Becoming something…

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I feel like I’m trying to escape something, but I don’t know what it is.

Tonight, I hid under the coffee table. This is the dog’s space. He was very confused. Yet, at the very moment that I was trying to get away, I was trying to get closer to the ground.

Are we not just like the dog, trying to recognize one space as constant? This is our grounding. We have evolved as animals, but still need context. Unlike the dog, our being grounded isn’t as easily shattered, we can adjust to some variables but it can still just as easily disappear.

What can we do to stop running?

It may be about turning inward, instead of looking outward. I’ve pulled some interesting bits of information and insight from: Yoga Journal - Yoga Meditation - Teaching Grounded Meditation

These thoughts on meditation provide some great insight into our minds and facing our own moments of wanting to be down with the dog under the coffee table.

+The mind can be our greatest friend or our greatest enemy, the source of many of our problems or the solution to our problems.

+Stages of Meditation Meditation encompasses three distinct stages. The first is self-regulation, in which we teach our students to consciously alter their body-mind functioning and feelings. For example, teach your students breath awareness with the stated aim of inducing relaxation.

Having taught self-regulation, the second stage involves methods of self-exploration, which consist mainly of concentration combined with self-awareness. This allows us to become aware of parts of ourselves that were previously unconscious. Self-exploration techniques develop inner strength and stability.

Ultimately, self-exploration techniques open the door to the pursuit of self-liberation and spiritual growth, the linking of our awareness to higher consciousness. This third stage is called self-mastery, which leads to self-realization.

+…meditation teaches us that we cannot get rid of our problems, that life is inherently problematic and challenging…If we simply seek ecstasy, and hope to avoid sorrow and suffering, then we are actually seeking the loss of ourselves. The ultimate aim of meditation is to remain grounded in self-awareness under all conditions of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, gain and loss.

I hope these thoughts have been helpful. I have tried to start my mornings with some quick yoga exercises. Today, I didn’t. A lesson learned. You can actually find some simple exercises online to get your day started (youtube). You could even start with five minutes in the morning attempting to focus on nothing but your breath (Tantric Breath Exercise or Three Breathing Exercises). Breathing should bring a level of self-awareness, so making noise while breathing is encouraged. I promise you will notice a difference with your day. You can check out what I do each morning here.

This entry is coming from an interesting experience I had yesterday. Shedding light on my cultural background and growth I realized that your environment can really influence impulses. I found myself wondering why I picked oranges over minorities.

I’d just enjoyed some nice gulps of water, post workout. I was waiting for my fair weather friend to change. I say fair weather because she ditched driving me home because the roads were getting poor and I was left to wait for a fair weather bus that was a cycle late. I digress. While waiting, I looked at a photo representing the writing/academic center for the campus I work on. I noticed something peculiar. What do you notice?

I saw oranges. I was so tickled by my discovery that I asked the same question of miss fair weather. Turns out everyone is white in the photo, this being what she noticed. Stumped, I asked her to look harder. By time the oranges were of mutual discovery, she was antsy to leave and I was fumbling for my own explanation of our differing perspectives.

Was it that I came from a college with beyond Caucasian diversity around 15% (not to mention other missing groups)? Was it that I don’t remember seeing much color in my suburban environment? Why did I choose oranges over minorities?

It hit me though, in one of those I got it before but now I really understand it kind of ways, that our life experiences are unique. Not only unique, but they are the molders of how you see the world. It was important to realize that all the education in the world hadn’t taught me to see, instead I was blind. We will see things differently, all of us. Your boss or supervisor that just doesn’t seem to make sense, probably isn’t doing it on purpose. This experiential intelligence is hard to measure because it has as much to do with how much you experience as it does with the quality and variety of an experience. In the work setting, the ability to recognize this is the biggest step in being able to manage up (7 ways to manage up or Managing Up: An Overlooked Factor in Career Success). In your personal life it can help relationships grow and drama dwindle.

Can we challenge ourselves to see things differently? If you saw white people, begin looking for the oranges, and vice versa. I think too often we find ourselves in conversations where we are more concerned about the other person not seeing the oranges that you did. Instead, why not notice that they saw something different and wonder why you didn’t see it at all.

Life is one big learning opportunity. If you aren’t listening you might just always end up with a bunch of white people or oranges for that matter.

I went to work forgetting I have purpose. I have skills, opportunities, and my position in life to work towards something, even if it’s nothing.

Beginning a bit depressed, today wasn’t supposed to be the day that I heard inspiration and absorbed it instead of just listening to it.

A man named Jeff Johnson (BET’s Cousin Jeff) spoke as our Martin Luther King Jr. keynote. He moved and reached me.

To paraphrase and summarize in my own words, isn’t the same. I still wanted to leave you with a message.

No one was born a leader or without potential. We also cannot be things that we aren’t. At this time, we are who we are and we have what we have. Use what you have and use your position. To posture yourself into higher self, something “to be,” instead of something that “is” is falsifying your talents. Wake up from your dream and act. Words are old and can act as weights. Create your own words, story, and purpose. I hope you have the strength to be open to your own purpose. Purpose doesn’t exist in what you think is supposed to be, it is in your current situation, your now. Be now, feel now, and use now, because now ain’t forever.

In one corner we have the most individual of the individual, Justin-China. In the other you have the opposite in strength, clearly more settled and definitely not alone, Justin-Committed Relationship (CR).

The rink, Beijing, is home turf for Justin-China. Yet, much of his support is missing or under pressure.

As for Justin-CR, the significant-other is right at his side for the ride. It is as though the Justin-CR’s birth mother is in the front row, eyes watching.

So enough of this metaphor speak. We are going to Beijing, China for a bit of travel. The tickets were cheap, I guess people don’t go to China for Thanksgiving! China was a life of individualism for me, the back story
of any study abroad trip. Since graduation, I’m paying rent, working, living with the guy in my life, and looking at what stability I can find in my future. This is a long way off from good ole Junior year. Sure I’ll still have a beer in the streets of Beijing and find a moment of Zen. Just this time there will be someone else in the equation, zen +1.

Rightfully so, our lives have been centered around ourselves for some portion here and there. It’s only appropriate, considering that for us, it’s where things begin. Yet here and there other people enter life. Especially after graduation, we learn that even when we are alone there are still people all around us that matter and our actions have an impact on. That “feelin’ kinda down” day doesn’t mean homework just doesn’t get done, it can fade into job and relationship performance. Now you ask, “you are right, but any advice?” I can’t say I have anything specific this time around. Just stick to your guns, usually your intuition has the best words for your ears.

We begin to learn that zen +1 can feel just as good as a solid self-centered moment. Zen +1 can also take more work. Just remember there is a context to yourself. We are all supported by a social network around us, even it if at times it feels very impersonal. You have an obligation to the most self-centered cell in your body to learn what around you makes you an individual. Go in, be an individual, and then come out. It may be a closet or it could be out of a shell, but just come out and share yourself with the world around you. We all don’t live around our own Walden Ponds for a reason.

In this battle, hopefully everyone wins.

Be an individual of many…Zen +many.

I spent most of last week in Seattle, which is why my posts were so sparse. I was there for both a conference on experiential education and some personal meddling. My significant-other, Gregg, had taken the initiative a few months earlier to begin co-coordinating our conferences. We had one methodology, decide on a city first then conference second. Which of course we mixed up priorities. Then this is where he and I are different. Conference search, for me, meant days online looking at all the options possible. Cities first, then maybe find time to see what conferences were there. Plus I had some ideal, that nagged me during the search, that this was an opportunity to find a conference that had topics that I was really into (I scraped our strategy basically to look for the most perfect option) I’m exhausted all over again just thinking about it, aren’t you? As my list grew, Gregg’s list got smaller and he really was only considering the city because he thought, if someone else is paying why be so concerned. You can start to see a trend.

It might begin to look like I’m heading down the road of dissing the “open-minded-free-spirited” bunch but I am in fact pinning the tail on a much larger donkey. This post is for all of us and all those times when we find that “going with the flow” is really a guise for being indecisive. This causes tension in most everyone because being completely narrow-minded or open-minded isn’t really ideal, yet our society rewards making the most perfect “right” decision but only after being open minded enough to consider every option. We are destined to fail, how can we be both at the same time?

Through my whole process of looking, looking, looking, I exemplified my tendency to wander. While I was looking, Gregg forced us to make some decisions on his ever shortening list. In the end, my tactic led nowhere. City first, conference second had us removing more options from his list. We were left with one, Seattle, which was on both of our lists since the beginning (a slap in the face). Plus the conference was applicable to both of our work positions. I grumbled at the decision.

Part three of all of this was the beginning phases of looking at graduate programs. I thought, wouldn’t it have been better to have chosen an area with more college options? Quite the opposite was true, at least for me. Since the Seattle area didn’t have the plethora of options of say Boston, I was able to satiate my desire to look at all of them. I ended up visiting all applicable programs offered in my broad areas of interest at each of of the institutions.

There is a growing lesson from this. I could over analyze this whole ordeal but I’ll keep the lesson simple. Settle more often. Settling for Seattle led me to find the first graduate program that seemed to take into account all my interests, plus the institution is highly rated. I discovered an article in Psychology Today while in the beautiful Seattle library, just as I was wrapping my own head around this conclusion. Click here and check it out!

Here are some tips they suggest:

How to Make Options Your Allies

You can outfox your evolved emotional makeup.

* God is not in the details: Practice making decisions quickly about small things and routine purchases. Limit the time you spend comparing specs. Build confidence in your “gut” by attending to it.
* Don’t dwell: Refuse to spend too much time regretting a decision or blaming yourself for a poor outcome. Instead learn from your mistakes and determine to do better.
* Keep your expectations realistic: Needing it all is guaranteed to make you unhappy.
* Risk a wrong decision: Fight emotional paralysis by seeing that even making the “wrong” choice is often better than making no choice at all; you still learn through trial and error. It is better to blunder your way through life than to avoid making decisions.
* Don’t look back: Engineer your decisions so that they are binding and irreversible: Force yourself to buy final sale items or draw up a contract with family or friends stating that you will not reverse course on a larger decision.

This whole topic relates right back to a previous entry about focusing your options, specifically regarding those close to you. It seems like although settling has a negative connotation we must settle and focus in order to actually have time to experience something. Play to your evolutionary strong points and keep it simple stupid.

Like climbing stairs, writing for me is just one step up after another. Once I break the momentum I create a landing to live on convincing myself that the stairway leads to nothing.

I fear, am apprehensive of, tiptoe around doing more than I fear, am apprehensive of, tiptoe around the actual doing of something.

Swallow distraction and internal guilt for a moment and go do. The doing seems to allow for the easy digestion of initial fears, apprehensions, and tiptoe sensations.

Share an example of a time when you just got up and did something recently, starting the momentum up a new set of stairs.

I took a weekend away, thanks to my boyfriend.  It was the first gift out of our three anniversaries (that is another story ).  The pretense of the weekend was time for ourselves but not necessarily time for “us” as a couple.  What happened there was something I didn’t expect.

This surprise that I am talking about was a major release of built up emotion, thoughts, and the exploration of space.  I finally had space.  This was no fault but my own but the literal move to space, in nature, allowed me to recognize it’s existence.  I breathed, wrote, slept, ate, and thought all weekend.  All of it consumed me.  I’ve emerged better and stronger with a better sense of everything new that smashed into my life all at once recently.  The week afterward was hard, really hard.  Yet, had I not taken that literal move to space I’d be happy, content, and extended into all the new things around me.  What fun would that be?

You can get caught up in everything.  If it’s new, you are bound to spend a lot of time with it.  In fact I feel like most people spend most of their time caught up in things.  It can seem nice, really nice, and all the honesty in the world will tell you that is it.

It really is nice.

I’m not here to try and diminish that.  We can only be honest with the space we are in.  The here, the now, and the what we are.

In transition, the hardest thing to listen to won’t be what is flying at you every second of the day.  The hardest thing will be to pay attention to what has been there since the beginning, yourself.

Take some time.  No really, do it.