For serious, I don’t think I’ve ever had as much on my plate ["my plate" here referring to the Career To-Do List] as I do right now, ever in my life, even back in the UofT daze.  Students are notorious for letting the rhythms of the school year run their nervous systems, as they should be, since you only get one chance to write that exam/perform that recital/finish that précis or whatever.  But I can clearly remember finishing stuff.  I can very clearly see myself handing things in to be marked, walking away and really walking away, from the whole project.  Just hand ‘er in and let things take their course.

Working was even more delicious on that front [or, well, it would be if I had greater mental clarity].  5 pm comes and whoosh, out the door…transmogrified from stern administrative hard-ass to, well, anything I wanted.

When your job is the transformation of your own nature [ROFL!], there are no breaks and the due date never arrives.  I absolutely love teaching yoga in every way.  There’s nothing about it I don’t like.  I am simply unused to being this invested, both within and without, in any one project.  So let’s say [to pick an example totally at random] that I successfully memorize the contents of my anatomy workshop with Martin Kirk.  That covers pretty much the whole bod, and is a precursor to his excellent therapeutics training coming in the fall.  I have the notes and the handouts right there, along with good ol’ Blandine Calais-Germain’s Anatomy of Movement which is starting to get soup-and-chip-and-bathwater stains on it due to being read at mealtimes and in the tub.  I could totally do it.

BUT IF I DID I would simply be moving on to the NEXT to-do item, reading Douglas Brooks’ companion book to the Bhagavad Gita and making comparison notes in the margins as I do.  I should also probably work on my Handstand, the ongoing struggle.  As soon as I finish that I can take a break with Daniel Odier’s Spanda Karika, a little light reading [ROFLcopter], and then what would you say to a half-hours’ pranayam practice?  It’s only wafer thin!

Even the prospect of these studies, that I actively and consciously choose, that I shell out molto deneiro for, month after chock-full month, gets a bit overwhelming.  In fact, I’m pretty much fully whelmed.  Any additional whelmitude comes with some gasping and panting.

I’ve talked to friends, fellow teachers and students of other disciplines, who confess to a desire to just *stop* the s**tstorm and step outside themselves, to take a holiday from the constant and consistent self-examination that comes from a path this deep and a calling this passionate.  Who wouldn’t. I feel like that all the time.  I love life and I want to participate with her, and in fact that’s also explicitly made my “homework” and that actually makes enjoying myself feel like an obligation, in one of the more eye-rolling twists this path has offered me.

You'd be surprised how hard it was to find one of these that didn't have a Confederate flag as a background

Here is my hypothesis, and the thrust of this post:  Life does not take breaks.  Which is not to say that you have to be dialled up to eleventyhundred all the time.  Au contraire, mon frère.  Rather, there is a momentum and constant growth to this existence, an outpouring of creative energy so massive that to simply immerse oneself in it is to be white-water-rafting in your soul.  It is our intransigence and learned patterns of inertia that exhaust us.  Step into life and GIT R DONE.

This hypothesis came to me while I literally wrung my hands in front of my laptop earlier today.  No, really: I grabbed onto one hand with the other hand and wrang it out like a dishtowel.  I was fretting about my mammoth inbox and had a mental to-do list 22 metres long.  As above, no sooner did I imagine one act than I planted the seeds for the next.  Of course this created a hideous crapalanche [h/t M] of tasks that pretty instantly rooted me to the spot, handwringing and blinking like I’d been hit on the head with something blunt.

Citta vrtti nirodhah.  The cessation of the mindstuff would be easily accomplished by dropping the heck out of this crazy train.  No, thanks, I don’t want to attend that workshop; no, I can’t sub your class for you.  IM BISY!  No, we can’t meet to discuss our obligations as Anusara Inspired teachers for when John Friend comes to town.  BISY BACKSON.  No, please don’t come audit my class and take notes, you’ll give me a stroke.  No, now is not a good time for my annual optometrist’s appointment.  No, God no, I can’t come to your birthday party/housewarming/baby shower/wedding/ZZ Top concert.  No, no no no.

If you say no to life, she says no to you [not being anyone's fool].  She’s not really the kind of chick who’ll keep leaving messages on your voicemail.  She is very popular.  And then it occurred to me, not for the first time [and likely not for the last either]:

Wowdy Watty Piper

The flow of grace is like learning how to breathe underwater.  You’ve lived your whole life breathing air, and all of a sudden there you are, head immersed, struggling for context, oxygen deprived.  Once you start being in this new element, a creature of spirit, you get to dive much deeper…but of course your old patterning wants to take a hold.  Stop/No.  No.  You tread water for a moment and the panic sets in:  What am I doing?  Humans can’t do this [in flagrant disregard of where you have just been and what you have just done].  The trip back up to the known gets longer and longer as you dive deeper and deeper, so the transition is more and more painful and arduous.

This is my element; I want to live in the world of spirit.  I have lived life according to the known and found it pallid and unsatisfying, and mostly a lie besides [how's that for being "known"?].  When you get stuff done you align with life, who is always doing stuff, and not thinking so paralytically much that you wring your hands.  Step in and do it.  You know you want to.  And you absolutely can.

2 Comments »

November 17th, 2009 Jes Says:

F*CK YES YOU CAN!!

Thank you Sjanie. This is exactly what I have been struggling with (among others, but this is a large [and by large I mean LARGE] part of my internal banter). Monkey brain refuses to let me read my book because I have so many other books I NEED to read to get to the place where I want to be, which is simply the first step in a huge, enormous, overwhelming staircase of other important steps needed to be taken to truly come to a place where I would feel comfortable and be able to take a minute to…b.r.e.a.t.h.e….
….oh, wait. There’s the inhale….

November 21st, 2009 einajs Says:

love you xox

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