Essay 5: On Being (Not) Still

This is "Deep Thoughts #3" for 2018. I have taken Vanessa Martir's 52 Essay Challenge, and tweaked it a bit for this year. Instead of an essay a week, I'm just going to write some so-called deep thoughts. :)

I cannot be still.

I know, I know: what you say is what you will become. I should, instead, say, I try my damnedest to be still and sometimes it happens, sometimes not.

I’ve been reading (on and off) Deepak Chopra’s Seven SpiritualLaws of Success. I can’t quite get myself to just sit down and read it all at once. I don’t know why. Could be the layout of the book. The manner in which is it written. Or it could just be me, not in a place to receive the messages he’s telling me. I read a little and then I put it down, carry the book with me everywhere, but don’t open it up again until days later (if I’m lucky). Instead, I open Ellen Bass’s The Human Line. Or Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. I don’t get it. I’m all about the yogic philosophy and spiritual practices. Chopra’s book outlines things I’m already aware of and reinforces these ideas –and maybe that’s it, the reason why I’m not done with the book already. Maybe I'm looking to learn something new. (Though isn't everything an opportunity to learn? Perhaps it's something else then.)

Anyway, I digress.

In the book, he talks about the Law of Pure Potentiality. (Yes, that’s chapter 1. This is how slow I’m reading a short book, which I “started” in the fall.) He talks about accessing this potential by being still, by sitting in silence, by meditating. Sounds good to me, right? I meditate every day. Twice a day.

But wait. My meditations are not sitting in silence. Often, I have a chant or mantra playing (or I’m chanting myself). There is power in sound and I am using it. On the other hand, there is also power in silence. Quite a dilemma.

I know, I know: I can hear the peanut gallery now: you meditate twice a day – just make one with chanting and one with silence. But that’s not the problem. The problem is stillness.

Lately –since the start of the new year, actually—my meditations have been difficult. My mind refuses to be still. Which is not to say that prior to this, my mind had been successful in achieving stillness, but that I have been able to go deep within and connect with Self, even if only for a few moments. Now? Now, I am all over the place. Like the Road Runner caught in a labyrinth trying to find my way out but moving so fast that I go down every path and miss the turns and slam into dead ends and try to back up but forgot where I came from and so end up repeating certain paths.

WTF.

My friend Eugene reminds me that the most important thing is to just show up.

But you know, the judgmental ego says: yeah yeah whatever – that’s not good enough.

I have so many things I wanted to write about for this week’s essay. I’ve been thinking about the soundtracks to our lives and once again, wondering if we can reset the memories associated with certain songs. I’ve experimented and I wanted to write about that. I’ve also been thinking about race (what else is new??), but specifically in two instances: 1.) as a mother of color to biracial daughters – thinking about what messages our culture sends to them (white & thin is beautiful, for example) and how to, not only subvert that, but equip them with tools that challenge the status quo while celebrating who they are as they are; and 2.) the relationships across race that have been tested and possibly broken due to our current political landscape (I’m being intentionally vague here, because there is a lot to unpack –and I will write that essay for sure.) Also, I want to write about depression and anxiety, about people’s relationship with mental illness, about how stigmas and presumptions can cause real damage, about how we need to figure out the best, most effective ways of interacting with those in our lives who suffer on the inside.

See? There’s a lot brewing in my head. But I can’t sit still long enough to just listen to the silence, to be in the silence. Because perhaps there is something (likely the Self) whispering in that silence, telling me something important, something useful, something loving.

Being still sometimes feels scary because of what we might hear. Because what we find may be the thing we want to deny. Maybe the thing we find is the truth of ourselves that we do not want to face.

Eugene asked me: how do you do it? How do you do it all? I’ve been asked this question on more than one occasion. I do a lot. Between raising three kids (and acting as mom taxi for swimming, basketball, piano, and ballet), a teaching job, teaching yoga at two studios, going through Kundalini teacher training, running a household, and, oh yeah, writing – I don’t know how I do it. Honestly, I don’t. I know I get less sleep than most people. So there’s that.

But this is what I see: I do all of this because I am running. Whatever is chasing me (demons of all kinds), I am trying to outrun them. Which is why I think I have a hard time being still. Sure, I can sit on my cushion and physically sit still. But my mind? Wheels are spinning at a thousand miles per hour. But you know what? I can’t outrun them. They’ll catch up to me pretty soon. And then what? I don’t know. Maybe I should work a little harder on that stillness. Which means I have to also work on surrender. Eek. Maybe I can get through Chopra’s book to arm myself for spiritual success so that when they do catch up to me, I am prepared.

Maybe.

(*Side note: I also have to work on being more kind to myself. This is for another installment of "Deep Thoughts".)