My friend is having a bit of a hard time. Relationships can be difficult, for some - very sadly - it can be much harder than for others. As much as some refuse to admit it, many hopes, dreams and therefore expectations are loaded onto relationships. Like loads of any kind, these can turn out to be precious cargo which you can capitalise on or glut stock which is defunct and irrelevant - weighing you down and ending up as what we in modern slag call "baggage".
Figuring out what to do with all this loot and trying to sift out the valuable cargo from the useless stock can be incredibly taxing and I'm sure that many of us can relate to this.
My friend is going through a lot, and her mind is in constant turmoil as her thoughts undergo a constant stream of "maybes" / "what ifs" and persistent thoughts of how to "get over this" / "deal with this" / "solve this" / "figure this out" / "understand this" / "make sense of this" / "forget this" / "move on from this" etc. which of course ends up moving back to a not-so-brand-new cycle of "maybes" (e.g. "maybe if I do / did this etc.") and "what ifs" (e.g. "what if I did this / didn't do this / had done this etc."). The cycle goes on and on and for her it has been going on for quite awhile. Anxiety increases, the thinking goes into over-drive as the mind, soul and eventually the physical being quite simply over-heats and wears down.
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| The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin, whose first cast, of 1902, is now in the Musée Rodin in Paris; there are some twenty other original castings as well as various other versions, studies, and posthumous castings. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. It is often used to represent philosophy. |
The saying goes that there are "two sides to every coin" and I believe that with human thought there is no exception. Good and bad thoughts are naturally connected as the "yin and yang"of human thought that has allowed a self-conscious human existence.
Our ability to evaluate and to contemplate is a gift from God. Many agree that human thought and how it can supersede basic primal instinct is what differentiates us from other living species and has enabled us to claim dominance over our eco-system.
But as with all gifts, a lot depends on how you use it and cultivate it. Human thought, capable of so much good, is also capable of so much darkness - fear, obsession, arrogance, greed, anger and sadness. These dark emotions are all linked to and result from thought, just the like the brilliance of courage, passion, pride, generosity, compassion and happiness.
I am writing all this, but I promise you that I am no angel, no expert. I struggle between the balance of good and bad thoughts, everyday, all the time, and many times the coin that is my thought falls flat, struggling to get back up and maintain the balance it needs to roll on ahead. There are times when I am consumed by fear or anger, unable to move forward and get back on track, there are other times that I am influenced by a sense of false hope and impulsive naivety and move backwards instead of forward.
But why am I going on about human thought in the first place, I realise that I am rambling on, getting distracted by my thoughts. Then again, this is why I am writing (or typing) a blog and not an essay.
Last night, speaking to my friend, in quite an unexpected impromptu manner I found myself telling her to give meditation a shot. I'm no mediation guru - trust me - I still find myself getting distracted by beads of sweat rolling into my eyes and ears when arriving at the meditation phase of each yoga practice, and it took me some time to not feel like some sort of spiritually pretentious idiot chanting "Ommm" three times at the start of a class. It was probably only last night that I came to the realisation that I do actually believe in meditation instead of thinking of it as an opportunity for a quick snooze before jumping up, getting showered and getting on with my day after each yoga session.
So thank you my friend, "The (a little) Weird One" - in this way you have enlightened me.
Driving home from dropping her off, I found myself thinking about my own experience with meditation. Why had I gotten the sudden urge to encourage her to clear her mind and to stop thinking for a bit. Where had I even gotten that idea from? I realised that it had come from yoga.
It's not that I am sitting on some rock somewhere with my eyes closed, legs crossed and facing a windy ocean. No, I'm just an everyday yoga novice, that has certainly not been my experience with mediation. Thinking back, I realise that a good amount of my exposure to mediation comes from the often welcomed "dead man's pose" or "Shavasana" that comes at the end of every practice.
It's a very simple pose. Basically, you lie flat down on your back, hands and legs apart - yes - like a dead man; close your eyes and clear your mind. Very simple you say, yes, in the beginning it very much is; but then, I think, it gets harder before it (hopefully) gets easier.
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| The Shavasana or "Dead Man's Pose" / "Corpse Pose" |
You see, thinking back to my yoga practice, I think that my relationship with the Sharvasana has, unbeknownst to me, developed quite substantially.
In the beginning I saw it as a welcome relief from all the physical work I had done from my practice session. You see, when I first started yoga, physically, it was a lot of work for me - and the Sharvasana basically ended up as a pose where I recovered physically and grabbed the opportunity to doze off for a couple of minutes. This is the part when the pose feels easy. As with anything, when you're just scratching the surface, it all seems simplistic and quite straight forward. Afterall, I was not really completely engaging in the pose - what I was really doing was sleeping.
The next stage, I realise, is when I started getting a little frustrated with the pose. I had gotten more confident with the physical side of yoga, I knew what to expect. This is especially because when I first started yoga, I practiced at Fitness First, and the yoga classes there, by nature of the fact that FF is a multi-level generic gym, were pretty standard and repetitive. Which is not a bad thing, it helps you practice, but it also meant for a good 2 years I was basically going through the motions.
At this stage Sharvasana, as simple as it is physically, was a pain for me. Instead of conking out into sleep as I had done in the past, all I could think of was what a waste of time this pose was. Lying here, doing nothing. My mind wondered, from how much work I had to catch up on, to what I should do on the weekend, to how pissed of I was at this situation or that situation or this person or that person, or, commonly, how irritated I was that sweat was rolling into my ear. The list goes on.
For fear of being rude to the yoga instructor, I usually stuck it out. But a few times, I simply got up, rolled up my mat and left. I have things to do, don't I?! I'm a busy woman! I have deadlines to meet!
This went on for some time. But somewhere along the line, and I'm not sure why - it could have been something one of my yoga instructors said, or perhaps my unconscious mind plain getting fed up at being fed up of not being able to "utilise my time" in the Sharvasana - I started to take the pose more seriously. Just like I had trained my body to understand the various yoga poses, I sub-consciously started to train my mind to do the same thing.
Many times, yoga instructors tell you to "clear your mind". But what does that mean? And is that even possible?
To meditate. What does that mean? Often you hear people say: "mediate on this for a bit". Huh? On Wiki it is defined as: "Meditation refers to any of a family of practices in which the practitioner trains his or her mind or self-induces a mode of consciousness in order to realize some benefit."
I have thought about this, and I am still thinking about this. I think that I will be thinking about this for some time. I am human afterall. :P But to me, I think that mediation really is about "clearing your mind". It is not about sleep, and I don't really think you can "meditate" on something because that certainly means that your mind is not clear of thoughts. Right now, I think meditation is about rebooting your mind, releasing thoughts - and therefore giving your soul, and eventually your physical self, and opportunity to refresh and rejuvenate.
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| Maybe a silly analogy, but perhaps, just like the usage of many iPhone apps are linked to each other, our thoughts are constantly linked to each other. Have too many apps running at the same time and your battery is eventually going to run flat a lot faster. |
This is probably why it is called the "dead man's pose", because us living human beings are not used to switching off. We can be good at resting, sleeping, engaging in recreation and of course, thinking - but we're never really able to power-off until we die.
As with the rules of physics, with wear there is tear and sometimes, I think, the best we can do for our minds, bodies and souls is to reboot. Hopefully with that reboot, that "restart", our minds and our souls, better rested, can be a little clearer...a little freer from all the "legacy code" and all the glut and baggage we carry through the thoughts, the thought-provoked emotions and the memories that shape our individual human existence as we know it.
I believe that with this new clarity and rejuvenated strength, we will have the bandwidth to understand ourselves and our world better, and with that maybe we can pave our way towards being more responsible thinkers and from that small step hopefully become more responsible human beings.
I am going to prepare for yoga practice now, but today I know that I will take Sharvasana much more seriously - as I continue the human struggle to maintain balance through my thoughts and from there, ultimately through my actions.
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