On Being A Flute
How many things do we do, have to do, must do, do we let get done without realizing that ever move we make stirs the Universe? If we begrudge what we are doing, it stirs and rebounds and we will have reason to feel bitter, resentful, harassed, put-upon every time we do it…. I try to get through the stuff I dislike so I can get to the good stuff. Sometimes there is more Other Stuff than good stuff, but I just try to keep myself going and find reward in completing what I had to drive myself to do.
“The peace that comes with surrendered action turns into a sense of aliveness when you actually enjoy what you are doing.” - p297
It is not that I am obsessive about having peace, but I am darn close. I want to be able to be fully alive no matter what I am doing. Even painful things need to be felt fully. That is easy to feel. What is hard to feel is joy and excitement in doing mundane things. I am not delaying my sense of satisfaction. It is that I work more diligently to get something done Right! No good, nor best, nor in comparison to anything else…but that I am doing and conscious of doing rather than lost in thought, whether they be of drudgery or dislike which automatically springboards to other negative thoughts, with me…to simply being conscious of what my body is feeling while I work…how it loves the moves it makes.
Eckhart wrote: “The waiting to start living syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state.” (p297) When I tally up the hours I was unconscious, I realize how very much I have missed. I have begun to find creative ways to complete things I have preciously disliked doing. I make games of it. I try to create a poem in my head as I do them. But I am lucky. There is not much I HAVE to do now. Being in Retirement has amazing bonuses.
See, Ego would have this statement torn to shreds but a few months ago: “It isn’t the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it. That aliveness is one with who you are.” (p298) I think recognizing that everything I do is a gift of some kind (and sometimes that takes creativity, believe me) makes what I do do worth noticing. So often I waited for someone else to notice and make judgment, then I noticed and made judgments from egoic state, and finally I am able to just notice what I do, honor that I can still do them…I am blessed, even in being able to get down on my knees and scrub a toilet for goodness sakes. I do not need to take pills of any kind for whatever little physical complaint I have, or what many, my age, do take… I notice I do things differently.
I have a secret. I have arthritis so badly in my left hand that it takes until about noon for me to straighten and bend my fingers on my right hand. I type when I can because writing is my major passion. I tell myself that the movements of the hand and fingers will keep them more pliable. But, secretly, I have begun to use my left hand more. I can not write with pen or pencil very easily for some months now…and I can not seem to use them as well as I can type. The pain in my hand has made me appreciate what my hands do and have done. As well, I cannot walk very far any more due to neurpathy in my feet, which ahs traveled up and now my thighs go numb if I stand or walk very far and then my left hip starts spasming. My balance is not as good as it was and I have taken some wild and wonderfully aerobic jumps and running disasters off the flower garden stones. But I still create. I still walk when and where I can, perhaps only more slowly…and therefore I stay more present and see and experience much more. I had always been on a dead run…now I am capturing moments along the way. I am finding ways to compensate. My body finds ways to compensate…isn’t the body wonderful? I am more conscious of my body…and had it not hurt, I may not have come to this yet.
Eckhart says: “When the creative power of the universe becomes conscious of itself, it manifests as joy. (p297) I understand the sweet smiles of many of the elders…they know…. There is joy in being made aware of things we took for granted. There is much joy that I might have missed.
“Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.” P298 Even now, as I move into Elderhood, there is so much to experience. I have the time, the moments to contemplate, and one of the greatest things I have learned is that “a nap” is the most glorious thing and I do not even feel guilty for them. I have spent a few days contemplating my naps. Imagine!
Have you ever really been present in rest and then noticing the pattern of rest and then sleep? It is a wonderful sort of meditation to feel the body sort itself out to rest…when the mind is quietly being present and noticing what it is doing.
There are those things I ignored, did in a rote fashion, and I missed much Joy, but I am learning to search and find it in the things I do. As Eckhart says, even though there is Joy, “You are still an ordinary human.” (P 300) and I think the key is that I was spending a great deal of energy and time trying NOT to be ordinary and feeling the whimsy and wail of never quiet making it in anything. See, I never recognized real JOY. Joy was not success, nor challenges met, nor Ego-driven things. Joy was always in me. I just had to sit still long enough to notice them…and in noticing that Joy…I am noticing the miracle of being human. Now, as I allow things to just BE, I can recognize a deeper level of the following quote that Eckhart wrote in his book: “I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through. Listen to this music.” - Hafiz-Sufi Master
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