Can you let go?  Can you take a leap of faith and become voluntarily passive in front of the life that lives you right now?  Becoming voluntarily passive is a notion that comes from Gurdjieff and has greatly illuminated the role that my ego plays in daily suffering.  Here's how I understand the notion in a nutshell:  Every day I am impacted by life.  I (little I/ego) instantly judge those impacts as being something pleasant or unpleasant.  Based on these judgements I react to the impacts in all sorts of neurotic ways to keep myself from experiencing the unpleasantness or to grasp the pleasantness.  Essentially, I never actually feel the resonance of life's impacts in my body because I instantly judge and react.  This ends up keeping me a few steps away from life and as a result I feel estranged, isolated, depressed, anxious, crazy (which I judge and react to and the whole thing starts again).  A simple example: I get behind someone really slow in traffic.  I feel anxious to get to my destination.  But, I don't stop at simply allowing the anxiety to pass through, instead, because I don't like the feeling of being anxious or held up I react, speeding past, road raging, trying desperately to discharge the unpleasant feeling.  Multiply this by a hundred impacts a day and I end up wound in a bundle of judgements and reactions divorced from the feeling of life moving within me.  The point in this example isn't just that I end up with a speeding ticket or in an accident but more fundamentally that I lose my onnection to the feeling of my aliveness.

What happens if the ego concedes and instead of trying to control life, becomes voluntarily passive in the face of it?  Ego's got a new job:  voluntary passivity.  I feel the anxiety, staying connected to the force of my life and in staying, listening, feeling and seeing something new, wiser, stiller arises to help me move through life.  There is something else that waits to live you, will your ego move over to let it through? 

It feels to me that voluntary passivity is a leap of faith.  The last willful act of the ego is to let go of it's will.  Thy Will be done, not my will.  In class lately I've been playing with how to cultivate this letting go and share below a meditation practice to help:

Laying comfortably flat on the floor begin to feel the force of gravity.  Become aware of the places that you are tense, up tight moving away from it's force.  Begin to play with the idea of allow the force of gravity to fully affect your body.  Become voluntarily passive in the face of the force of gravity.  Watch the resistance, but commit again.  What is it like to completely let go to this force?
Spend five minutes, fifty minutes, with this, watching how you move in and out of voluntary passivity. 

And then, experience the breath.  My yoga teacher friend, Treva, the other day said, "let your breath find you".  Can you also let it breathe you?  Breath moves, uncontrolled and unforced, in and out over and over again.  Can you become voluntarily passive in the face of the force of your breath?  Watch the resistance, but over and over again, let your tired ego fall.  Do you notice that even when you're not controlling the breath it continues to move?  Something besides your will is at play.  Can you let it dance?

Finally, after many minutes of letting the breath breathe you begin to feel the other forces within your body.  Emotions, physical sensations, then begin to become voluntarily passive in the face of these dynamic forces.  They move, they ebb and flow, and you simply receive.    Watch as thoughts come to you, then let them through you.  Watch as emotions and sensations come to you then let them through you.  Reassert the last act of your ego's will time and again - I become voluntarily passive in the face of the force of my LIFE.  

When the ego moves out of the way, what does it make space for? 
Add Comment
 
 
Picture
Downward Dog
Stretching can be the home of the ego. In any asana the sensation of stretch has the ability to usurp the legitimate expression of all other sensations. The stretch becomes the dominant force, the loudest experience. Stretching the muscles makes us feel like we're doing something, achieving something. It can become the embodiment of the “no pain, no gain” attitude that permeates our culture. Without awareness it can become habit to know an asana in terms of stretch to the negation of all other sensation. It starts to feel like we are not doing yoga without the stretch. What would it be like to experience asana from other perspectives? Take downward dog. It is easy to find the stretch here, hamstrings, calves, shoulders. What if we softened a bit by bending the knees and letting the heels rise off the floor? Feeling now the weight distribution between the hands and feet. Then noticing the freedom or constriction in the joints of the elbows and shoulders. The breath moves in patterns of undulation through the tension and softness in your tissues. Can you feel your strength? Are you willing to feel your weakness? Feeling the aliveness in your warm muscles and coming to know the places of stagnation throughout your body you are more than the stretch. You are more than the singular perspective on the moment. This is flexibility – to see the moment from more than one vantage point. To come in to a global awareness of life's rising and falling in your body, in the moment.

Imagine the possibilities of cultivating this ability in your life. Take a conflict with your partner. He's wrong, you're right. What if you softened your position a bit? Feel something other than your “rightness” present. There is emotion. There is the look of pain on his face. There is the flashback of a wrong done to you years ago that has nothing to do with the present moment. Your breath undulates from your fear of being wrong, it undulates from the pain of your aggression. Can you feel your strength and weakness? Can you feel his? Feeling the aliveness of your anger, there is something else there, it is empathy. And you become more than your rightness.

Being more than a singular aspect of your yoga practice, be it the stretch, the burn or the alignment allows us to see the moment from various perspectives. It challenges the ego's tendency to fixate on one aspect of our circumstances in an attempt to appease it's desires or discomforts. And, the greatest fruit of this practice is that it helps us to live with greater compassion. We become able to see circumstances from the vantage point of the other – whether that other is your partner, your child or a perfect stranger.  This week in your practice, as a beginner or seasoned yogi, notice what sensations tend to dominate your awareness - what else is there?  Please let the rest of us know what you've found!
 
2 Comments