Focus on the Unmoving

Last week in yoga I was working on the balance pose "dancer" with a small class. The goal of the pose is to balance on one leg while holding your other foot behind you in the palm of your hand. You may stand up straight or lean forward with the other arm extended, keeping your chest lifted. There is a strong temptation to look up at yourself as you bend forward, with the mirror only feet in front of your face, but this temptation leads to falling almost every time. "Focus on something that is NOT moving," said the teacher, and that excludes you!"

I thought about her comment as I fixed my gaze on the lines of tile on the floor. It seems true of every activity I do: piano, guitar, poetry, blogging, yoga, that when I get lost in the flow and forget myself I perform at my best, but when I stop to pat myself on the back, with comments like "Wow! I've got it now, I must be getting good" I imvariably hit a flat or fall flat, on my face.  The other extreme wreaks havoc on my flow, too; comments such as, "I will never get this, this is SO hard, and that other lady over there looks awesome" distract and topple my efforts.

Thich Nacht Hahn says ( in Your True Home) that "when you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything." It seems to me that if you are touching a moment with deep awareness, you are not simultaneously aware of yourself doing so. The self is lost, you are more the Buddhist idea of "no self" as you rise or fall with the sensory perceptions and emotions of that moment. This is difficult, as it runs contrary to many goals of Western society: to be important, with self well-defined, to be busy, hardly aware of moments passing as we focus on the calendar or to do list. Trying to embrace a moment deeply is like walking on a tightrope, fighting off the demands from all sides as we pause in our swift passage through time. We may fall, but for a short time we will be present in alll moments, past present, and future.