Stay Open

Sometimes when I’m driving around I audition songs for my yoga class playlists. Yesterday I was doing this and I noticed I was being a bit like one of those judges on the talent show panels on TV… You know how on those shows sometimes they’ll tell you the back story of the contestant and you’ll hear all about their home life and follow their journey to the audition so you get really invested in them and then they’ll get onto stage and they’ll sing one note and the judge will be like “Next!” It’s abrupt and rude and devastating for them but also you as a voyeur of their heartbreak. I’ll often find myself shouting at the TV “Just give her a chance!”?
Well I was being like that judge and hitting next on just about every song within two bars. And as soon as I realised I was doing that, I got a little bit curious about it. And I recognised that what I was doing was, rather than actually listening to the song with an open heart, I was listening in a contracted ‘mind made up’ way. And what that meant was, every song that was going in to the playlist was either a) a song that I’ve used in a yoga class before or b) sounds exactly like every other song already in one of my yoga playlists.
So I stopped doing that. And I just relaxed and listened to the songs… And it was suddenly possible for me to enjoy a song. And a world of possibility and richness opened up. Not every song made it into the playlist but there was joy in the listening.

It’s possible to notice this same kind of contraction at play in all sorts of circumstances… Sometimes when I’m shopping for an outfit, I’ll go with this very specific thing in mind and then the experience is one of contraction and angst as I battle to find this one thing that may not even be available right now, versus, if I go with an openness and decide to find something that simply ‘feels special’, the possibilities are endless.

In relationships we can sometimes find ourselves listening to another with an ear only to hear what affirms our existing belief rather than to really hear what the other person is saying. And we end up locked in a dynamic or in conflict.
So what would it be like instead, to stay open? To listen to really hear?
And how do we do that?

Yogis talk about the ego. It’s function is to create identity. To give things order and a place, so that the world doesn’t feel like disjointed chaos. But one of the downfalls is, that when the ego says “this is like this” and it stores that away, the next time you meet an experience that part of your mind says, “Oh, we know what this is. This is like this” before really investigating. And so we kind of meet the world with mind made up.
Picture yourself visiting a magnificent forest for the first time. Perhaps it’s unlike any forest you’ve ever been to… In Japan, or North America or the Amazon or somewhere you’ve never seen with your own eyes. And can you imagine the breathless wonder you feel as you gaze up at the trees and take in the green of the moss or the different foliage. Suddenly you see a dew covered web with a magnificent spider in the center. You stop to admire her. And feel moved by the beauty of it.
Now picture yourself sometime later. You’ve walked this same track now many times. Do you still feel the beauty and wonder of it? Or are you so habituated to it that it doesn’t spark the same response? You might cruise along, listening to a podcast or lost in thought.
Probably, you’re more inclined to feel less moved. The brain is efficient. It recognizes the things you’ve seen before and has them all catalogued. It only bothers to jump up when there’s something novel.
So how do we shift that to experience the world as new and wonderous, or even just as it truly IS in each moment?
Can you imagine how rich and full of possibility the world might feel, if we were to stay open and curious?
To unravel that tendency to meet life through a lens, is to meet the world fresh every moment. To be curious and open to what is, as it is, without needing it to fit a model of what has been before. Eric Schiffman says it like this “living life live”.

My biggest complaint...

My biggest complaint about Adult Life. It’s so Adulty.
Just now I was in my loungeroom frantically vacuuming. To make it more lovely I put on this album that I’ve been loving to death lately but as I was searching for dust bunnies under the couch I was feeling a bit sad and sorry that I couldn’t hear the music over the roar of the vacuum.
There was this feeling in my arms like they wanted to reach out wide and my feet wanted to rise on to demi point so I could spin around the room in my uggs.
And then I realised. I can do those things. There’s no rule that says you must vacuum and then sit at your computer and do productive things all day long until you pick the kids up from school.
There’s no rule that says that the only physical activity you do, has to be productive.
And it occurred to me, that often even yoga classes feel like a ‘to do’. They are often goal oriented in nature - build to a specific pose, practice these moves to perfection, or achieve some energetic agenda.
But what about just moving because it feels good to move? What about the joy of moving and breathing and expressing and experiencing somatically? It’s like I’d forgotten that I can do that.
Play. Dance. Laugh. Even before all the chores are done.
Have you been doing that? I hope so. If not, let this be a prod in that direction. I know life is very serious. I know there’s a lot to be done. But also, let’s have some fun.

“Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
― Mary Oliver