Loving a man who, in his daily tasks, feels wholehearted ease.

The moments I find myself admiring and falling a little in love with Jorge are quite peculiar: when I see him absorbed in a daily task like washing the dishes.

Curious, I thought I’d write about it to unravel the mystery a bit. But I can hardly write about it feeling as I am, so touched by what occurs in these moments.

My gaze rests on him as he moves through the actions of the task. I see a man comfortable in his body and his posture as he cleans, wipes, arranges and continues workings. He is clearly where he is happy to be. Nothing else on his mind. The space around him even seems light-filled in some cheering way. He is capable. The process is clear. He is involved with just the sweetest touch of enthusiasm. He clearly takes some pride in his natural skill.

He seems buoyed by the self evident reward that making a space orderly and more beautiful brings to one’s life.

I am married for many years. Our love-life waxes and wanes. Wanes mostly when he brings irritation and pressure to our intimacy. But in these moments, where he is absorbed at at ease, I desperately want to take him. I want to step into his groove and keep it flowing. The lightness in his being draws me to him. There is an unconscious desire of wanting the same quality of attention he pours upon those dishes. I want to partake in this transportation into Self. Calm and centred as he is.

I stay silent and return to my own task. Aware that I tend to oscillate between irritation and pressure when relating to my own responsibilities. But this moment has gifted sun, soil and water to a pretty little seed in my heart that is budding up to flower.

Meditation with Samantha - Be with the breath. It will give you space and insight.

At the conclusion of tonight’s meditation practice Sam said: “Sometimes we can’t even be honest with ourselves, because there is too much pressure.”

Meditation gives us freedom. The freedom to be honest.

I asked myself “What in the next moment would lack honesty?”

I imagined the next few moments. I would depart from the meditation practice. I’d open the door to the rest of the family home and face the imposition of the kitchen bench, the lounge room floor, children not yet in bed, my husband’s face: all objects requiring my attention.

Each of the likely things I would interact with felt very clearly like a mechanical moment seeped in the residue of the past. Lacking any presence, the familiarity would stifle the aliveness I’d been in contact with as I sat in stillness and silence.

It seemed the world was teeming with unwelcome detractors from my inner calm.

So I go ahead and leave the meditation space. As I enter my home, and what it ultimately my life, I feel myself unconsciously robed in layers of old expectation. The habit weighs on me and limits my free movement, my view, my ability to respond in fresh ways.

Momentarily it seems these force that dull my senses are something external. They come from the outside and are pushed onto me from the home and people in it.

But meditation is a portal to insight and that insight tells me: the limitation exists in my thoughts and my heart, not out there in house or husband. And what of the question of honesty?I know honesty because I feel honesty. It is a clear feeling, an open feeling. Neither holding anything in or pushing anything away. These layers of past assumptions, past movements and past words that limit me are honestly saying one thing: awaken!

My posture, my walk, my facial expression, my tone of voice are all free: wild, impromptu, open to the flow of life that I actually feel through meditation. I could dance, smile, open the back door to the cool night air, sing in companionship with the moon. I could be inspired or curl in a ball and cry my depths out.

But we are creatures of habit in our physical body, and of constancy to the ego in our socio-psychological realm. So there is not much room left for an open, spacious, free and expressive engagement with the living moment. One probably just tidies up a bit, says ‘I’m tired’ and goes to bed.

Acknowledging this is both sad and good.

What I can do now is have courage.

And I can trust.

And if I hold this sattvic inner space with some intimacy, then it more easily resonates with and radiates into daily life. This aliveness is not something to be done, it simply is a radiance that can no longer be covered over. I am not having to create, I simply open to life’s unpredictable and creative nature and let a little of the unknown flow.

Sam shared that the meditation, having matured over time, will also provide us the confidence we need to live our Dharma.

Meeting a heavily burdened moment and choosing to see possibilities is that confidence. Like a snake shedding its skin, I am a little exposed, but I am free. I allow myself time and kindness to grow into my shiny new ways.

Anchored with my expansive, breathing body, the earth as it arises through me, and with the space around me as it is now felt, on fresh new senses, I am an invitation for honesty.

The bare truth of things just as they are.

A new light is shone on the kitchen mess which never looked so beautiful or felt so appreciated. I see a glow of possibility around my husband’s form as he greets me.

~~~

I write this in thanks to my teacher, Samantha Coker-Godson and the growing sangha of Dharma Circle human beings who regularly meet in weekly meditation. And I write in the hope that there is something here for you.

So I invite you to notice, after some time of repose, does the return to life feel like a pressure to put on the worn and familiar habits? Honesty and some keen interest can help us interact with each new moment in fresh and refreshing ways. And it can arise within us by simply being with the breath - “it will give you space and insight” - and the rest will follow.

Lignification - a way forward into life

Lignification: To become firm and woody

We often think of the soft part of the plant as life filled and beautiful. The sprouting seed, the budding stem, the blossoms smooth and vibrant.

We value youth and the parts of a system that are taking up the energy and getting all the attention.

Kids and young adults think they hold centre stage. And rightly so! Exposed as they are, unprotected from the lessons learned. At the helm of self creation.

Oh but to be lignified! To be hardened in your very cells. To be the strength that lends itself to new growth and deeper roots. To have the capacity to be the big sister, the parent, the grand and humble grandparent.

I came across the term lignified as both a desired and needed quality for fig tree propagation. When pruning, keep the branches that have lignified, pop them - two nodes deep - into the ground, an voila, you have a new fig tree!

“Cell wall lignification is a complex process occurring exclusively in higher plants; its main function is to strengthen the plant vascular body.”

This hardening is a desired trait and I want to tell you more about it.

People… you see.

People can be difficult to navigate. Especially when we love and care about them and want them to be our friend, sibling, mother, child. When we want them close and trusting and having fun, sharing the days of this life with us.

Well, the joy of having and being a lignified friend is a true one.

I have a memory from my 20’s. Out on a grassy hilltop, overlooking the splendour of Terra Bulga national park. My friend and I sat next to each other, looking up at the moon in the day sky. We were friends for sure. Our kids went to the same school and we’d hanging out when we could, and still getting to know each other. On this weekend we deserted the city to camp out in nature. This outing itself was a ‘lignification'‘ of the friendship.

But at this moment, both of us sitting with knees hugged into our chests, I felt a need to let go and I lay my head on her shoulder. Just lent clean across and gave up all my holding with no idea as to how she would react.

I could have gone for years with that underlying ‘walking on egg shells’ feeling around her. The kind that is unnoticed and arrises from not knowing where she stood on this or that aspect of life. But as my head found her shoulder I felt she was as strong as a rock. A bolder deeply embedded in the earth. Unmoved. Her gaze steady in the distance.

All my insecurities, self doubts, double checking myself, all for naught. She was unperturbed by me. Unmoved. She was total and complete. I was relatively insignificant. Like a butterfly landing on a mountain. Her woody cells represented to me her stable sense of self. Another way of saying it: she sat within her own centre.

Discovering this quality in another did truly set me free.

So, yes, we can be soft, sensitive, gentle, and walk lightly, but stabilising one’s self is divine and sublime too.

The fig tree needs the grown, stronger, harder bits to reach out and fruit each year.

Our emotional lives too, need some solid, bounded areas. Too concerned with ‘gentle and nice’ will not always be the best path. Nice will too often send us skipping over or sliding across the gritty, meaningful parts of life.

I am not saying toughen up. Not in the old, post-war way. I am saying grow strong, when you’re ready. Push gentle-like upon the edges. Go softly toward the discomfort. Stay in the challenges of a friend’s personality, or a coworkers rotten ways, or whatever it is you are quick to avoid. Play in the sand a little. Dig a little deeper to touch the grit and make it yours. Make a life that aligns you with your deepest, truest Self. Find your deeper, stiller centre.

Many come to yoga to be more supple. I come to find joy in stability. And that requires developing a little lignin to keep the cell walls strong.

~~~

Another definition I like:

“Lignification is a dynamic, flexible process reinforcing cell walls according to the different needs (water conduction, mechanical support, defence) of the plant during its life.”

Note my use of the word hard: The word is not nice but this whole article is about getting a little more interested in hardness. It does not have to automatically mean bad, dead, obstructive, old, lifeless, mean, unresponsive.

Please do note: the process cannot be reversed in plants. As humans we could take some care: while we hold firm to that which bounds and stabilises us we can also keep fluid those places where love, compassion and joy can thrive.

Chakras - understanding reality and the ways we manage information

6 minute read

Dear reader,

Do you think from your head, your heart or your gut? Chakra are a ripe topic for reflection when considering which part of us is running our lives. Are there forces driving us from unseen places? Or does the energy at different parts of our body (chakra) have no relevance whatsoever on how we think or act?

Are chakra even real?

Commonly described as energy centres along the spine, I always feel strange telling people what a chakra 'is.' If you have never in your life known or felt 'a swirling vortex of energy' along your spine then I would never tell you that you have one! That seems fair to me.

If chakra can be so illusive then why do I teach chakra workshops and use the concepts in my therapy sessions?

Because chakra inquiry can be a powerful way to illicit new perspectives and connect us to physical sensations that might not have been fully felt. This is important, because when what is inside us is not fully felt it is harder to understand ourselves. We limit our understanding of self if we only use moving therapies like yoga asana or talking therapy like counselling. Chakra brings more meaning to both.

Chakra inquiries can also be nourishing for clients as they gain skills to manage pain, build self worth, improve relationships and to connect with oneself.
 

People have taken a look in and it's working for them.

Here's my working definition of chakra, based on how I introduce the experience:

“A chakra is a physical place in your body. It is place with some significance. So not a limb, wrist or toe. Chakra are a place where meaning happens: a place where we feel our own inner-life”

Why not try with me now? If you put your hand on the centre of your chest and let your mind consider what is felt there, after some time and as you relax, sensations arise: past emotions or yearnings for the future, will present themselves to you. Some sensations may feel stuck or dull, some bubbling to the surface.

Your busy and creative mind will place meaning to those feelings. Including any lack of feelings. That is what we humans do. How else do we know when we love, grieve or experience celebratory rapture? It happens in the physical body, in our tissues, our cells, our organs. And we interpret those sensations with what we know and what we intend. This is a subjective experience. It is personal.

Objective and Subjective Reality

But again, we ask, is there a chakra swirling beneath the experience? Really?

To be able to answer this question we will need to consider subjective knowledge and how it relates to objective reality. You may be surprise how this turns out. If you’d like to, come with me and we will see where enquiry takes us.

Ultimately, to a greater or lesser extent our experience of life will always be subjective. Even before Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, it was acknowledge we know the world through the limited designs of our five senses. Sorry, but there’s no direct link to reality. Throw your microscopes and scalpels away! No amount of reduction or specificity is going to help.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how a chakra is commonly described. In this case Svadhisthana, the second chakra located around the sacrum behind the lower belly.

Svadisthana Chakra

An image that helps us consider certain qualities within ourselves and about life.

A common description of the qualities of

Svadisthana Chakra

From Yoga Journal

The symbol of the sacral chakra is orange with six petals surrounding the center. The circles in connection with the lotus flower petals represent the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. The tangential circles also create a crescent moon shape, which reminds us of the connection between creativity and the phases of the moon. According to Sahara Rose, the colors and the symbols associated with the different energy centers are reflective of the vibration of the chakras. When the ancient rishis meditated on the energy of the chakras, these were the colors and symbols that arose in their mind’s eye.

This chakra is associated with sensuality and creativity. The primary function of this energy center is pleasure and overall enjoyment of life. When this chakra is balanced and functioning properly, we can expect our relationship with ourselves and the world to feel harmonious, pleasureful, and nurturing.

The svadhisthana chakra is associated with the element of water, says Snyder. The water element is all about flow, flexibility and freedom of expression when it comes to emotions and sensuality. This energy center, when balanced, offers direct access to flow, flexibility, and fun.

In working with this chakra, you will address your relationship with both others and yourself. Personally, you’ll discover you have unlimited creative power; you’ll learn how to cultivate a healthy relationship to pleasure; and you’ll gain insight into your default reactions and deepest emotions and learn how to sit with the depth of your feelings. You will more freely express your wants, needs, and emotions with others. You will also learn how to express yourself more skillfully and how to begin setting healthy boundaries.

www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/chakras-yoga-for-beginners/intro-sacral-chakra-svadhisthana/

The seven chakras

This popular image of coloured chakras was only recently developed.

Meaning-making-machines & invisible agreements

So each chakra will have its own: colour, image, element, sound, yoga posture, associated organ and diseases, mudra, mantra, electromagnetic frequency, essential oil and even has a dedicated planet.The Sacral chakra above relates to Jupiter. Naturally.

But if a chakra is a place in my body that senses and feels, then why all the hype?

Again, it is because

1. we humans are meaning making machines, and

2. we forgot we made everything up

We live among a sea of agreements that hold together so invisibly that we believe them to be more real than what they are. Society is made up, money is a concept, even numbers do not exist except for when we create and maintain them. The number zero did not exist for mathematicians until the 6th or 7th century.

So truth, or let’s just say ‘reality’ is much less accessible to us than we think.

The Buddhist perspective and meditation

The Buddhist perspective suggests that when we really look thoroughly at the nature of life, it all end up being an illusion of real. Our daily lives need things to be pretty much bedded down and secure so we can get to work, get paid, pay our bills and have decent relationships. But those definites that make all that possible are not definites. We each day renew the agreement to live with constancy.

If you are willing to strip things all the way back to their simplest forms, which is what happens in meditation, then seeing the illusion becomes easier.

Shall we for now agree that to a great extent things are less real and less certain than we like to pretend?

If you’re into this way of understanding life, then when someone says a chakra ‘ is’ you will understand that to mean: ‘people have elaborated on this place in the body in ways that are meaningful to them and help them to make sense of themselves and this life.’

And that is what anyone with interest in something will do: elaborate.

Pick any passion of yours and you will see how it maintains your attention. And because of that you attach more and more meaning to it and see the world through it. Since I started gardening, I’ve found it is a metaphor for every aspect of life. Others see life through the lens of money and everything is a weighed as cost-benefit transactions. You get my point.

Structures help seperate information and focus our attention

And while on the topic of how our mind streams information: The third thing the chakra system does is help us seperate out our experience into discrete areas for us to name, consider and develop. Life can be overwhelming and having a well established, comprehensive structure to guide our attention is invaluable at those times of confusion or over-load.

Here are the seven areas of life chakra have been popularly divided into:

With the lack of skilful attention paid to our inner experience -our inner life - I welcome the chakra descriptions that others have shared. The associations the ancient rishis made to these places in their bodies aligns well with me. Perhaps you noticed how similar it is to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

When the descriptions resonate across generations and cultures they are organically propagated because of this attunement.

It reminds us we really are connected at the deepest level.

So I don’t find myself asking ‘Are chakras real?’

The question is “How do these chakra descriptions and practices serves us?”

When you read the above Yoga Journal quote, your mind was touched by “the moon, cycles of life, creative power, flow, pleasure, deepest emotions, freedom of expression.”

You would have been somehow changed by those images and concepts as you read them. That is an experience you had and otherwise would not be having. It has set cogs in motion in the mind, seeds now sewn in the heart.

I meditate on the sensations I feel at my lower and upper belly and heart. Occasionally throat and third eye. It is an authentic inquiry and one worthy of an expert hand.

I reach with genuine appreciation for the revelatory and healing nature of the process and teach from what I know.

To decrease skepticism I keep my language around the sensations in the body and what a client’s actual experience is. I avoid overlaying it with external, made up ideas that might have no relevance. But when guidance is needed, I have a wealth of delightful images, essential oils, concepts and knowledge to dip into. And if they are into astrology, hey, I can even bring in the celestial planets.

For you: have fun and see how the descriptions of the chakras awaken and enliven you. Will you put on some music you love, get your hips swinging and live with a little flow and expression? Yes please!

We can be touched by what is on offer rather than prioritise truth. With this in hand, it can protect you too, against those who may wish to dupe you. The deepest truths are without form, they need no explanation and they are immediately known as they arise within us.

Possibilities for Deep Listening in a Politically Correct Culture

I wrote in my local chat group the question “Where can we celebrate Chinese New Year”.

So I woke the next morning to the post “I’m sick of people calling it the Chinese New Year” and a string of posts that equated to public shaming and people trying to re-educate me.

“You mean Lunar New Year???” etc

I felt blood drain from my body because I had made someone feel “sick” and it was in a public domain. I also felt sad because the groups political correctness was resulting in shaming me as I’m sure it has been used to shame many others in the past.

I had not explained that my request was specific, and so it was presumed to be ignorantly exclusive.

My understanding is that political correctness is at its best when I am at my best:

When I am educating myself… taking a broader view… understanding different people and different situations than my own.

Along with this open mindedness is a gentle concern that others feel included and accepted. 

That’s it.  P.C. in a nutshell. 

So P.C. could instead stand for Polite Conviviality or if you really want to go deep Powerfully Conscious, because it shares agency - with otherwise marginalised groups - consciously.

So why do we often hear rumblings and gripes about being P.C.?

Could it be because too often the open-minded, inclusive attitude only extends so far. We can be quick to pull people up who use outdated expressions. We become social Police Constables and turn up uninvited and unrequested. We don’t realise we’ve become judgemental, not openminded. We are inclusive only if you dot your i’s and cross your t’s. Otherwise you are OUT. And at worst, we think our buttons are somehow your responsibility.

If I were a local council or a government agency, then yes, feel free to pull me up. I would. Organisations are there to represent the people who make them up. 

But when it comes to individuals… I think we are mostly doing our best to manage life and be true to our own experience. So it is fair to give a wide berth and let other be. If we are an articulate person we may find ways to share why we say things with specific sensitivity. The art/ skill is for that conversation to be just a simple share, which may land comfortably in another’s experience.

I get disappointed when open-minded inclusiveness is used to cut people down. It’s just not cool. 

I’d rather converse with my 80 year old Mum with all her non-P.C. comments because hey, at least it is not masquerading as morally superior.  If I listen deeply I can hear a raw truth of hers.

Just yesterday Mum told my husband, who had brought in the washing, that it was a woman’s job! A large part of her knows the idea is outdated and no longer relevant. Equally, I know there is a small truth from her life, from her history, that gets acknowledged when she says such a thing. She is communicating what was and what is inside of her, and the expectations she took on as a woman and a mother all those years ago. She is stating her past more than she is stating what should be. I know this and so I smile in acknowledgement of all of that, and the conversation moves on to other topics. Maybe this is not a pretty history, but it is a real one. 

So when I ask where can I see Chinese New Year Celebrations this year, maybe I’m not taking about the broader Lunar New Year which Vietnamese and Koreans also celebrate. Maybe I am interested in the Chinese culture particularly and how they celebrate it. 

So, can someone tell me… where can I take my kids to see Chinese dragons, eat Chinese dumplings, admire Chinese fireworks and speak the Chinese language (which the kids are studying at school)…?  While my kids are asking about their Chinese-Timorese heritage and want to know more, can I please celebrate it guilt free?

And after all this, I’m now going to join in any Lunar New Year Festival, as long as everyone is happy and looking after each other. 

So, having expressed all this, I feel clearer and I can now give a confident ‘sorry’ to the person I inadvertently upset. Confident because I don’t feel shamed or small or wrong. This is important because making people feel bad to get them to do good Does Not Work.

‘Sorry’ cannot happen when we do not have the bandwidth to include the other’s need to be heard because our need to not feel wrong is taking up the data stream.

And if I open my vision, I am sorry. It is possible this person from the chat group is really saying “I’ve had decades, and my family have endured decades, of not being seen for who we are.” So thank you to our PC Councils for finding the commonalities that includes our diversity: the Lunar New Year.

So here we have arrived: from shame and anger to high ideas and lessons learned, to a calming conclusion. 

A funny side note: The next day I visited my girlfriend and she had made traditional Chinese food from my husband’s Chinese Timorese heritage: Hakka. We sat, ate and had a good ol’ laugh.