highly by other people, amassing a wealth of money, experience, and outward achievement.