 |
|
I have a lifelong habit of staring at ceilings, out windows, at water, at anything over a foot away. The "what" is hardly important, neither is the act of staring. The puppet master here is my lollygagging mind (or as some western yogis call it, the Puppy Dog Mind), which is causing thoughts to leap out of the here and now and bringing unfocused eyes with them. I'm a mental wanderer and an introvert. Which means that while I know life isn't life without people and Things To Do, it can still be a helluva lot of fun without anything at all. My mind is its own adventure room filled with conversations and relationships, with both past and future problems to solve. A day all alone with no work and no plans? Most excellent, good times can be had sitting or walking for hours. The glitch with introverted mental wanderers, however, is that we have to learn to be the pack leader of the damn puppy dog or we'll be constantly yanked around. A mind at play by itself – engaged in dreams and reverie – is fun for a while, but habitually unproductive fantast and focus on things outside of the Now leads to nowhere – nowhere but delusions and a life unengaged. I realized this about a decade ago and in response began a dive into meditation and contemplative traditions. They brought in a sense of regime that began to balance the fantasy with observation and self analysis, taking me into depths of grace and understanding, into a beginning awareness of the Present, into an ability to relax to life and gain understanding from wisdom that was both my own and so very much not my own. These disciplines attached me. To ancient spirituality, to my hide-and-seek Real Self, to the tangible. But as with every new thing, the "honeymoon high" of epiphanies eventually morphed into normalcy and despite profound growth I found myself repeatedly hitting some of the same old walls, altered but still familiar. Cyclical thinking and patterns of being that couldn't be "thought away" or simply "let go to drift down the river of consciousness." And I knew that my mind, even focused and channeled, wasn't separate from the rest of me. It wasn't dis-embodied. It couldn't by itself, even in conversation with other people and with a God vastly larger than it, bring a person "home." This past year, on yet another mental search, I read the following and it was so ridiculously obvious I guffawed: "As a withdrawn type, you tend to be too disconnected from your body. Get active with something daily...you will find yourself only by grounding yourself firmly in the realities of the here and now." (Compiled from Understanding the Enneagram and The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Riso and Russ Hudson.) The guffaw was followed with a serious shake of my head. Totally cliché, but all I could think of was Oprah and her darn "Ah-ha" moments. For years I've been attuning my mind but treating my body as something that was simply temporal, that would eventually "waste away." Denial of the flesh? It's a religious tradition I grew up in. The use of reading, problem solving and quiet contemplation to get to the root of Who, Why, and What I Am has seemed more important than what my body is feeling. Meditation taught me presence, but I've ignored the most present thing here. My body as a voice? I only paid attention when it shouted at me in pain or pleasure – that's always fleeting. I'm not without common sense; I've exercised, pushed myself to sweat in the name of weight loss or even to attain better mental focus. But at best my body has been a solid third on a hierarchical list of spirit > mind > body. And at worst? At worst it's been a punching bag, the recipient of the fallout that comes from a sometimes anxious and undisciplined mind. It boggles me that even as I had made the mind/body connection I somehow failed to really comprehend the significance of the body itself. Our blind sides are so blind-sidey sometimes. -----
|
 |