Sneaking Past the Ego

I am, frankly, a little confused and spun. The new house, new possibilities with Jason, new business and career challenges and opportunities…

All of these challenge me to continue asking the questions "Who am I?" and "What is true?"

I've asked those questions to the end of the line before, unraveling the ego cocoon. But if you are alive and have a body, it will knit itself back together again--thus the need for constant meditation and internal work.

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As I experiment with doing the Five Tibetans integrated with the Five Minute Miracle, I still see no downside--whatever advantages derive from doing them in direct sequence (working with accumulated fatigue from the previous exercises?) would seem to be compensated for--at the least--by the power of re-centering five times a day.   All I have to do is to see how each exercise affects my breathing, and stay with that. Then, ask a secret part of myself to be observing my breathing ALL THE TIME.

I remember Pendekar Paul De Thours (master of Indonesian Pentjak Silat) as a man whose movement was magical. I have never in my life seen martial arts techniques where I couldn't even figure out what was happening.  His techniques looked FAKE…until he did them on you.  Then it was as if you had an invisible third leg you'd never known was there, and he knew just how to sweep it.

Until Stevan Plinck, the Pendekar's senior student (before he was excommunicated.  Yeah, martial arts communities can be like that) explained the principles of "Base, Angle, Leverage" and pulled away the curtain.  OH!  THAT'S how it works.

There really are secrets. There really are things that you'd take years to figure out, that can be communicated in seconds if you ask the right question of the right person, when you are ready to hear the answer.

In fact, I cannot think of anything I've accomplished in my life of any real importance that I "figured out myself."  It was always a matter of humbling myself before a teacher (or in one case, my wife!) and saying "teach me, Sifu."  Well, I didn't say "Sifu" to Larry Niven, but it was the same feeling: empty my cup, and let him fill it with his wisdom. Filter that through experience and daily action. Take what was useful, and discard the rest.

Always learning.

Always doing

Always sharing.

And what I noticed is that my BEST ideas came not from any conscious self, but the "boys in the basement" (as Stephen King says).   They come unexpectedly. But they come most often to people who research exhaustively and work obsessively, then change their focus to do something else.  Almost as if the "True Self" has to wait until your ego is busy doing something else, and then it can creep out.

Life weaves the ego cocoon. Your daily practices should be to UN-wind it.  It can seem like Penelope, wife of Ulysses, who wove her father-in-laws shroud during the day, and unraveled it at night.  If you don't deliberately unravel, dis-assemble the ego shell, you'll have to wait until some drastic event shatters it for you, triggering an epiphany.

Tai Chi is one of the disciplines that addresses this, and because it is a combination of physical and mental activities, it is powerful AF if you take it seriously.  There is a sense of "centered dizziness" that one can feel as you perform some of the moves ("Cloud Hands", "Fair Lady works shuttles") that can give you the feeling that you are standing still while the universe swirls around you, folding and unfolding your body like Origami.

Strange. Powerful.

And I noticed two days ago that if I did the first Tibetan (Dervish spinning) for 21 reps, and went immediately into the Tai Chi form, I FELT IT.

This was terrific, because I use Tai Chi for my Morning Ritual, splitting my attention between movement and focused flow.  This is an amazing metaphor for life, but is NOT optimal for deepening my practice. That's all right, if it must be: I progress with Tai Chi more slowly, but in life more deeply.  And that IS the point, right?  Not to learn some set of moves, but to answer those twin questions:  "who am I?" and "what is true?" using the form as a way of engaging with reality.

So "Tibetan #1" leading into the form seems like a very, very sound approach.  I enter the form "a little confused and spun" and with every breath, every move, every mental focus, every shift of my eyes I have another chance to find the balance within the confusion. Each move has a feeling.  It is a lot like a roller coaster: you work to climb that first hill, but after that gravity and stored/released elastic energy do it all, like water sloshing down a twisty culvert.  Here. There.  Up. Down. Sideways.

If you stay sensitive to the physical forces shaping your body, the "water" itself will tell you what the next move it, and you are just floating along for the ride. To do that, of course, you have to have your basics memorized to the point of "unconscious competence." And to do that, you have to be able to ignore the voices in your head that scream that this isn't working, go do something else, you are wasting your time, and so forth.

The ego thinks it is you.   Or perhaps more precisely, the ego doesn't want to die, but it MUST if you are to operate at your real level of being.  And you can either do this daily, gently, or you can wait until a health crash, financial emergency, relationship nightmare or something else SHATTERS your ego and leaves you naked and afraid.

I say do it as gently, firmly, consistently as possible, a little every day.  It is still a bitch at times, but you don't end up curled on the floor, sobbing.  

I've been there. It isn't fun.

So find a discipline, and a teacher, a path.  Walk it just a little every day, and you'll know if it is real when you begin to react differently to life, when you extract different meanings from events, when you catch yourself observing rather than compulsively engaging.

Instead of compulsively engaging, try compulsively, obsessively WAKING UP.   The form is an opportunity.  And the Five Minute Miracle, forcing you to snap out of your trance at least five times a day. And the Tibetans are a fine minimalistic engagement, both diagnostic and developmental.

So yes, I am a little spun by life right now.  I don't quite know who I am.  But that's just fine. Because the truth is that "I" never knew anyway.   "I" is/am always behind the curve. The moment I think "I," real being vanishes.  As it is in the egoless state that our greatest genius emerges, it is a treasure to have a practice that unwinds that illusion.

Were there just a few moments today, where "it" was happening, and "I" was not present?  Yes there were: "I" observed myself coming out of them.  The instant I noticed, it wasn't happening any more…but I can realize that for several moves, I was in that blessed space where the deeper self was in control. Gravity, and the forces of physics and physiology were in control, guided by something within me that is always present, even if it speaks and acts quietly.

For a few weeks I've been experimenting with the notion that some things in life are like dogs, and others like cats. Dogs come when you call, cats wait until you are busy doing something else and then jump into your lap.

This practice, like writing, like lasting love, is a hybrid. There are things you must do every day, with sheer discipline: the "dog."

But the essence, the thing you most treasure, sneaks in around the edges when you aren't paying attention: the "cat."

I love this process.    And love learning, doing, and teaching it.

This is the flow of life. And I am so grateful to have found it.

Namaste

Steve

(Every Friday at noon pst we do a Zoom mastermind to discuss writing, movement, and relationships.  If you would like to join us, sign up at www.stevenbarneslist.com)