Living a balanced life

I have been holding the question, “What does it mean to live a balanced life?” in my heart all week. And though the question is more like, “What does it mean for me to live a balanced life?” it still seems bigger than me or my day-to-day challenges.

It is as if I am standing at the front of the class at the blackboard looking up at this hieroglyphic like equation with chalk in my hand. And when I turn around, everyone else is looking up expectedly with pencils raised and ready in case I stumble upon a solution.

Are we all in this together?

I sure hope so.

I am convinced that the struggle for balance in our lives is a modern predicament. It is born of media overload, overblown expectations of what “life has to offer” and the breaking down of the strict social and cultural caste system we call western civilization. It is both very disturbing and very exciting. So many of us former peasants and slaves expect so much more out of life than our parents, grandparents and ancestors.

We expect to enjoy life. We expect to be amused. We expect to be famous for 15 minutes. We think all this hive like activity must have a larger meaning, context or purpose.

What we forget is that most of us were never meant to have time to consider such grandiose ideas. Our socialization prepared us to be cogs, wheels and overseers, not artists, visionaries and dreamers. We are ill prepared for a life filled with meaning, divine inspiration and mystery.

I was raised to be a worker, a leader amongst workers and if I was lucky either a teacher of workers and their children or to escape to the managerial strata … to manage workers.

I was not raised to be a mystic.

So whenever I try to make sense of my life, I look at it through the lens of my working class roots.

Well of course, I work really hard for long hours … that is because I am a good worker. What do you mean I need to make space for thinking, writing, meditating, resting and self care? I should be working! And working … is hard! Sitting and thinking is not hard enough. I need to get back to work.

So when I read, write, meditate and rest … I feel like a lazy bum. But when I am teaching, designing software, cranking out web sites and traveling all over god’s creation, it is difficult and so it is good … because it means I must be working!

So I feel like I am working all the time – because I keep filling up my schedule so it becomes difficult to just sit and think. And as much as I feel unsatisfied with all these life balance challenges – I also feel like myself when things are challenging.

I am nervous when I have “too” much time. What if I get caught … lollygagging? What would the other workers think?

Heh! So it comes down to this …I work hard …because I was raised to work hard. I am punishing myself because of a societal imprint.

Enough.

More later …

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Finding Balance

I often feel out of balance in my life.

I feel like I am working all the time.

I feel like I am missing out on the simpler pleasures.

I feel like I need more XX in my life. Where XX stands for (amongst other things) enjoyment, relaxation, self-nurturance and social connection.

However, the real issue is ... am I really as out of balance as I feel?

This is an important distinction ... I have felt lazy when I was doing the work of twelve people. I have felt incompetent while experimenting with technology so cutting edge only four people in the entire country understood it ... besides me. And I have felt unacknowledged when people have showered me with sincere praise and recognition. So the fact that I feel out of balance does not mean I *am* out of balance.

Over the last few weeks, I have been working along with other free-lancers, knowledge workers and non-traditional artisans to devise a methodology that would help us is to illustrate whatever balance that is already present in our lives and nudge us in the moment of decision making toward improving our sense of balance.

We have crafted incredibly beautiful balance bots, mandalas, diagrams and tools to help us track this elusive balance. And we have discovered a great deal about all the ways we differ and the many, many ways we are the same. One very smart fellow even did a tarot reading to help us in our quest.

But here we are, weeks later, still scratching our collective heads. We are oh so close, but it is starting to feel like it is time for that intuitive leap to reveal itself, that qualitative jump that will transcend all our individual assumptions and blow all our minds.

Because, I am starting to wonder if it is not our lives that need to change so much as it is our conception of what it means to live a balanced life.

What if … my life already has a dynamic, Two of Pentacles, kind of balance … and I fail to notice because I focus all my energy/attention on working hard?

What if … I dismiss the importance of all the openness, the relaxation, and the social connections that I already have abundantly in my life?

What if … I attached as much importance and visibility to the lunar, yin and watery aspects of my life as I do to the solar, yang and fiery aspects?

Hmmm …What if the balance I seek … is within?

That would make so much sense. I have been focused on balancing between self-nurturance and sharing. This has been helpful in many ways. It helped me to restart my yoga practice, encouraged me to rest more often and it allowed me to began reading my mystical texts again without feeling guilty about “not working” … whatever that means. But the renewed balance in my life has not sated that thirst for balance within me.

What is missing is a sense of balance, core balance if you will. So how do I encourage core balance? My yoga, walking, meditation and canonical prayers are part of my overall practice to build core strength.

What if the balance I seek is simply another facet of core strength?

…

I promise myself to care for this inner questioning as I move through my week. I will allow these ideas and questions to settle into my prayers, my yoga practice and my breathing. I will give this process the time it needs and nurture this unfolding mystery so it can eventually sprout and bloom. I hope to share its fruit in the coming days and weeks.

But in the meantime … I ask each of you … how do you find balance in your life? How do you acknowledge the balance already present? And how do you strengthen your physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional core?

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Yoga Musing

Yesterday was filled with so much delight. This year’s Connect DC summer solstice ritual will henceforth be known as the laughing ritual. That is what happens when you invoke both Coyote and Hotei, the laughing Buddha. My cheeks were already aching from the London bridges falling down grounding, the hokey pokey circle casting, and the nursery rhyme calling of the elements. By the time we got to the laughing yoga meditation and later the coyote dance throw down, oh my goodness, several of us were holding our bellies as our grins stretched all the way back to our ears. It was glorious!

But this morning I woke up tired.

So after stumbling through the morning service to the feline deities, I reluctantly rolled out the yoga mat. I was convinced that it would be near impossible to squeeze in more than three salutations. Heck I thought as I settled down to chant the invocation, I will be lucky to do one.

So as I started my sixth (!) salutation, I felt such gratitude to my yoga teachers. All these years of stumbling into yoga class, holding on to hope when my muscles seized and joints ached, all those blessed props and adjustments to help those muscles and joints, and here I am joyfully completing six salutes … on a Monday … after a public ritual … when I would have rather slept till noon. Wow.

As I laid down for savasana, I remembered how even the thought of yoga use to frighten me. I had thought that yoga was all about those incredible poses you always saw on book and video covers. I thought yoga was for the fit, the flexible, and the strong. I thought yoga was for slim people who ate nothing but petals, seeds and fragrant rice. I thought that yoga was out of the question for a fat, sick, stiff jointed old reprobate like myself. I was so incredibly wrong.

Yoga is so much more than poses, it is a system of philosophy, a worldview – some would call it a spiritual journey. I read at some point that all the poses are about teaching you how to breathe. Most folks who feel good after a yoga practice do so because they finally got all the oxygen they needed.

But what about those poses?

There is no requirement, at least in Anusara yoga, that you attain the “perfect” pose. What you aim for is your pose, your own variant that expresses the ideal of the pose in your body. But it is not just a game of improvisation. Your pose consists of applying the principles of yoga to the unique abilities and capacities of your body. And the principles, although you can read about them in a book or listen to them on recorded media, are best learned at the hands of an experienced teacher.

A yoga teacher can help you attain your pose by teaching the principles, demonstrating the poses, and illustrating adjustments and props, but more importantly by adjusting your pose. And this is crucial. As I said above, your pose is found by applying the yoga principles to your body. So a good teacher will help you to examine your edges and respect your limits. It is only in this container of self-examination and self-respect that your pose can be defined.

It is a lot like life.

I have had such incredible teachers throughout my life. They have demonstrated the principles of vocation, self-sacrifice, joy filled living, devotion, continuous study, delayed gratification, self care, gratitude, right livelihood, leadership, humility, service, discipline, independence, interdependence, compassion, tough love, resilience, ambition, recognition, and confidence amongst many other gifts. My teachers have illustrated how to move toward these principles by taking one step after another. And they, like my yoga teachers, offered me the assistance I needed to examine my edges and respect my limits so I could discover how each of these fundamental ideals expressed itself in my life … on my journey.

And so this morning I am filled with gratitude. To all my teachers and to all my students who teach me as well, thank you. Today, this very morning, I am grateful for finding my pose.

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Mid June Glimpses

Well that was a long period of silence!

I had meant to post so many times over the last few weeks. But life kept surprising me. And I needed to focus on maintaining my footing as it seemed that the very ground itself kept moving, shimmying and quaking.

So I am surfacing not so much because life has quieted down, but because my need for expression has bubbled up. So I offer a few quick glimpses from my life in the midst of madness, mystery and other oddities.

• Just as the emotional side effects of the prednisone significantly calmed down, my doctor had me lower the dosage due to the physical side effects. I had not realized that it was the prednisone that was making me sweat profusely and had me up four or more times a night to pee. The latest lab tests are inconclusive, so I now have a referral to see a rheumatologist. It seems that Eridanus and I will continue our game of leapfrog in our respective medical journeys.
• Apparently my life was not full enough so I have decided to go back to school. I have decided to apply to the Assisi Institute (www.assisiconferences.com) for their certification program in Archetypal Pattern Analysis. It is a two-year program, but my plan is to do it in three years so I can spread out the cost. So on average, I will spend three long weekends a year in Brattleboro, Vermont. Now I have to decide if it was actually a good idea to agree to teach at Cherry Hill this fall. Ai yi yi!
• I have been feverishly working on the issue of life balance these last few weeks. I have been participating in an experiment with one of my favorite bloggers, David Seah (http://davidseah.com). David with the help of his avid readers had been trying to find ways to model, track and maintain balance between various aspects of our lives. I was happily building little balance bots, butterflies and grids as I joined in the fun. I have come to the conclusion that what I needed was not a balance between work and life, or between creativity and conversation – what I needed was a balance between self-nurturance and giving to the world. I want to write more about this topic, so look for some ranting on this in the near future.
• I have been slowly reading a wonderfully dense book called Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill. It has been slow going partly because of the prednisone but also, Underhill packs a lot of punch into every sentence and paragraph. I also want to write more about this topic too.
• I have restarted my (almost) daily yoga practice and weekly walking. Last week, since I was missing my yoga class, I upped my practice to six sun salutations instead of the regular three. It was glorious! Apparently the first three were more like a good warm up. And going past them produced such an incredible rush of endorphins. I could feel it because of how the prednisone allowed me to feel how my muscles responded to each pose. Now I do six salutations daily and as a result I have improved several muscular skeletal issues with my shoulders and hips! Even Dr Z , my (Romulan) chiropractor, was impressed. Yay me!
• I have hit a major snag with the editing of my book. No big deal, I just have to print out another copy because my first reader misplaced hers -- y’know, the one with all her edits and feedback …sigh. Hopefully, I will finish the edit phase real soon. I promise there will be more updates about my book progress as warranted.

And that is it for now. I will try not to wait so long to post here. Although I have been writing, it has been almost entirely in my paper journal or on someone else’s web site.

I definitely want to write more blog posts. I have a lot of ideas, musings and experiences I want share. After all, writing is one of the ways I make sense of life, the universe and everything. So you can expect more wild-eyed rants from this crazed mystic.

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