| | So this morning I awoke and paid attention for 35 - 40 mins. Noted body, attention itself, my body meeting the world, how breath and attention function together and the special quality of attention that listening to the sounds of the world offers. Counting breath the balance between control and allowing becomes apparent - how the proper balanced play of breath rests on sustained equanimity. How it provides sustained equanimity. I watch my breath and find myself subconsciously making it even, deeper, smoother - to get the energy that oxygenation provides, perhaps. At the end of each breath there is a moment of neither in nor out. A pause. A void. This is not a moment of muscular action as such, rather I sense a subtle coiling for coming action. Placement, speeds, intensities are relevant here. Initially I was blipping over that moment, not even noticing it, rushing past and ever so slightly forcing the next intake of breath. And at the height of the intake of breath I was also ever so slightly holding, clenching, attempting to wring out the last little bit of energising goodness. Taking control. At one end of the breath cycle I was holding on to what I had, and at the other trying to rush past a moment of doing nothing. One clinging one averting. And, of course, to cling is to avert and to avert is to cling. The two folding in and out of each other constantly. A lack of trust in psychological terms, perhaps, and a lack of attention in simple practice terms. The result was for my breath to feel slightly off, not so nourishing (to use that word again), held, forced. The answer was to attend more closely and bind myself to the movement of the object, while also ready to act as directed. The presence to enact non-action precisely and fully, the presence to enact action precisely and fully.
Which brings me to submission which all my practice seems to return to again - and again. Or rather a lack of submission, perhaps. Which is to say, at base, my practice seems to be asking that I simply submit myself. And that act of submission feels like a huge prayer of giving up the self to something larger. A set of acts, times, attitudes. Of folding the self into a space and shape just a little smaller and other than it wishes to occupy. Wearing. Yet another of those endless folds that seem more and more apparent to me: in this instance total submission none other than total control. Total containment, total freedom. And this only possible because the law/s to which we submit are themselves productive, creative. And part of our control that thin sliver of creative agency that going forward we may enjoy when in alignment with the always already creative productivity of being. But damn it requires balance. I'm that guy wobbling around on his unicycle, finding his groove for a bit, getting a bit of a nice run, before I tire or the path gets tricky and my sketched in skills miss their line. |