I’m listening to Bob Doto speak on Aiden Helfant’s podcast about the connections between spirituality and PKM. There are some things I love:
- the way he talks about giving inspiration “a place to land so that you can come back to it"
and some things I have to grapple with:
- the framework of “capturing and riding” inspiration/spirit.
It’s been a minute since I’ve been horseback, and while I love horses, there was something about “riding lessons” that didn’t sit right with me. It could be all the money that flies around horse culture on the East Coast of the US (among many other places in the world), that most folks who “ride” are the privileged few who can afford to. Or maybe it was the fact that since we were pretty small kids when our mom took us on this riding lesson venture, that we were put on old ponies with names like Brandy and… General Custer?
Either way, my experience ”capturing and riding” bears no resemblance to the pictures my imagination conjures of Dothraki horse folk catching and breaking wild horses. And I don’t love that image, although it’s a lot cooler and more exciting than me ‘n Brady sidling around the dressage ring.
I think my discomfort or dislike resides in the word “capture.” I don’t want to capture anything. To me that word sounds too much like imprison or dominant, control or seize. Even when I think about riding the waves of my breath, which I do all the time, I don’t capture it first. I “simply” accept the gift, and exhale thanks (I put simply in quotes to emphasize simple ain’t always easy). And maybe this is my own bias showing up in some ways. I tried to make rabbit snares once. It was hard and I lost interest, maybe because I wasn’t hungry enough. Maybe that’s true here too. I want to be open to inspiration/spirit, not capture it though. To give it “a place to land” so that we have an agreed upon meeting place we can both go as we feel called, places I can go to listen and reflect and remember. I am grateful every time I notice I am inhaling, and I can no more capture my inhale than I can stop breathing and continue to live. I think the same may hold true with spirit/inspiration. I am grateful to learn new ways and continue to practice old ways of giving breath and inspiration places to land I can more easily return to. And I am grateful to Bob for speaking his mind in such generous and thoughtful ways.
Bob also mentions Gyan Yoga, which is called Jnana yoga as well. This is the yoga of knowledge or wisdom. While I am familiar with the term jnana yoga, I never thought about my own practices in that way. I study a lot with Tracee Stanley, and just reading some of the Wikipedia page on the “I am, I am not” nature of gyan/jnana yoga I can see much of what I’ve been practicing with her is this. I feel a lot of gratitude for teachers who guide me into embodiment of a teaching without having to know all of the details about it. These are ways of being far more than logical knowing. I am also grateful for teachers who emphasize the importance of creating from these places of embodied knowing. Sense making is a yogic, spiritual practice— flexibility of mind as well as body, and a sense of nonattachment with all of it.
As Bob talks about in the same podcast episode referenced above, and as I often say in many of my own yoga and meditation classes to students, we have bodies and emotions and it is good and wise to acknowledge the sensations and qualities in all facets of our being as long as we don’t over identify with any of them, as long as we don’t become overly attached. This can be difficult, and to me, it’s where I see the greatest benefit to practicing sense-making, thought organization, personal knowledge management, whatever you want to call it. For me, I am more open minded when I literally open my mind up in this way— I let words come out onto pages and I share them with other minds so we can expand our minds together in good ways. “Strong beliefs loosely held” I’ve heard a lot lately—I make sure what I’m saying is what I actually believe, is as grounded and well thought out/researched as it can be before I share it because that is part of my responsibility as a community member, and then I share it. I might feel fear about this, or I might feel like whatever I’m sharing is the most important thing ever and everyone will be super stoked about it, it doesn’t really matter. I have to let go of those attachments. Acknowledge them if they’re there, pause and reflect, maybe change something that needs to be changed, and then let go. Practice and nonattachment are the cornerstone of my yoga practice, and giving thanks is why I am here. Thanks for reading, and please feel welcome to share your thoughts here too!
Also how synchronous is this page I made for my bullet journal in mid-January well before I listened to Bob and Aidan’s conversation or wrote any of what’s here now?
#evergreen