Last weekend in Teacher Training we talked about how challenging it is to interrupt habits of reaction and destruction, and decided that the only way to make a different choice is to notice when we’re in the pattern. The noticing itself takes remarkable focus and intention.

Not coincidentally, this came across my path today:

Krishnamurti on Close Attention
Close attention is very hard work

You may know the superficial layers of your mind, but to know the unconscious motives, drives, fears, the hidden residue of tradition, of racial inheritance – to be aware of all that and to give it close attention is very hard work; it demands a great deal of energy. Most of us are unwilling to give close attention to these things; we have not the patience to go into ourselves step by step, inch by inch, so that we begin to know all the subtleties, the intricate movements of the mind. But it is only the mind which has understood itself in its totality and is therefore incapable of self-deception, it is only such a mind that can free itself of its past and go beyond its own movements within the field of time. This is not very difficult, but it requires a great deal of hard work.

The Collected Works, Vol. X – 253

And then this:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller

Satya is one of the Yamas, or restraints, of yoga. Its most simple definition is perhaps truth, honesty, non-lying.

Judith Lasater expands this definition by saying that Satya is about slowing down, filtering, carefully considering our words so that when we choose them, they are in harmony with the first yama, ahimsa (non-harming, non-violence).

A quote from the book The Liar in Your Life: “Research on new acquaintances has shown, fairly consistently, that people lie to each other about three times every ten minutes.”

Three times every ten minutes? Ouch!

The author also suggests that the effects of lying impact not only the target of the lie (well, unless they don’t know… but don’t we kind of know on some level?), but also the liar. “Even white lying makes liars feel a little worse, and this coloring of mood can last even after the conversation has returned to more honest territory.” The author calls the effect of the lie an “emotional smudge on the interaction.” Another ouch.

My teacher Mary once offered a challenge to my trainee group as an experiment with satya:

Give yourself an hour where you do not lie in thought, action or deed. No half-truths, no exaggeration to make yourself look more funny or saintly or smart. Then do an asana practice where you ask yourself to be brutally honest and present. No impressing, no making it look better than it is.

This exercise in unsparing honesty still resonates today—I’ll catch an exaggeration to make a story more compelling or a white lie to boost a friend when maybe silence would be just as supportive. This honesty becomes essential on the mat—where are our honest limits, am I tired or undisciplined, who am I trying to impress anyway?!

Sometimes stretching the truth becomes so automatic we don’t even realize it’s not true! Mary says that even being in the past or future is a little bit of a lie.

Try an hour of satya with yourself… sincere, authentic truthfulness. Let me know how it goes…

There’s a lot to be serious about these days: the economy, the environment, world affairs….

I’m a Capricorn, so I tend to be a fairly serious person. At least I take my worries and suffering pretty seriously.

A recent magazine article on “How Not to Act Old” listed rule #16 as Don’t Be the Ricky, suggesting that many relationships have a Lucy and a Ricky—one person barefoot in the grass (or the grapes) and the other who won’t even come to the picnic (no time, of course). Don’t be the Ricky, it warned.

In my efforts to do good and right in the world, I sometimes forget to be silly and full of wonder.

My mom threw a “1/2 birthday party” for me and my cousin last night (she remembers how to be a Lucy sometimes). Being around my cousins reminds me of that lightness. There were twin 2 year olds at the party. They had that lightness.

As I’ve “grown up,” have I lost the curiosity and sparkle of pre-mortgage? Suddenly it’s all online banking and eco grout cleaner and I said no eating on the couch!

Can I have that with a side of sing-a-long too loud with the ipod, wear a flower in my hair, in black cowboy boots, please?

The poets say it better than anyone… enjoy this by Billy Collins. I hope that soon I risk enough to fall down. And when I do, I hope there is light.

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.