Occupy Self

I spent Thanksgiving weekend practicing teachings recently offered to me on my human body, specifically how to use its tangible physicality to locate and work with my insubstantial, intangible mind. Four days of Occupy Self.

The first step was, in a manner of speaking, to claim squatter's rights by directing total attention to those parts of my body that were touching the ground--or a cushion or a chair that was itself touching the ground. The practice was to notice how without judgment or demand, the ground, aka the Earth, so willingly supports me. With a little help from gravity, it does all the heavy lifting. There's absolutely nothing to do but relax, just relax the entire body into its embrace, sending all tension and stress down into the Earth. It's there for me, for all of us, a cushy support 24/7.

Realizing there's no need to fight to hold the body up is a tremendous relief, an eraser that clears the mind. Feeling grounded, or anchored if you prefer, makes it possible to direct total attention to breathing, to the air that comes in and then goes out of the body. In and out, in and out... to just be keenly aware of this continual interchange between the body and outer space. That too is friendly and supportive, and becoming a bit more palpable.

Every in-breath is a fresh lease on life, a new start. Every out-breath is a death, a release. Inner space fills and merges with outer space; the body exhales and separates itself. The body itself begins to feel like space, an open window with air blowing through it. Not so heavy, not so settled, not so inflexible as it seems.

The practice is to breathe deeper into the body. Deep down to hit the spot four fingers below the navel, deep inside the core. Tibetans call this sweet spot "the origin of all dharmas", which means all phenomenon. They mean it is every person's epicenter. I don't know how they figured this out without MRI machinery, but this is actually the embryonic spot we all stem from, the very source of our life. "It is the place where the egg becomes a ball of cells that form space for the spinal cord to sprout," a medical doctor just explained to me. "That's like a template/architectural blueprint from which the pattern of the body gets formed. It's the first movement of creation and sets the tone for the entire process, which of course, is ongoing until death terminates it."

So the practice is to hit the spot with full attention and try to hold it there. Magically, effortlessly, all perceptions shift as the mind expands. It's possible to simultaneously feel grounded in the Earth yet free and wide as outer space. It's easy to see I am not so limited as I thought. There is more...much much more...vastly more. Possibility is infinite if I don't choke it off again.

Sense impressions become astoundingly clear--unfiltered high definition. And just as magically the crucial distinction between what is real--what is actually perceived by the senses-- and what is imagined as we experience that--our wishful or ignorant spin-- becomes more self evident. This is "waking up." Or in non-Buddhist words, a bailout. This now subprime collection of hair, skin and guts obsessively covered with fashionable clothes, this old bag of liver spots and bad knees who has become so frighteningly forgetful she went the wrong way up a one-way street she knows very well, this is not me. I am not stuck with or in older age. I am beyond that.

I could occupy myself with this realization forever.

Yours In The Dharma 2001-2010, Sandy Garson Copyright 2001-2010 Sandy GarsonAll rights Reserved

~Sandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/

Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, ReligionThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.