So, last week I began a new series of arti­cles on The Zen of Let­ting Go, with side ref­er­ences to body­work, breath­work, and energy (espe­cially sex­ual energy) work. I keep find­ing myself drawn to Rod­ney Smith’s “Step­ping Out of Self-deception” as a great framework.

I know I’m repeat­ing myself, but I want to say some­thing about sun­y­ata, or as we are defin­ing it, “as-it-is-ness.”

The “dif­fi­culty” does not lie with how things are. The issue is always what our mind does with what is thinks is going on. There is the bare thing, the pure expe­ri­ence, and then there is the story our mind concocts.

The odd part of being human is how much cre­dence we give to the sto­ries we tell. We get caught up in the sto­ries, which “coin­ci­den­tally” rein­force what we already believe. For exam­ple, I once had a client who thought her hus­band was a ter­ri­ble father. She end­lessly regaled me with sto­ries of his indif­fer­ence, cal­lous­ness, and inat­ten­tion. One ses­sion, she said, “Do you know what he did this time? He spent 3 hours with the kids, carv­ing jack-o-lanterns!” I said, Hmm. Seems to fly in the face of the typ­i­cal “bad dad” story…” She looked at me oddly, and said, “That’s not the point. No one takes 3 hours doing some­thing I could have done in 45 min­utes! I don’t under­stand how he could be so inconsiderate!”

Methinks he was damned if he did… And if you think you don’t do this (see David Sheedy’s arti­cle, below) not so fast, Kowalsky!

Here’s the kicker. Our job is NOT to stop vet­ting each expe­ri­ence through the fil­ter of “my story-of-me.” It’s to notice, laugh, and not “enact” the story.

To quote Rod­ney Smith,

“As long as the mind remains in charge of the spir­i­tual jour­ney it will end­lessly com­pli­cate and pro­long the process. It works on behalf of its own ide­ol­ogy, not toward the true inten­tion of the heart. The baton passes from the mind to the heart once we are sin­cere enough to admit our old ways are no longer work­ing, con­trol is slip­ping through our fin­gers, and we have no fall­back strate­gies. We do not have to con­form our life to some spir­i­tual ideal, we just have to admit our efforts are feel­ing and move on.” p169

From a body­work per­spec­tive, one of the best moments is when the client starts to vibrate. This can hap­pen from some­thing as sim­ple as breath­work, and has the best poten­tial to hap­pen as blocks are released and the the body finally relaxes. Free-flowing energy might be thought of as the body’s nat­ural state. Right at that point, if the mind chooses to stay dis­en­gaged and obser­vant, the energy will flow, and the body will shake.

What typ­i­cally hap­pens is that there is a new sen­sa­tion, a strange, chargy, and often pleas­ant sen­sa­tion, and the mind kicks in with a “wait a minute!” story. Mus­cles re-tighten, or the mouth starts moving.

Most peo­ple are so dis­turbed by their own energy, or the sto­ries they have going on regard­ing charge, sen­su­al­ity, sex­u­al­ity (all the same thing) that just lying there, bathed in the expe­ri­ence, is way, way too freaky. So I end up back­ing up a bit, invit­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion, and encour­ag­ing an inter­nal process of let­ting go of the sto­ries in favour of bare aware­ness. This won’t hap­pen trough the client try­ing to force it. As I said last week, it’s mostly about “falling back into it.”

Rod­ney Smith again:

“The four R’s of Wise Effort are the per­fect instru­ments for this objec­tive. They are relax, release, relin­quish, and rejoin. None of these words holds any ten­sion or stress, nor builds upon the “story-of-me.” “Page 99

Relax

Relax­ation is not the stuff we do while on hol­i­day, although that could be relax­ing. Mostly, we try to relax by going semi­con­scious. We are look­ing for a relaxed state of full awareness.

Full aware­ness is being aware of all six (Bud­dhist) senses: see­ing, hear­ing, tast­ing, smelling, feel­ing, and mind. The entire body is open—the tight­ness melts, the energy flows, the vibra­tion begins. And the mind absorbs the expe­ri­ence and adds it to its data-base. This is the essence of mind, as opposed to “adding to the story of me.” This ver­sion of mind states it’s expe­ri­ence and asks ques­tions, but skips the “right/wrong, good/bad” judge­ments. Or as one client put it, “That used to feel weird, and now it feels… well… normal.”

Relax­ation comes from breath­ing. We tend to hold our breath when we stress our­selves, and then we tighten up mus­cles and shut down emo­tion­ally. If we return to the breath, and even visu­al­ize the flow of energy in the body, the ten­sion releases, and the absence of ten­sion is relaxation.

Two exer­cises are deep belly breath­ing, and Heart — Belly breathing.

and then focus on the energy cen­tre known as the Lower Dan Tian, located 2 inches below the navel, and two inches in. Visu­al­ize a ves­sel or bag, or bowl. This is the home of Jing (or ching) Qi, the Qi of sex­u­al­ity, ances­try, and power. Breathe in fully, so as to raise the lower belly. It helps to place your hand over the spot, and to focus your aware­ness on the inter­nal location.

Once you feel some warmth and full­ness in the Lower Dan Tian, take your unoc­cu­pied hand and place it over your heart (the Mid­dle Dan Tian — home of Qi or heart energy.)

As you breathe, mod­u­late your breath so that both hands rise and fall equally.

Now, visu­al­ize the energy flow­ing down the front of your body, from Heart to Belly. Inter­est­ingly, this is “thought” to be dif­fi­cult by the West­ern mind, as Heart and sex are often dis­con­nected. Hold­ing these two points strength­ens both.

If you just went off and did the exer­cises, good for you! That would be “hav­ing an expe­ri­ence,” as opposed to think­ing about one!

If you went up into your head and started a, “What is Wayne talk­ing about this stuff for?” dis­cus­sion with your­self, that would be what Rod­ney Smith is talk­ing about in the first quote, above.

Release

Our “sense-of-me” is pow­ered by sto­ries, and has a great fear of “out there.” The world, to our “sense-of-me,” is a scary place, and has to be dom­i­nated or run from. (Fight / flight response.) The very last thing the “sense-of-me” wants to do is let go—of con­trol. Of course, the joke is that we con­trol pre­cious lit­tle out­side of our bod­ies, and get off on blam­ing our­selves for not doing a bet­ter job of con­trol­ling the uncontrollable.

Release is where relax­ation leads. In body­work, I actu­ally see this tran­si­tion. The body relaxes, the energy starts, and if the mind kicks into defen­sive­ness, there is a shut down of vibra­tion, and a wor­ried look crosses the face. One of my clients gets a big crease between her eye­brows, as her story-telling clicks in. Once, just once, she got into feel­ing the energy move between acupunc­ture points, (likely how the merid­i­ans were dis­cov­ered in the first place,) and there was no crease–just a look of wonder.

So, how do you do this? Release hap­pens first in the mind. The oppo­site of release, Rod­ney Smith writes, is con­trol, and the cure for con­trol is faith. Faith that there is noth­ing, in this moment, to resist. No story to tell. No drama to cre­ate. There is the sen­sory data, and the mind­ful aware­ness of both the sen­sa­tion and the aris­ing resistance.

Breathe. Notice and smile. Relax your fore­head (inter­est­ingly, home of the Upper Dan Tian — it’s right at the Third Eye.) per­haps mas­sag­ing that point. Even out the folds of skin, and breathe through the doubt and ques­tion­ing and fear. This spot is the home of Shen Qi (which is the Qi of spirit.) Spir­its fly free, and breath dri­ves Qi.

Own­ing our essen­tial pow­er­less­ness to con­trol life is key to our work. In Zazen, we sit to sit, and noth­ing mirac­u­lous hap­pens. We feel, we think, we get bored, hun­gry, con­fused. If we release into the mys­tery, then we can sit peace­fully, right there, in the midst of it all.

Next week, well look at the final 2 R’s : relin­quish and rejoin.

Back in the days of our e-zine, “Into the Cen­tre,” David Sheedy, a friend and guy I laugh with and at, used to con­tribute amaz­ingly timely and astute arti­cles. (Here’s the archive.) Then, as if he had bet­ter things to do, he stopped writ­ing for us. (As did Dar­bella and Debashis, but hey… wait! Maybe it’s me. .….. Nah.…)

Imag­ine my sur­prise when, last week, David wrote, and in amaz­ingly short order, sent me an arti­cle. I laughed as I read, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too.

Kowal­sky ~~ by David Sheedy

Good day; was read­ing the bearded one this morn­ing, and real­ized that a lit­tle pon­tif­i­ca­tion that I did with my wife this morn­ing (“Hi Terri!”) lent itself to a con­tri­bu­tion in Wayne’s world. I’ve con­tributed before, of course (If I know Wayne, he’ll put links to it), and I don’t know if and how this links to those the­mat­i­cally, let alone tonally. But I’ll give it a shot.

I’ve been think­ing about and notic­ing the base­line assump­tions peo­ple carry around and project on oth­ers higgledy-piggledy, like ran­dom movies cast upon unwill­ing screens. Where before I politely allowed such dra­mas to play out upon my par­tic­u­lar per­sonal can­vas, I find myself less and less tol­er­ant of such unper­missed (hmmm, my dic­tio­nary doesn’t know that word) bound­ary crossing. 

There is an old joke about a drill sergeant who finds out a sol­dier named Kowal­sky has had his mother pass away. In typ­i­cally drill fash­ion he demands “All sol­diers who still have a mother alive, take one step for­ward. NOT SO FAST, KOWALSKY!” That’s what I feel like say­ing when these things come up. Not sure what I mean? Let’s start with an easy one.

“Oh, deep down, on some level, you really DO believe in God”. Now, this is an oldie but a goodie. Implied in this is that a) we are speak­ing of a Christian/Judaic deity, and b) what­ever deity, I must believe in one. It’s patron­iz­ing and con­de­scend­ing of course, but even more than that, it’s a pro­jec­tion. There is actu­ally more proof/research/reasons that we NEED to believe in God, than there is proof of God him/her/itself. The assump­tion here is “I’m afraid of dying and want there to be some­thing after­ward, so you have to be there as well.” Look, I have no prob­lem with you cling­ing to what­ever gets you through those lonely moments of your loom­ing mor­tal­ity. Just don’t drag ME into the delu­sion. And so I say “NOT SO FAST KOWALSKY.”

Here’s a famil­iar (and famil­ial) one:  “It doesn’t mat­ter how old they get, they are still always your chil­dren.” Said almost des­per­ately by the heli­copter par­ents of the ikid gen­er­a­tion. These are the ones who keep their kid’s doc­u­ments (SIN cards, birth cer­tifi­cates) in boxes at home, because their 26 year old might lose them; Who lec­ture their 31 year old on dri­ving their new car too fast; and who cross their own bound­aries in order to have any kind of rela­tion­ship with their kids. Don’t get me wrong, I strug­gle with allow­ing my chil­dren to be who they are with­out inter­fer­ing in their lives. But I do my damn­d­est; and I don’t attach myself to what I think they should or should NOT be doing. They made it to 18 in good health; my work here is done. As Joanne Peter­son used to say, ‘good enough par­ent­ing’. They are grown-ass women and men, and should be treated as such. That means leav­ing them the hell alone. 

The adden­dum to that one might be “They are your parents/siblings/third cousins, and you’ll love them no mat­ter what.” What? Look—my par­ents got ME to 18 with rel­a­tively lit­tle dam­age; thanks very much. I now owe them fealty (worse, ado­ra­tion) for the rest of my life? Rub­bish. I don’t expect them to love me uncon­di­tion­ally, any­more than I believe I am required to do the same with them. If they don’t like who I am, or how I’m treat­ing them, they should bounce my ass the way they would do with any­one else in their lives. My par­ents are 3 provinces away, with no qualms from me. Yes, they will die some day, and yes, I’ll speak at their funer­als (although, when I try and think of what I’d say at their eulogy I find myself unusu­ally stumped for words). I enjoy the time I DO spend with them, and con­trol it judi­ciously; as I imag­ine they do with me. But if your par­ents are inter­ested in the oppo­site of what you are, believe fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent than you do, why are you spend­ing time with them?

“Rela­tion­ship is about com­pro­mise.”  Wanna know a secret? Com­pro­mise is where every party involves gets less than what they wanted. And a rela­tion­ship is sup­posed to sur­vive in those cir­cum­stances? I’ll tell you what hap­pens with com­pro­mise. One party resents, the other doesn’t know, and soon that is leak­ing out all over the place. I say rela­tion­ship is about under­stand­ing as much about what is going on with the other per­son as pos­si­ble. That means prac­tic­ing Rad­i­cal Hon­esty (Wayne’ll prob­a­bly link you to the book here), so that you know where each of you stand, WITHOUT either one of you hav­ing to move an iota.

One more, and it’s a com­pli­cated one.  “Oh sure, that’s easy if you have _______”, but I have _________”  The sim­plest exam­ple of this one I saw in a Peo­ple Mag­a­zine where some celebrity had lost weight and got­ten into shape. A per­son wrote in about their ‘life­long strug­gle’ with their weight, and said how ‘easy it would be ‘ if only they could afford a per­sonal trainer and a dieti­cian like the star. Gimme a break; put down the potato chips and go for a walk. How much does THAT cost? I always mar­vel at this idea that there is some mys­te­ri­ous way to get what I want (in shape, over my anger, lose weight, find a mate) but that there are obsta­cles soooo insur­mount­able that I couldn’t POSSIBLY over­come them. Wayne went through this with me in my first mar­riage (no offense to Ali­son, who was doing noth­ing she need change). He’d hap­pily show me tools, choices, processes, etc that would help me in the rela­tion­ship, and I would patiently show him rea­sons, jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, excep­tions, and ratio­nal­iza­tions as to why they couldn’t pos­si­bly work for me. Truth is? I ain’t that spe­cial. None of us are. If you want to do/be/change some­thing, then start doing it. Hell, you don’t even need a library card any­more, just an inter­net con­nec­tion. If, as Wayne has said to me, you need a men­tor to get you started, find one. But don’t be that ‘help-seeking/help-rejecting’ per­son who keeps find­ing rea­sons why solu­tions don’t work for them.

Think this is all bunk? Every­one for whom this is work­ing, take one step for­ward. NOT SO FAST KOWALSKY!