Perfectly Tense

The desire to improve yourself is valid and even important. Without it, you are unlikely to realize your full potential creatively and experientially. But it can take two forms, and it’s important to cultivate the healthier of the two, or else the whole enterprise becomes self-defeating.

On the one hand, you may desire to improve yourself because you feel you are inadequate. There is an ideal to which you must aspire, and until the day you finally measure up you are worthless. This is the illusory form of self-improvement, the John the Bastard (Keanu Reeves) of Much Ado About Nothing. "This is my happy face"The problem with this mindset is that it’s like dangling a carrot on a stick and attaching it to your back. For every step forward you take, the carrot moves an identical amount, leaving you as far away from contentment as you ever were. In fact, it’s worse that that. Because even if somehow you get the carrot, the “one day I’ll be good enough” mentality will create a new carrot for you to chase after. That’s because this approach feeds your insecurities rather than freeing you from them. Carrots are insecurity's favorite food. The mismatch between your reality and your ever-elusive fantasy of "perfection" will fill your body and mind with tension, creating problems in your relationships and generally undermining your wellbeing.

But this kind of destructive desire for self-betterment can readily be transformed into the other, healthier kind. In this version, we desire to improve ourselves not because we feel we are inadequate as we already are, but for the sheer joy of becoming what we are capable of being. This human life is an incredible feast, and by staying static we only eat soup. If you are gifted a Ferrari, you drive it. If you are gifted tickets to see your favorite band you go. You don’t just stay at home because that is what you’re used to. Yet we have all been gifted a human life, and still many people fail to fully use it because they are happier to just stick with what "works" even if it leaves them unfulfilled. It takes a big effort at first to overcome that inertia. But once you’re in motion, happiness becomes habitual. You’re in the Ferrari, cruising on the open road; you’re at the concert, dancing to your favorite song; you’re fully alive, and so glad for it.

Making the Change

There are two main ideas that are usually used to bridge this transition. The first is that you are perfect as you already are, and the second is that life has no inherent meaning beyond that which you create for yourself, so you might as well make it an ass-kicking meaning.

Like most ideas, these can be extremely powerful or utterly powerless, depending on who’s hearing them and how they are expressed. I encourage you to look for a way of understanding them that rings true for you, and gives you inspiration, rather than one that turns you off. Try to find the best possible interpretation of them rather than the worst. I find that's a good way to approach other people's ideas in general.

If you find the “you are perfect right now” line to be insipid, consider taking it up a logical level. Of course, you’re not perfect as measured against some ideal of your own or society’s construction. But nobody is, some people are just better at faking it. So what would have to shift to make the line true? The ideals against which we measure ourselves would have to be arbitrary rather than timeless. At times, all of us suspect this to be the case. But to take it beyond an intellectual thought into a deeper realization, we need to experience what is timeless. That’s why meditation is so effective at improving “self-esteem.” It puts us in touch with the timeless, so that our time-bound concerns lose their urgency. It literally expands your mind until the roaring neuroses that once filled it now become so small they barely squeak.

"Take a bath. Moi? Hahaha!!"If you find the “life has no inherent meaning” approach daunting and even depressing, don’t worry. You’re in good company. Jean-Paul Sartre found it nauseating (though, being French, it may have just been the smell of his unwashed armpits that caused this*). If you feel undermined and uneasy, that’s perfect – it’s the first step. What comes next is a leap of sorts. You could call it a leap of faith, but that expression has lost its original power and tends to be used pejoritavely these days. So perhaps its better to call it a leap of co-creation. You become the author of your own experience.

Fear and Trembling 

At first, this is a mantle we shudder under. But as time goes on, the glove will fit. As soon as you stop blaming others around you for your unhappiness, you have no way to deflect it. So instead of being passively unhappy, you become actively unhappy. At this point, you realize you have immense power to control how you feel and respond to everything that happens to you. And eventually (though this point may take a while to reach) you will decide that enough is enough. 

It’s as though you’ve been standing in the hallway outside the control booth for your emotions your whole life, assuming the door is locked and there’s someone else inside pulling the levers (probably some combination of your parents, your partner, God and the Man). Then one day you decide to try the handle. Turns out it’s not locked after all, and there’s no one else in there. Of course, all your problems don’t just suddenly go away. There’s still the lifelong task of figuring out how the controls actually work. But the underlying anxiety and feeling of helplessness are no longer there. And what’s more, the view from the control room is a lot clearer and wider-ranging that that from the hallway. Moreover, it’s a lot more fun.

Of course, it’s easy to mistake this insight for an “anything goes” pass. If there’s no inherent meaning to life, then why shouldn’t I just do whatever I want? The short answer is because that would make you an Asshole. This is an important technical term that we can go into another time. If you want proof that “anything goes” doesn’t work, just try it. You’ll find yourself more miserable than ever. Plenty of people realize they have incredible power to create their own world, and then go and create an obnoxious one. These people are the most unhappy of all – their life is full of struggle, and they realize they have no one to blame but themselves. No one can bear that sort of pain for long, so inevitably they start back on the path of deflecting blame and villainizing the people around them. Soon, they are back at square one, and they forget they ever had the power to author their own experience. Only if you use your individual freedom for more than just narrowly individualistic goals will it last.

So go for it – take your life by both hands. Go be the best you can be. Not because you are inadequate as you are. You are already perfect, and there are no objective standards by which to measure your worth anyway. But there are standards. They are not ones you can create all on your own. Nor are they ones that are created entirely independently of you. You must co-create your life’s value structure. And then have a whole boatload of fun aspiring to live up to it.

 - David 

*Disclaimer: I have many French friends, and loved living in France. Far from being xenophobic, I love all peoples equally. However, I grew up in England where ridiculing all things French is de rigeur.

Human Nature

“And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life…you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.”

- Kahlil Gibran

Today there was a huge thunderstorm in Minneapolis. The day had been humid, a dense fug hanging in the air. Briefly stranded in the Seward Co-op, I decided to walk the six or so blocks home in the thinning rain. To my delighted surprise, the rain was warm. What a beautiful feeling, to be washed in warm rain – especially when you expected iciness.

The weather and the changing seasons have a clear effect on our moods and other natural rhythms, yet this is something that we as a society have largely lost our understanding of. We make token gestures towards it: the summer vacation, the midwinter holiday season, the September return to school. However, in a world increasingly focused on human beings as productivity machines rather than people, our original connection to nature has largely been severed. 

You can see this in the way we treat animals and our environment. Whether or not you eat animals, nobody can reasonably deny that the meat “industry” is largely barbaric and inhumane. Deforestation and pollution are rotting away the lungs of our planet as we level every surface and cover it in concrete. Three thousand years ago, the Daoists pointed out that the best measure of a society is how it treats animals and the environment. By their standard, we are currently the worst civilization in the known history of the world.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. The same technological prowess that we now use to destroy can also be used to preserve and restore. Our charity of the month for May is Environment Minnesota, and a few months back it was the World Land Trust’s rainforest conservation program. If you have recommendations for other environmental charities, please let us know.

But in order to undo the damage on a macro level, we need to start by healing our own individual relationships to nature. Here’s a simple exercise that can help. Think of an animal you’ve seen while walking outdoors. It could be a squirrel, a cat, or a bird. If you’re lucky, it could even be a bald eagle, a narwhal or a chupacabra. Pay attention to its movements and markings. Watch how it interacts with its environment. Once you have formed a clear picture in your mind, sit or lie down and close your eyes. Imagine what it would be like to live in that animal’s body, to see through its eyes. Imagine its internal life, its instincts and emotions. Just a couple of minutes spent in this way can have a profound effect in restoring our lost connection.

Consider that the shamans of South America honor the plant world as the greatest university of all, that water may be able to store emotional information, and that people who spend time outdoors are less prone to depression.

We can’t spend our whole lives “protected” from nature by central heating, air conditioning, clunky shoes and automobiles. A screensaver is no substitute for a real vista, and a Blackberry™ will never taste as good as its organic namesake.

Speaking of which, while researching this post, I came across a great article in Time magazine. My favorite part is where the writer eloquently describes mankind’s fall from grace over the last two hundred years:

Eco-therapists point out that human beings have evolved in synchrony with nature for millions of years and that we are hard-wired to interact with our environment — with the air, water, plants, other animals. But in the past two centuries, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, people have been steadily removed from the natural world, our lives regulated not by the sun or moon but instead by the factory clock. Recently it's gotten worse, with the rise of the Internet and other technologies, like iPhones and BlackBerrys, that dominate our lives, pushing us even further from any appreciation of our natural surroundings.

The editor felt this was a perfect point at which to interpose a bolded red ad entitled “See the best iPhone applications.” S/he either has a great sense of humor or no shame.

This separation from nature is one of the main reasons why people are becoming so alienated from their own internal, psychological seasons. So now that the good weather is here, get outside! Get up ten minutes earlier and take a walk around the block before you get in your car. Or take an al fresco detour on the way to your next appointment. We’re also going to offer some outdoor yoga classes this summer – watch the facebook page or sign up for our mailing list if you want to take part. And if you see a thunderstorm looming, don’t lose heart! The rain might just turn out to be warmer than you thought. The same holds true of the “thunderstorms of your heart.” Just sayin’.

 - David 

All the images in this post were shot in Minnesota

All Change

As the class of 2012 prepares to graduate, I am reminded of what a significant transition this time is for most students. For many, the end of your scholastic career will be the biggest transition you’ve faced up until this point: the end of one way of life and the beginning of another.

In yoga, we talk a fair amount about finding a balance between stability and freedom within the poses. The two are constantly in flux and as adept practitioners we learn to become sensitive to these fluctuations, how to modulate them.

The transitions between poses are equally important, though they often receive less attention. In these moments the balance shifts and we enter into passages of tremendous freedom and limited stability. So it is with the transitions in our life: we forsake the stability of the familiar for the possibility of the unknown.

As a culture, we now experience more transition than ever: we change jobs more, divorce more, and relocate more than previous generations. And yet despite our mania for change – or perhaps because of it – we seem to have lost the ability to recognize its telltale psychological effects. 

Many people today feel constantly nervous or ill at ease. And in many cases that’s because they haven’t been able to take time out of the hustle and bustle of their daily life to examine their underlying liminality (or “in-betweenness”). This lack of awareness is problematic, I think, because along with the many exciting things that transition brings, it almost always injects some measure of uncertainty. 

As a reader and a writer, I relish ambiguity and uncertainty.  In our own lives, however, it can feel unwelcome (and even angst-inducing).

We all hope for elegant and fluid transitions, and the more we pay attention, the more we heighten the probability of this occurring. But awkward and clumsy transitions happen too, and when they do it doesn’t mean that we’ve failed. Rather, we’ve created unexpected opportunities to learn.

When I look back on my own periods of transition and uncertainty I think it would have comforted me to see that time as a natural part of the movement of life. Our growth depends on our ability to hazard moments of instability.

***

Last year, I went to my sister’s (and brother-in-law's) graduation at Northwestern, where Stephen Colbert gave the commencement address, and talked about the importance of change. The whole speech was great but below is a particular highlight:

- Megan

Self-Concept

I just got back from celebrating my dearest friend Tanya’s birthday in NYC. Many of my most illuminating conversations occur when Tanya is sitting across the table and I have longed to touch on some of our topics of discussion in this blog. One subject that we frequently return to—without necessarily labeling it as such—is the idea of self-concept.

Tanya and I met as freshmen in college, at a time when our self-concept perhaps outweighed our self-knowledge and life experience. In the intervening years, we have spent countless hours (and gallons of coffee) measuring expectation against reality.

In Tanya’s view, self-concept is almost synonymous with integrity. To some extent, I agree. People who “don’t know who they are” have always unsettled me somewhat. The word “dissipation” connotes—to me, anyway—a dissolved or broken sense of self, a lack of moral center. A clear sense of self, on the other hand, seems to foster a more reliable and coherent outlook.

In the yogic view, however, our self-concept is the cause of our suffering, the root of our clinging and aversion. (In the words of Hamlet, “there is nothing good nor bad but thinking makes it so.”) Furthermore, our failure to live up to our ideas about ourselves leaves us bitterly disillusioned.

In The Wisdom of Yoga, Stephen Cope writes about the ego ideal:

“Each of us is driven by these same kinds of unconscious ideals—fixed ideas about who we are and who we should be. These ideas come from a well of motivations, volitions, and drives of which we’re almost entirely unaware. Nonetheless, this web of thoughts, feelings, and images drive most everything we do—including spiritual practice and psychotherapy. Our unconscious ideals cause us to sacrifice our true lives to a beautiful chimera, a haunting dream, a compelling illusion.”

Cope writes that the ego ideal seems to exist at the very center of our being. “For most of us,” he continues, “these internal ideal representations are experienced as the best part of us.” In other words, we sometimes confuse our self-concept for self-knowledge.

Ultimately, self-concept (even the noblest kind) is a construct—a bricolage of our aspirations, fears, ideas about who we are, as well as the things we’ve been told about ourselves. And this hodge-podge of influences is inevitably a powerful force in how we live our lives.

Once we become aware of the constructed nature of our identity, however, we can reclaim a degree of control. Instead of passive victims of external circumstances, we can become the architects of our own self-concept. Ultimately, we owe it to ourselves to bring a level of awareness to how we choose to regard ourselves. There are two things that strike me as important in making this effort:

1. That we be open to (and accepting of) change. The self you imagined at 18 probably has little bearing on the self you’ll be at 40. The more clearly we learn to see, the less rigid our self-concept becomes. (Otherwise stated: as our insight grows, our need for a firm self-concept diminishes.)

2. That we focus on values rather than appearances. We tend to conflate the two, seeking the trappings of our values rather than the value itself. We think we value success when we really desire wealth. Or perhaps we imagine we value intellectualism when we really covet academia’s symbolic capital.  (The list could go on forever.)

The closer we hew to the heart of our values, rather than their fruits, the more fulfilling our lives will be. 

- Megan

Tender Surrender

Many great thinkers have expressed the idea that there can be no spirituality without surrender. Surrender means laying down your weapons, ceasing to resist that which you have been fighting. It means relinquishing control (though not necessarily responsibility). It requires a shift in perspective from one where the universe revolves around you to one in which you are merely one part of a profounder puzzle.

This is hard for us in the West. We have been trained always to be on our guard, never to trust guilelessly. In “cultured” societies, naïveté is the last thing we want to be guilty of. Or, in more colloquial terms, nobody wants to be the sucker at the table.

And indeed, such skepticism may at times serve us well. In one sense, the very founding of the United States was a direct act of rebellion against mindless surrender to authority. There was hope that a new nation could grow up free from the choking hierarchies of Europe. To this end, the founders set out to form a government and culture predicated on a deep mistrust of power and charisma (five minutes spent with any congressman today will convince you that, true to this founding vision, charisma is still entirely absent from most of the United States government). Unfortunately, just as a kid denied candy will grow up to gorge himself, this has somewhat backfired, and is one reason why cult leaders are able to gain so much traction in the United States.

Of course, the other country where insane cult leaders are most easily able to gather a following is none other than mother India, one of the least anti-authority states ever formed. All of which is simply to say that – as with so much else in life –  neither extreme is healthy.

The key point here is that not just any surrender will do (otherwise the French would be universal spiritual masters). The question is, surrender of what to what.

Some things to surrender: your self-importance, but not your self respect; your atomism but not your autonomy; your feelings of omniscience, but not your commitment to rational decision making; your hang-ups and socially conditioned prejudices, but not your conscience or your desire to get along with those around you.

Some things to surrender to: your personal ideals but not your personal attachments; your god but not your church; your love but not your lover; your unbounded truth but not any one of its bounded expressions; your wisdom but not your need to always be right; your spiritual teacher – not the one with the beard and the holy book, but the only one who really counts…the one within.

 - David