A New Series—The Body Speaks

In the first in this series of arti­cles, I pro­vided you with a handy lit­tle chart that shows the loca­tion, descrip­tion, and char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Chakras. Use the link if you want to refer to it.

How We Get Lost in Thought

Wak­ing up is about bring­ing your atten­tion, your focus, and the power of your will to the present moment. I’m not about to lie to you and sug­gest that this work is easy. Stay­ing awake, focus­ing on the here and now, liv­ing in the moment… hard, hard work.

“Of course I know all about all of this!
Of course I’m awake!
Just look at me!”

“Asleep” is a state of ungroundedness—of going through life on dozy auto-pilot.

Many are quite smart and talk a good show, but when you look at how they are liv­ing their lives, it’s another story altogether.

This arti­cle is a guide to awak­en­ing. Being end­lessly “Lost in Thought” is not help­ful, and yet is the preva­lent state. Let’s think, instead, of how we might bal­ance things out—creating a unity of body, mind, and spirit.

Often, you’ll find that things come in threes

There is a way of look­ing at the Chakra chart from this per­spec­tive. Some peo­ple say that the lower three Chakras are phys­i­cal, and that the upper four are spir­i­tual. I don’t think that’s exactly right.

Another way of look­ing at this is that the bot­tom three are phys­i­cal, the top three are spir­i­tual, and the mid­dle one, the heart Chakra, is the meet­ing place and bridge between the other two realms.

You might say that the bot­tom three pro­vide the sta­bil­ity that allows the upper three to be used, and that true being comes from our heart.

Body Block­ages Man­i­fest in How One Lives / How One Lives Cre­ates Body Blockages

What I’m say­ing is that block­ages in the body are metaphors for stuck­ness in the way one is liv­ing. As you notice the block­ages, a choice-point occurs. You can either do the work of dis­solv­ing the block, or you can con­tinue to stay stuck.

Stay­ing stuck hap­pens as the ego, (which is a men­tal process, and there­fore a story you tell your­self, about “you”) kicks in. Our ego-mind, our way of thinking—culturally con­di­tioned as it is—rushes in, try­ing to get us to return to the pat­tern of being stuck, and doing noth­ing more than complaining.

Emo­tions come and go,
as I sit with myself.

Dis­solv­ing—If we gen­tly notice, if we hold our thoughts lightly and then let them go, then space is cre­ated to express and own the emo­tion, (“I am angry,” or “My anger is aris­ing,”) to release the emo­tional and phys­i­cal block, and finally, to sit in silent accep­tance in the midst of ourselves.

How We Get Lost in Thought

It’s so easy to get hooked into the pat­terns of the past. It’s so easy to dis­tract your­self with the exter­nal sit­u­a­tions you’re end­lessly creating.

You plant your­self firmly in the sto­ries in your head, and ask your­self, “Why is this hap­pen­ing to me again?” “How do I resolve this exter­nal sit­u­a­tion?” And the odd part is that we never notice the end­less, iden­ti­cal stream of exter­nal sit­u­a­tions that we keep gen­er­at­ing. All that ever changes is the cast of char­ac­ters. As one of Stephen King’s char­ac­ters put it, “SSDD” (Same shit, dif­fer­ent day.)

This, as opposed to see­ing one­self as the author of
one’s own life and reality.

You can’t ground your­self and come to know the essence of your being by end­lessly did­dling around with exter­nals. Gandhi had it right. If you want a dif­fer­ent world, you have to

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

It often seems that being grounded is only about the body

3… 2… 1… LIFTOFF!

Being grounded is the anti­dote to “lift­ing off”—the activ­ity of peo­ple who live with their heads in the clouds, and who never seem quite con­nected to real­ity. In other words, most of the population.

Many of the tech­niques to learn ground­ing are physical.

• In Body­work, we apply pres­sure to the sci­atic nerve dim­ple on the butt, work down the legs, and mas­sage the First Chakra.
• The goal, from a Chi­nese per­spec­tive, is to recon­nect the per­son to earth energy, which the Chi­nese believe enters the body through a spe­cific point on the sole of the foot.
• Mar­tial artists and Qi Gong Mas­ters use a pos­ture called horse stance to develop sta­bil­ity, steadi­ness, breath con­trol and strength.
• In med­i­ta­tion, “just sit­ting” phys­i­cally con­nects the Root Chakra to the ground.

But ground­ed­ness is much more than that

Ground­ed­ness is all about find­ing a sta­bil­ity that is lived, rather than sim­ply imagined.

We tend to spend a lot of time think­ing about, and ques­tion­ing, our sta­bil­ity, and very lit­tle time being sta­ble and grounded..

• We won­der if we’re worth­while, belong here,
  and have a right to “be.”
• We focus on fill­ing our lives with stuff, clut­ter­ing, in order to dis­tract our­selves from a base­line feel­ing of insta­bil­ity and unworthiness.
• We feel empty, bereft, and abandoned.

And then, another aspect of our mind kicks in, and crit­i­cizes us for think­ing our­selves unwor­thy or unsta­ble, for feel­ing empty. This crit­i­cal men­tal chat­ter tells us to get over it, and then devises a ball plan to accu­mu­late more stuff, to attract more peo­ple, or to pre­tend we’re happy.

The rea­son we like Body­work, Med­i­ta­tion, Chakra work, and all the other phys­i­cal tech­niques we teach, is that their focus is not on think­ing. Notice that I didn’t say, “Their focus is on the body.” Although all of them have in com­mon a phys­i­cal tech­nique, the real goal is to, in a sense, still the mind enough to exit the head.

We’re not den­i­grat­ing the head

We’re sim­ply say­ing most peo­ple are lost up there, trip­ping around in the dark, end­lessly repeat­ing pat­terns that never have, and never will, work.

Peo­ple who are lost in their heads end­lessly defend what they believe to be so, despite the fact that what they believe to be so does not bring them a moment of peace or con­tent­ment. All such think­ing brings is judg­ment—
self judg­ment and judg­ing others.

The “cure” is acceptance

The para­dox is that it does no good to bat­tle our minds. As a mat­ter of fact, our ego loves it when we try. I’m sure you’ve noticed this, but when you fight against your mind, you’re fight­ing in your mind.

Ein­stein famously said,

“We can’t solve prob­lems by using the same kind of think­ing we used when we cre­ated them.”

“Hmm. I thought I was BLUE!”

In other words, the part of our mind that is end­lessly engaged in judg­ment is sim­ply a set of fil­ters. Imag­ine look­ing at the world through a red fil­ter. No mat­ter how hard you try, all you can see is red. You can’t change what you see if you’re unaware of the fil­ter. Whin­ing, “But… see! Every­thing is red!” is just as silly as say­ing “All men are the same,” or any of your other pet beliefs.

To fol­low Ein­stein, you have exit the part of your mind that made the prob­lem (the fil­ter.) To do that, you have to take a step back and see the fil­ter. Once you see it, you can choose to look another way.

Hav­ing a judg­ment about being judg­men­tal solves noth­ing. As you accept the judg­men­tal part of you as being a part of you, sim­ply that, you can let it be and choose, (again and again!) to dis­en­gage from it.

Enter the body, enter the breath—finding a heart­felt sense of yourself

This shift­ing of focus is a tool and an alter­na­tive to being lost in thought. As the men­tal chat­ter goes back­ground there is a sen­sa­tion of more space—or per­haps bet­ter put, of spa­cious­ness. There is an open­ing, and an expansion—and you find your­self con­nected and inter­con­nected, in new ways, with oth­ers and with the uni­verse.

In other words, it’s as if you’ve grown roots and are, finally, firmly planted in a ver­sion of real­ity that is ripe with potential

This, of course, flies in the face of the norm, which is, you guessed it, to be lost in thought. From now until you die, your work (and it is work) is to bring your atten­tion out of the chat­ter and into the spa­cious­ness.

Spa­cious, present aware­ness is one of the chief aims of meditation

You notice how your thoughts arise, how your thoughts pass. You notice your breath, going in and out. You notice aches and pains, aris­ing and dis­ap­pear­ing. You notice all of this moment by moment, in the now. The med­i­ta­tive state is not a blank state. It is an aware state.

When asked who he was, the Bud­dha said, “I am awake.”

This is some­thing of a dilemma because we’re not used to being present, and we fear being “out of our minds”

Yikes. “Who and what will I be if I’m not thinking?”

The answer to the ques­tion “Who am I?” is, “I am this.” And the this that I am is the me that exists moment to moment. No mat­ter how dearly you attach to the story you tell your­self—
to your imag­i­nary history—in actuality

the essence of you is the per­son who is
read­ing this in this moment.

I’ve worked with many clients who have attempted quick fixes. They do a lit­tle bit, try a lit­tle bit, play around a lit­tle bit—and things do indeed get a lit­tle bit bet­ter. For a while. Then, a test comes, and it’s back to whin­ing, judg­ing, complaining.

Those who seek ground­ing, on the other hand, make a life­long com­mit­ment to self–sta­bil­ity

It’s refus­ing to set­tle for a quick fix.

You can approach med­i­ta­tion as a thing to add in to an already hec­tic life, or you can make your entire life a meditation

I’d like you to con­sider not plas­ter­ing over the prob­lems in your life, but rather to own them as self-created, to love your­self any­way, and to use the tech­niques and under­stand­ings pre­sented here and else­where to pro­foundly shift how you see yourself.

Give up look­ing for res­cue, for quick fixes, or for magic. Hasn’t worked, never will.

Instead, devote your­self to liv­ing from the total­ity of your­self, which, oddly, is no self at all.

As I always sug­gest, find a med­i­ta­tion teacher, a ther­a­pist, and a Bodyworker.

Ded­i­cate the rest of your life to walk­ing in a new way—a grounded way—a self respon­si­ble way. Let go of your grasp on your odd and dys­func­tional sto­ries, let go of your pas­sion for get­ting lost in thought, and choose to be present.

Pick your friends wisely, engage with them fully, and be yourself—completely. And begin today. Now. End­lessly now.