Hey, look back into the room. Maybe that wasn't an elephant all along.

As our yoga class reflects this week on satya, truth, I've been reflecting on my kidhood. The playing outdoors dimension was so great. Earliest memories are of the farm outside Chandler, Arizona, where my dad grew cotton and milo on ground leased from my grandpa: kid paradise. 

My brother and I played in the irrigation ditch -- the dry ditch, that is -- where we dug little caves and landscaped an entire world for our imaginary characters, Mousie and Rattie. (Rattie as his name suggested was the less principled of the two. Mousie was kind, with dependable integrity.) We crawled through the growing milo, making complex tunneled labyrinths where we sometimes got lost. (It was against the rules to stand up to get bearings.) And we spent hours climbing the huge-to-us cottonwood tree which grew right next to the ditch. I was sincerely infuriated that my younger brother climbed higher because he was more daring than I was. (That seemed to go against the natural order of things and my supposed superiority as two years elder.)

The being indoors dimension had its fun as well. We played library, checking books out to each other. We pored over the exciting new set of encyclopedias which our parents, like many conscientious moms and dads of the 1950s, had bought from a traveling salesman. I still remember the feel of the cool linoleum floor against my cheek as I lay resting from a warm afternoon outdoor adventure, listening with Daddy to the Sunday baseball game. 

So, the kid world was pretty much non-stop fun. The adult world, however, was complicated.  Things didn't always add up. Sometimes Mommy was crying -- a puzzling occurrence with no explanations offered. Sometimes Daddy was talking on the phone in a strange way -- I didn't know the word furtive in those days. But we kids didn't pause too much on these things which we didn't understand. We just carried on with our gloriously fun world of play.

From the present point of view I look back and put together the evidence, add up the clues, construct the jigsaw puzzle. Dang, it turns out that we had the proverbial elephant in the room. Elephants, actually. In all the rooms of the farmhouse.

But watch any nature show and you'll find out how kind and resourceful elephants are, and such bulwarks of protection toward their young. Hence, I can't say that we had elephants at home. They were more like hyenas -- whose reputations include selfishness and sneakiness and slyness.

Aw, my dear parents, I'm not saying that they were hyenas. Far from it. They were absolutely loving and they treasured us kids. And we -- me, my brother, and my little sister, who came along in the post-farm era -- loved them back.

The hyenas were the big, big problems that our folks carried with them. Our dear Daddy, I figured out years later, was ensnared in alcohol. And sweet Mommy, we deduced many more years later, was struggling hard with chronic anxiety. 

But alcohol and anxiety, especially given the conventions of the time, could not be named. Could not be admitted. Could not be revealed. Could not be discussed.

Truth-telling. We kids learned to do that in the small, nameable things. We couldn't learn to do that in a larger sense because within the atmosphere of home, because truth-telling was compromised, incomplete. We did get by okay, though. We took the goodness of the kid years and the love of our parents, added onto it, and eventually grew up to be pretty good people.

Satya. That is something I continue to figure out, to this day. All of us kids have journeyed, making our way into the deeper reaches of truth-telling.

Now, if I just could have figured out how to climb higher in the old cottonwood!

Of what use is that old fellow, the ego?

"The ego in the life of the individual has its useful purposes, I'm sure," I was musing. Probably trying to justify some recent, egregious out-of-bounds move of mine. 

But really. Since we've evolved to have an ego, along with our amazing physical bodies, and all the layers of bodies that go along with -- it must be of some use.

Or, to use the saying that the kids brought home from sixth grade environmental camp up at Woodleaf, "God made dirt. And dirt don't hurt!"

I just found, re-found, a very clear little passage on the role of the ego. It's from Sad Vani: A Collection of the Teaching of Sri Anandamayi MA as reported by Bhaiji, translated by Atmananda. More about these remarkable folks in a future post.

69.
You often declare that the ego is the root of all evil; in actual fact however, this is not so. While the ego is the cause of birth and death, it also helps toward liberation. 

The development of the ego and of the spirit of independence has made the individual feel cut off from God. To uproot this sense of separateness, the use of will power is indispensable. 

The man who has merged his ego in the Divine or surrendered it completely to God Almighty, the Lord of the universe, may depend on the working of Providence; but a person with a strong sense of self-reliance, who feels that he is the doer, must exert himself in everything he undertakes. 

So long as intelligence rules a person's life, it means that the ego still exists and that the person is responsible for actions and their results. 
Resign yourself entirely to the One or else be intensely absorbed in Self-inquiry. Although karma may still have to be worked out, by and by the perplexities and problems of the ego will diminish and finally fade away.

Between yoga weekend classes: homework

What is a good study course without homework? Ours, between weekends 1 and 2, was to carry one focus from class out into our lives for two weeks. 

And so I was plumb focused. Aware, that is, of our plumb line exercise, where with classmates' help we began increasing our self-awareness in the matter of postural alignment. 

I found -- surprise! -- that my lower back, instead of having the usual curve, is pretty darn flat. While standing next to the plumb line, I began experimenting with the feeling of putting a little curve back into that area. It felt so sway-backey!

Since that time, while standing or walking, I've occasionally kept experimenting. One result, almost as surprising as the flat-back discovery, is that replacing a lower back curve tends to lift the ribs up and out -- and lift the shoulders back. A bit. Gently. But perceptibly. 

Aha.

Soma, Indra's Net, Egoic Egos, and Habits: Listening to the Yoga Matrix CDs

How did I miss reading Richard Freeman all these years? One of our yoga class references is his CD series titled The Yoga Matrix: The Body as a Gateway to Freedom. Freeman takes on a huge task in the series: to orient us to the huge, multi-layered world of yoga. 

What follows are a few notes from listening to the first CD.

Traditional wisdom regarding the body

The Greek word for body is soma, which is the root of our English word somatic. The ancient Indians used the same word to refer to a plant extract which heightened their abilities to concentrate and meditate. (No one knows which plant was used but an internet search turns up lots of speculation. Aldous Huxley borrowed the word for his own purposes in Brave New World...) Freeman links the Sanskrit and the Greek meanings to explain that in yoga, the body itself offers in its essence a path to concentration, meditation, and ultimate comprehension of the nature of Reality.

Freeman goes into detail on an ancient metaphor for the body: as one jewel in the bejeweled, mythological net constructed and employed by the deity Indra.

Wikipedia offers some background on Indra's net:

Per Jon Kabat-Zinn:  Indra's net has a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, and each jewel is reflected in all of the other jewels. He quotes an ancient text, where the image of "Indra's net" is used to describe the interconnectedness of the universe:

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.

Kabat-Zinn, Jon; Watson, Gay; Batchelor, Stephen; Claxton, Guy (2000), "Indra's Net at Work: The Mainstreaming of Dharma Practice in Society." in: The Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Science, and Our Day-to-Day Lives, Weiser, 2000

Per Timothy Brook In Vermeer's Hat: 

... to describe the interconnectedness of all phenomena [there is the metaphor of] Indra's Net. When Indra fashioned the world, he made it as a web, and at every knot in the web is tied a pearl. Everything that exists, or has ever existed, every idea that can be thought about, every datum that is true—every dharma, in the language of Indian philosophy—is a pearl in Indra's net. Not only is every pearl tied to every other pearl by virtue of the web on which they hang, but on the surface of every pearl is reflected every other jewel on the net. Everything that exists in Indra's web implies all else that exists.

Brook, Timothy (2009). Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World London: Profile Books

The significance of this ancient metaphor for the body? That beginning to work on the body through physical practice provides an entry point to all areas of one's life. We accept our present status and condition, work with it, and find that work leading to much more. We can for example begin with motivation to improve physical health, to find that with increased physical health comes mental clarity.

According to Freeman, because the body operates via principles of consciousness, through yoga we gain awareness not only of body but of consciousness.

One yogic view of the ego

Freeman explains that the ego, from a yogic point of view, is the force that keeps pure consciousness, which is part of each person's makeup, tied or bound to limited, separation-aligned consciousness.

In Sanskrit, chit - achit - granthi  = Consciousness - Not-Consciousness - Knotted together

Or put another way, the ego confuses pure consciousness with the contents of consciousness.

Or yet another way, ego provides the imaginary and erroneous sense of separation from the whole of the Creation.

How does this apply to you and me? For myself, too many times I've put the emphasis on feeling separate from others. Or have assumed I wouldn't belong somehow. Or have made premature decisions about situations or people, decisions that have closed me off from possibilities. 

The ego in the life of the individual has its useful purposes, I'm sure. But in the life of someone seeking unity, this fellow the ego can get out of bounds.

Habits, tendencies, favorites, aversions

Freeman attempts to school us in the concept of samskāra, literally from Sanskrit collected + actions. These are patterns, shaped by life experiences, held deeply in the body, deeply in the ego, which shape our behaviors.

Samskāras form our habits, tendencies, favorites, aversions, our likes and dislikes. 

Things like just having to read the Sacramento Bee before breakfast. Or always craving dark chocolate after tacos -- admittedly a bit peculiar. Or finding the bark of certain small dogs annoying -- apologies to the doggies' owners.

Freeman claims that by the simple act of observing a rooted tendency, one can begin to shift it. 

Readers can stay tuned henceforth to experiments on changing newspaper reading habits, or dessert after Mexican food habits, or canine preferences! or even weightier matters. 

Lots of sunshine in Sacramento

Summer, the most glorious season, with lots of sunshine, means good days by the river, tomatoes in the garden, peaches in the farmers' market, and . . . this summer a great opportunity to delve deeper into yoga.

In the fall of 1972 I was teaching high school, living in West Sac, just returned from a trip to Guatemala. I'd heard other travelers talk about some very interesting thing called yoga. Out of pure curiosity I found a series just starting, meeting at the YWCA on 17th and L.

Pure curiosity paid off bonanza-scale. The series lasted two years, during which we got quite a grounding in philosophy and in hatha practice. All these years later I still thank the instructor, Narayan S., who each week drove down the hill from Ananda Cooperative Village in Nevada County.

Since then, yoga has been vital, a constant, a support -- just plain important. I'll get around to some of that history. 

But now it's summer of 2015, I've been back living in Sac again for several years -- and I've begun a wonderful yoga course, taught by Michelle Marlahan and staff at the It's All Yoga studio. This blog will reflect learnings and musings during the course. 

Putting sunshine on yoga in a season of sunshine!