Video Podcast #3: Starting Point

Over the next several weeks, we will be publishing a series of short videos that discuss various aspects of the spiritual path. These videos are segments of an extended interview conducted by Jonas Elrod, co-director of “Wake Up”.

This clip discusses attention to and a relationship with our emotional state as a road map to an authentic and balanced life.

If you cannot see the video player or file download links below, you may alternatively access and play the video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AbdiAssadi

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Mindful new year

I offer you a poem by a man who knew a thing or two about transitions and living in a time of profound anxiety:

“I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things and they come toward me,
to meet and be met”.
Rilke

How do you read this poem? As an invitation for your ego to go forth and conquer? That with out you
there is no world? Is Rilke professing the same knowledge espoused by many of the modern new age teachers about manifesting what you want? Or can you see that it can also be read as life being a process of becoming; “to meet and to be met”? That there is a mutual dance that occurs when we soften, and the line between us and the process blurs? The times that we are living through will not and can not be met by the first way of reading it. It can only be navigated by the second, by trusting the process and softening the self.

I invite you to use this demarcation of a new year to deepen your relationship to your Self. I sense that any one who has concrete plans for a specific goal or direction right now will be sorely disappointed. It is a good time to be fluid and paint with broad brush strokes, set general directions and allow the unfolding of time to fill in the fine details. Any thing that smells of the old ways of being will continue to be ripped away from us. The challenge at hand is to continue to have the courage and take the time to examine what or whom is not serving us any longer. It is a time to keep clearing away the old and allow ourselves to know that we don’t know instead of singing the same old tunes. These times of uncertainty are extremely uncomfortable for all us needing the illusion of being in control. And yet it is exactly these times, when attended to with attention and silence, that allow us to better understand what poisons us and what feeds us. Here’s to a mindful new year.

Practice dying while alive

Death is a complicated topic in our culture. Most of us are terrified by the specter of the inescapable ax hovering above our heads, and sublimate our fear in any number of disguises. It is one of the reasons why we can never sit still. Slowing down brings us face to face with our own frailty, and reminds us of our lack of preparedness for the final letting go. One sees a similar fear in our behavior around the dying. On numerous occasions I have been at the bedside of someone a step away from death when a friend or relative drops by to offer some asinine comment like “you look great” or “ I know you will pull through this”. These comments are our egos talking; on some level we believe we can bypass this final exit.

We can deepen and enrich our lives by examining our conscious and unconscious attitudes towards death. In my experience, it is possible to learn about dying while we are living, and it is a valuable knowledge. When our actual death comes, most of us leave in the middle of something—we do not get to choose our moment of passing. Very few of us leave when our egos are ready. So it is good practice to see what feelings come up when we do have to leave things unfinished.

A meditation that I do from time to time is to lie down and feel what it might be like if I was dying. In my mind, I release all that I hold dear, all the plans and dreams and love that surround me in that moment. I pay attention to the emotions that come up and my reluctance to let go. And then I practice letting go. Try this exercise with some heart—it can show you much about where you are in your life.

Another activity that I practice is to stop an experience that I am engrossed in. Let’s say I am watching a movie that I find engaging and I force myself to walk out before the end. Or I am working on my motorcycle and before I finish the job I put down my tools. You can have the same experience by putting aside a book that you are immersed in. I follow all these actions by sitting with the agitation that comes from my ego not being satiated. Practice it: the force of the agitation might surprise you. With repetition, it does become easier. Practicing dying leads to living more fully. And letting go a little now can make it easier when death does arrive.

I took a walk today

I took a walk today. As I do every workday, at 6:00 AM, four blocks from
my apartment to my office. This is like walking in brackish water; the
late-night party people are straggling home while the early birds are
walking their dogs or jogging to the gym. I feel my feet on the hard
concrete and drop my breath. I start the day by attempting to be as
present as I can as this moment will inform the rest of my day. My
game with myself is to notice several new things on each walk: an
unnoticed piece of architecture, a crack in the sidewalk or an unfamiliar
dog. The color of the flowers in front of the deli was particularly bright in
the cloudy twilight. The smell of bacon in front of the diner was particularly
pungent, hanging in the humidity of the early morning.

The same walk for over a decade and something new every day. Yet the
witness, this old friend who watches through my eyes and smells through
my nose, who lives within and beyond this single human specimen, is strangely
the same. What if I had died last night and I am in a bardo state, my spirit walking
out of my apartment out of habit? I chuckle, feel my feet and drop my breath. I
take solace in the fact that in the river of life this city street carries, my awareness
of this witness is all I have. Thirty three years walking these New York City streets,
the teenage boy and the middle aged man, walking step in step.

The moment is our only guide

I had a woman ask me recently how she can make a decision when she doesn’t know what the immediate future will bring. As for many of us presently, there was an inner as well as outer sense of unrest in her life. It was demanding her growth through some challenging circumstances beyond her control. It can be taxing in a culture that fears change and breeds complacency to constantly listen to the inner voice and not to run on auto pilot.

A great example of this is our melting economy and how we are all being lulled back to sleep into an unsustainable cycle of consumption and debt as if everything is back to normal. We have to recognize that this inner as well as outer chaos is not something to be feared but rather something to befriend and be informed by. Chaos does bring with it a message and direction that will lead to a different way of being within and without. I find that at this time we need to have the patience, courage and wisdom to leave open the space and live with the unknown before the new reveals itself. We usually get one piece of information at a time when we are moving to a more authentic space. For example we might get that we need to change our job, home or relationship but no other information. Generally, we need to act on that one piece until the next piece is revealed. This is not some cruel joke or test by our psyche but rather the only way something new can be revealed. Otherwise we will be back where we were internally but with new surroundings. This is difficult for our egos since our tendency is to want to fill it with the old as soon as some neurotic behavior gets loose from its mooring and we feel uncomfortable in the newness or unknown. It takes courage and constant vigilance to live empty until the new reveals itself unto us, one piece at a time.

Let me explain what this can look like with a pedestrian example in my own life. Last week I was holding a meditation gathering at a temple where I have been holding it for about a decade now. A mass email was sent out several days prior for the Sunday evening event. I usually tend to get there an hour before to prepare the space and it was at this time that I realized I could not find the key to the place. The person whose space it is was traveling in India and I was not sure if he was back yet. Several unanswered phone call later I was still without a response or the key. In that moment, I had to surrender to the two pieces of information that I had: there was a gathering to be held with no way of reaching every one in time to tell them of the predicament and that there was no way to access the space. As I checked in, I got that I just need to go and sit by the door of the temple. I have learned not to limit the possibilities so I just sat in front of the door of the space and informed people as they were gathering that there was no key. There was fifteen minutes left before the start time and one of the attendees had managed to find a space for the group that can range from twenty five to eighty people several blocks away. Not an easy task on a Sunday evening in Manhattan within a fifteen minute time limit. And another was on the verge of finding another space when I got a call from the man with the key saying that he had indeed just gotten back from India. After a rush dash to and fro, the space was opened five minutes after the designated time.

So to break it down: I get that it was time to hold a meditation gathering and send out a mass email. That is the first piece of information. Then the day of and several hours before I find I have no key. That is the second piece of information and the place where I have to surrender into helplessness and work on not getting anxious about it since after all, I am helpless. I check in again and get that I need to show up at the temple’s door, but I have no solution or expectation. That is the third piece of information. Then the situation resolves itself. It could have just as well been that every one had to go home, then that would have been what was needed by the group psyche. The tricky part is to get the ego’s desire of what resolution needs to look like out of the way.

The important thing here is not to limit the outcome; not to see a worst or best case scenario. We do all we can with the information at hand, making room for our helplessness while keeping an eye out for underlying anxiety. Order, disorder, chaos which then leads to a new order. Our souls are beckoning. How are you answering?