church of my poisoned mind
An eight-hour travel day is enough to make anyone go berserk. Four of those hours were numbed with chick magazines. Then I finally picked back up the Pema Chodron book.
Many concepts resonated but the one I've been reflecting on today is duality. I recently had the courage to recognize and own my mind's default filter: right and wrong. Situations are categorized in my mind as either "right" or "wrong". People are "right" or "wrong". I am "right" or "wrong", always. For many years, I believed this filter served me in some way, perhaps as a way to understand my place in a perceived chaotic and bizarre world. And now I see it's a poison. It creates separation, a narrow world view: mine. And my views and thoughts have turned on me.
I went to an ashtanga class tonight, not by my own choice but looking back, perhaps it chose me. Ashtanga is a traditional sequencing of poses, the yoga style I started my own practice with almost 13 years ago and practiced for 7 years before I began to find it boring. Every practice starts with sun salutations, followed by a series of poses that alternate left side with right side. Tonight I found myself intrigued with each side, triangle left, right, warrior 2 left, right, noticing along the way the experience from side to side was not the same. The bodily sensations in movement can be frustrating at times, the transitions between sides or poses can feel like lead, judgement of self can easily set in. We find ourselves asking WHY it feels so hard to move today when yesterday this was easy? WHY am I not moving as gracefully as the person in front of me? But tonight I moved with curiosity. I felt both heavy and light. I was tight and open. It was strange to practice this sequence and yet familiar. I was a beginner and yet advanced. That's when the teaching of the flow emerged. This is duality in action.
I have one body, which is both tight and open, strong and weak, at any given moment. My dark thoughts do not invalidate my light ones, they complement. In essence, I am both right AND wrong. To categorize myself as one or the other denies the experience of being whole in mind, body and spirit and with the world we live in. Pema reminds us this duality is what makes us human, and we all have it, nobody is immune. Accepting it helps us release the judgement and allows us to become more compassionate.
Taking from the title, I decided to start where I am, in suvasana. I practiced visualizing a recent negative emotion, breathing its darkness and breathing out its lightness...noticing along the way the ease of visualizing darkness and the challenge in translating it to white light. This is the effect of the poisoned mind. Darkness has overpowered light such that lightness is like a distant memory. It is clear many breaths lie ahead.