Aparigraha: Questions

Richard Freeman, The Mirror of Yoga, states that Aparigraha is a tendency of the mind to be under the sway of the ego, to simply snatch at things and claim them to be it’s own.  “This I identify with and that I do not.”

So why do I cling to fear as my first emotional reaction?  What beliefs no longer serve me?  Where does my ego sway my mind, so that I identify with something – like what it means to be a “good mother”?  What is under my fear? In Nonviolent Communication emotions are always connected to needs – so that needs are connected to my fear?  What is the fear and how does it serve me now and in the past?  What does it feel like in my body and where does it live in my body?

My questions seem to spill over into more questions.  I begin my experiment with questions.

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Aparigraha: Presence and Attention

My journal of drawings, quotes from various readings, meaningful conversations, and journal entries direct and capture my observations.  Immediately I find out how often I do react with fear.  This looms greater than I realized – a pattern so subtle and yet so loud at other times.

“…obstacle to deep yoga practice ..relationship at the core of practice….love is allowed to flow freely… the foundation right at the center of our lives….overcome with friendliness and compassion….faith and trust… you won’t be discouraged or paralyzed.”  (Freeman)

So I bring my attention to my relationship with myself and with the Divine.  I use the yoga practice of deepening my questions and holding these questions with great care and lovingkindness. Perhaps this is a special gift from G’nesh?  What teaching might be in this obstacle of fear?

On Day two of the experiment I am leading a Circle of Trust at the Mennonite Church.  I go into the sanctuary to listen to the last part of the service.  We sing a song that has these words:

“…have no fear – hold love and trusting kindness….”

That same night I am reading in Rabbi David Cooper’s book, God is a Verb:  Kabbalah and the practice of mystical Judaism, and find the following words:  “All we need to do is learn to let go of our fear, for fear maintains the barriers of separation.” (p. 68)    “…the presence of Divine is revealed in the fullness of each moment.”   “…waiting is self-defeating.  We have whatever we need.” (p. 183)

What do I already have?  Each day seems to bring such a sharper awareness of the fear – as if it is always walking right next to me.  I begin to have a conversation with this fear – what is it that keeps me so tightly woven to this place of ~

Fright, alarm, trepidation, dismay, distress, anxiety, worry, uneasiness, apprehension, f      foreboding, jitteriness, panic, scared, worry, dread, to be terrified of….?

I speak to trusted friends and my husband about this journey.  Jane Treat, a dear friend from our shared storytelling world and a vision quest leader shares “ Sometimes we need to end something then wait before we begin something new.” So what will begin when I end my fear?

I am living my questions now – stretching myself into the fear inside and moving with it.  This is a healthy place to be – to hold my fear with tenderness and care.  Yet this is a challenge when my judgment comes up – harsh judgment – when I hear Helena’s story about healing through her trip to Cambodia.  How can I think I have lived fear in comparison to her story?!!  After one day of this, I move back to holding my own questions – my journey is to be the best Susan I can be – and I am not to answer the questions that others hold.  I take Helena’s courage and inspiration to work with my own fear.

Alan Morinis writes about the Mussar (the Jewish tradition that connects our inner traits with how we lead our lives) in his book, Every Day, Holy Day.  I read about “ametz lev = strong heart it is what gives rise to courage, what is called for without succumbing to anxiety or fear about its own safety or benefit.”

By now the fear is screaming at me – it seems so pervasive in my life.  Our daughter is calling about another major episode and a trip to the hospital again, the VISA bill comes for an extra $700 in medical bills and I can barely keep up all of my work – just trying to pay our bills.

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Aparigraha: Assessment + Test + Study = Experiment

This assessment and study has turned into a test of sorts.  Fear seems to be popping up everywhere – giving me lots of opportunity to befriend it.  As Passover approaches, I am reminded that just like the metaphorical story of the Jewish people crossing the Red Sea, I am passing through narrows – mitzrayim.

This reminds me of two important Jewish concepts –

mochin d’kutnut:  narrow mind, separate from the world, isolated, alienated and scarcity

mochin d’gatlut: spacious mind, lovingkindness, abundance, engage life from place of interdependence and compassion, sees self as connected to G-d and as whole.

This is a helpful awareness for me to realize that I am looking at my fear through the eyes of mochin d-kutnut – narrow mind.  I begin to shift now, opening my eyes – my heart, mind, body and spirit – to mochin d’gatlut – spacious mind.  An important connection is back to my earlier reading of T.K.V. Desikachar, The Heart of Yoga.  Here are a few quotes that say the same thing to me:

Yoga means to come together, to unite or to “tie the strands of the mind together.”  Yoga also means acting in such a way that all of our attention is directed toward the activity in which we are engaged…when we are attentive to our actions we are not prisoners to our habits…another classic definition of yoga is “to be one with the divine”….when we feel in harmony with that higher power, that too is yoga.”

Many other experiences continue to unfold, helping me increase my awareness of how my fear is part of my whole – an expression of the Divine or Skechinah.  In my Kabbalah class, I find in an exercise that trust and fear is a theme that arises for me yet again.  I transition to search for the hidden spark of holy light in my being – what will help me with this?

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Aparigraha: Practice emerges

One aspect of my fear is that it lives in either the past or the future.  So I return to living in this moment  – finding the Divine in this specific moment in time.  This is a relief.  Somehow I am now ready to move from observation and study to develop a practice.

My search on how to embody this process opens to several practices.  First, I find that I hold the fear deep in my belly, a tightening and tension.  So I decide that a breathing practice might be beneficial to loosen up the fear and to move with the fear.

Leonard Felder, in Here I Am:  Using Jewish Spiritual Wisdom to Become More Present, Centered and Available for Life, suggests the practice of listening to that still, small voice inside of me that asks the question “Where are you?” It is a way of becoming present when I feel the fear arising.  I answer “Hineini.  Here I am.” This helps me not run away from the fear into problem solving, swaying my ego to look like a “good parent”, be overly attached to our adult children or cling to belief that I should come up with a good answer that might fix, change or save my children.

Rabbi Rami Shapiro, in The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness:  Preparing to Practice, visualizes the name of G-d by moving the Hebrew letters vertically to represent a human body:

yod is head & face

hey is shoulders and arms

vav is torso

hey is pelvis and legs

I incorporate this practice he suggests – see yourself as the Name of G-d, the Image of G-d.  It is not enough to know you are God, to see the Name of God written with your body.  You must also see the Name in everyone and everything else.

I use this image to honor my own wholeness – fear or no fear.  This breathing practice helps calm and focus me, to “tie the strands of the mind together” (Desikachar).

My breathing practice helps me dissolve any feeling of separation from The Divine, especially when I feel fear.  First I image that when I breath in – G-d Is breathing out and when I breath out – G-d breathes in.  This sacred partnership of breathing with G-d brings me a deep sense of peace and connection.  I am present to this moment, not moving to past or the future – just here.

This practice begins to calm me and allow me to stay with the fear – to hear, touch, smell, taste many aspects of the fear.   Other emotions begin to emerge.

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Aparigraha: Second Round – Breathing practice (pranayama) and sadness

By listening, I have found that under my fear is great sadness.  Sadness that: I can’t save my daughter from her illness/condition, sadness about some things I would have done differently in raising my children, sadness about my daughter’s poor health and the unknown, sadness that my mother is dying, layers of sadness.  This is a surprise turn of events, as I have not even worked with my needs connected to these feelings.

And so my experiment evolves.  Holding my fear with lovingkindness, I find that perhaps it was easier to react in fear than to hold this great bouquet of sadness.  Perhaps I can now begin to let go of the beliefs that are tied to my fear and how I should or should not react.  Ah – now I found myself with new questions.

Jay Michaelson, in God in Your Body:  Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice, builds upon the visualization of the Name of the Divine as our Body by the following breathing practice:

yod ~ empty all air – empty lungs – hold

hey  ~ breath in – fill with air – inhale

vav  ~ body full of air + extended – hold

hey  ~ breath – exhale

I incorporate this breathing practice into my daily practice, especially when the sadness feels so great.  Somehow it changes, softens, is part of my wholeness.  The journey continues.

As T.K.V. Desikachar, The Heart of Yoga states:

We begin where we are and how we are, and whatever happens, happens.

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Aparigraha: Moving Forward

As in the initial story of the Rabbi and the stingy man reveal, one can let go of hoarding and  change those beliefs that no longer serve you.  I hope to deepen my own patience, persistence, presence and lovingkindness towards myself in this journey of non-grasping and making it simpler.

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A Journey Towards Contentment

Axis Yoga Teacher Training Students begin their studies with a hands-on study of Yoga’s yamas (restraints) and niyamas (observances). Through some self-reflection this student found the road to santosha (contentment) to be a mingling of all yamas and niyamas.

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A Journey Towards Contentment: Choosing

Selecting the yama/niyama I was going to focus on for my experiment was a difficult process for me.  Upon reading through all of them, it seemed like there were bits and pieces in each one that needed improving on in my life. On the evening in class where we were told to separate in to groups based on the yama selected, I felt like a lost puppy. Everyone seemed to move directly and effortlessly to their prospective group. I felt like everyone was so clear about what their intentions were with this experiment. In a pinch, I plopped myself down with the aparigraha group. Just pick one. Maybe I needed to work on that non-possessiveness thing with the objects and people in my life.  As we began to talk about aparigraha, it didn’t seem like a “perfect” fit. I’m not really a person who cares about material possessions, but maybe I need to delve further. I do feel that I try to control the people around me though. A possession of sorts. Maybe this “is” the perfect fit.  I was not content with my aparigraha decision.  Hmmm, “kind of sounds like Santosha” were the words that came from my wise yoga teacher as he sat observing our group.  Santosha?  That’s not even one of the options for this project!   It does kind of sound like I have an issue with discontentment though.What to do, what to do.

Later that evening when I got home, I re-read the yama’s and felt, maybe it’s staya that better fits my weakness. Maybe weighing my words before I speak them will help me to not try to control and fix everything. Then upon reading about asteya, I thought maybe that is the yama that best deserves my attention. Am I really being honest with myself?  Do I say one thing and act another? Do I criticize people for doing things, trying to control their actions, then turn around and do them myself? Then it hit me. An ah ha of sorts. Just this act of not being able to be content in picking a yama, searching for the perfect answer for my experiment, maybe this, maybe that, led me to consider those words from my teacher, Santosah…contentment.

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A Journey Towards Contentment: Defining

Ironically, that same evening, I had opened my class notebook to some “favorite quotes” I had been keeping track of since class began.  There, sitting in the top spot, was one that I had written down during the first week of class that had resonated with me from the Mirror of Yoga book:  “Contentment is the ability to be happy right now for no particular reason at all.  “You can actually cultivate this feeling by simply deciding right now I am going to be content.” Santosha sounded more and more like a fit.

I have had a daily meditation practice for almost two years.  Though I have felt it has helped me in many ways, I feel my mind still races with discontentment while meditating.   Get this done, what if that happens, I must try to change it, get them to do it differently, etc. etc.  From my interpretation of what Santosha means, it is that “it is impossible for one who is dissatisfied with oneself or with anything else in life to realize the higher consciousness.” ” Dissatisfaction (the lack of contentment) makes sadhana impossible.”  Meditation impossible.  ” One who wants to attain meditation must practice ALL yamas and niyamas.” So, I realized, this is maybe why I had a problem picking my yama.  I need to practice ALL of them to reach Santosha…contentment.  Tall order.

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A Journey Towards Contentment: Applying

I set out to be content. Enter daily life. A beautifully challenging teenage daughter. A marriage. A huge redecorating project that I had volunteered for with a deadline. A  beautifully challenging teenager now with a broken collar bone and pretty cranky. Financial challenges. A broken car (again). etc. etc. This is going to take A LOT of practice, this contentment thing.

To begin with, I decided to assign myself a mantra…”be content.”  I repeated this mantra daily, hourly, sometimes each minute to remind myself.  I liked this mantra.  We have become friends.  It helped to a certain extent.  I began offering my yoga practices to contentment.  This was a nice reminder also.  When I visited the Gong Bath, I sought out a crystal that would help with contentment.  Each morning, after my meditation, I would read over the yamas and contemplate how I can do things to live this knowledge.  All of these practices seemed to help me with becoming more content each day.

I did find, however, that when the going got really tough, like people dropping the ball with not doing what they were supposed to on my redecorating project, or my teenager not eating appropriately, or my husband not doing what “I” think is the “right” thing,  or my car breaking down for the eighth time, etc. etc.,  that my little mantra was challenged. “How can I be content in a situation like this?” Then one day, in the middle of waiting for someone who was 45 minutes late and I had a boat-load of things to do, I had another one of those ah ha moments. Contentment = dropping control. Stop – Drop – Control.  Kind of like that thing you were taught as a kid if you catch on fire. Pretty much the same concept too.  The more you run and struggle with the fire(control), the hotter and larger it will get and the more extensive the damage. So a second bouncing baby mantra was born to me, “drop control.”

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