Threads familiar and new, stretched behind and in front of me. Threads intertwine in tangled knots. The memories continue to live in, tying threads of the past to the present. The many strands of possibilities of the future saturate the now. My yoga guide's teachings have emphasized living in the present and cultivating an awareness of the internal body and breath inhaling external sensations and exhaling the mind's concepts and imaginings which pull us away from being present.
So many people I believe are unaware of their bodies, that live in the mind cut off from the heart and the embodied experiences and generate "samsaras". While I am so grateful to be on this quest that brings me closer to freeing up myself so that I can show up in the present moment, I recognize the quest is long and arduous.
Today and recent days, I feel like various threads of my being that connect the people and the places of importance are like a muscle overworked or awkwardly used leading to the soreness of a tight and sore muscle. In seeking to be more present, I feel I have derailed the grooves of society's routine and kept the habitual patterns of myself in check. Yet, the way of living that has opened me up is equivalent in many ways to the open heart surgery - a painful process with dividends of giving life.
The journey of a being aware and being equanimous to the active process of interweaving the threads of my life is not the easy path. Cultivating the intersection point of being as accumulation of moments and being-in-the-moment is quite the journey to find and once located, it's own double-edged sword.
Ironically (at least on my journey):
The letting go of the places in us that hold and generate suffering is itself a painful process.
(read on!)
We are present every moment. But, how often during the day are am I / we engaged and embodying the present moment? It is our decision, a conscious choice to attend to the infinitely full yet fleeting moment. To do so first requires recognition of the patterns modeled after society construction of "being" present. The default enactment of what one does in the present - to be engaged in actions is the act of becoming. Becoming the summation of one's or a be-ing --> being.
Presently, we are being(s) enmeshed in work or are being passive recipients of virtual reality being in cyber-space. In the former states of being, we are a array of actions living in a linear time. In living the "American way" are we more than a bundle of strands paralleling each other in a straight line? These ways of being separate or fragment the threads of the self.
Oppositely, we moving along circular stands- the lines of our thoughts. Tuning into the thought-patterns, repetitions of the wheel of one's regrets and repressions, the sense of what one "should" have done as well as a dreaming for something more, of what "ought" to be: the forever presence of time past and time future.. Mine on a on a wheel, we draw a line around our"selves" and become an island of our thoughts and feeling.
In this light, perhaps a knot is not so bad (pun not intended but fun).
That said, what way of being is possible if we consciously choose embodiment of the present when we dissolve the mind into the body and dissolve the mental embody the external world? A constellation of moments tied to each other in strands in an ever expanding and more intricate web. The self becomes one within, locating and integrating sensory perceptions and thoughts and feelings with the living, experiencing body. The union internally is an essential element to being-in-the-world, influencing and influenced by the evolving system of web of life.
Like catching and standing on that first wave as a surfer, the glimmers of the sense of peace, wholeness, a stillness in which one is riding the wave of life has enraptured me. Yet, the intersection of the vertical threads passing of time and the horizontal threads of time present is double edged point.... it is living on a constant edge.
I feel like Arjun, In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjun overlooking the battle-field. The battle-field is a metaphorical one. A metaphor for the internal struggle of untangle the "samsaras" - the memories, desires & resentments, attachments and comings and goings that bind me like a knotted muscle. Lately, I've felt like my body needs a massage but this is not a job which anyone can assist with aside from supporting me while on this journey. However, it is only through the mind & body that the true self can be free of the subtle suffering that each samsara inflicts. I seek the free flow of consciousness and energy through the thousands of "nadis" or lines/strands in the body.
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