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Boiling It Down
Spirit of Lake Harriet | by Jinjer Stanton
I used to fantasize about "the simple life." I fantasized about living
far from people and not having to depend on them for food, shelter and clothing.
I'd build my own house, grow my own food, weave fabric from wool sheared from my
own sheep. Yes, that kind of life is a lot of work, but I would always know what
has to be done. Over the years though, I've come to realize that the chief attraction
-- not needing to deal with the complexities of interacting with other people --
was the real fantasy. However remotely people live on this world, they have to deal
with others sooner or later.
And I love my computer. I'm very fond of toilet paper. Reading is one of my favorite
leisure activities and I am delighted that it doesn't take a six-mile hike for me
to get to my church on a Sunday.
My challenge has been to figure out how to walk the middle way: partaking of the
good things our culture has to offer without allowing my life to be overburdened
with the sheer volume of activities, belongings and responsibilities that lurk just
outside the door, ready to pounce.
Back when I wove this fantasy of the simple life, I was overwhelmed by the complexities
of the human world and it seemed to me that everyone else knew what the rules were.
Other people had expectations of me that I couldn't understand and I began struggling
to identify those expectations and meet them. As I did so, little bits of myself
began to tear away and get scattered to the winds. Living in the world got harder
rather than easier.
Then came a day when I rebelled and I began the slow process of reclaiming myself.
I began to see that my efforts to meet the expectations of others didn't really serve
them and were destroying me.
I began to pare away the irrelevancies. I began to ask myself questions like, "Is
this really necessary?" and I began to realize that by working so hard to meet
society's expectations, I was lessening my ability to make a real contribution to
society and to the world. That was something I could only do if I was whole and listening
to my own inner music.
It was difficult at first to know what my true self looked like and what my deepest
values were under the weight of the complexities of daily life. But little by little
I put the pieces in place.
We all make daily decisions for a wide variety of reasons: duty, desire to please
others, physical survival, need to "succeed," emotional reactions to situations,
desire to be creative and many others. Many of these reasons are noble and well-intentioned.
Many are reactions to the expectations of others.
After I'd done much of my work in this area I was given The Vein of Gold by Julia
Cameron one Christmas. There was a great deal of excellent information in it. There
were also some useful exercises. This one struck me most powerfully, because even
though I'd reclaimed so much of myself I discovered that I was still making many
decisions based on the expectations of society of what I should do.
Begin by asking yourself what motivates the decisions you make on a daily basis.
Make a note of the answer.
Now write a list of five or more people you respect (they can be living or dead;
people you know, people you don't know; they can be real or fictional, but they need
to be people whose lives arouse admiration in you). Next to each name write down
the quality you most admire in that person.
Carefully evaluate the list of qualities. Do any of them show up multiple times?
If you look more closely, is there a quality all the people you admire share? Make
a note of that.
Julia Cameron calls this your sacred value (I call it my core value). Compare this
to the reason you gave for the decisions you make on a daily basis.
My core value proved to be personal integrity. The people I admired (and still do)
were people who stood up for their personal truths whether it was approved by society
or not. This was a profound revelation for me.
I still find the needs of others tugging at me and occasionally inducing me to do
things I don't really want to do, but because I am aware now of what my core value
is, I can often say no, or recall my "yes" if I said yes when I shouldn't
have. It's simplified my life immensely. And it operates when I'm shopping, as well.
When I see something that's just so wonderful it deserves to be bought, I can say,
"Wow. Cool. But does it serve who I am?" If the answer is no, I can leave
it for the person who feels a "yes" well up inside them.
Knowing my sacred or core value allows me to boil my decisions down to their simplest
components. The more I live with personal integrity, the simpler my life becomes
for me and in the incredibly complex world we live in, that is a huge gift. It's
probable that your core value will not match mine, but perhaps using it to shape
your life will simplify things for you too.
Jinjer Stanton is a ministerial guide at Lake Harriet Spiritual Community and
a yoga teacher who combines hatha yoga with another ancient type of yoga called nada
yoga, the yoga of sound, or toning. The addition of toning to the hatha yoga we're
familiar with allows practitioners to go more deeply into poses and progress more
rapidly in their practice. For more information contact Jinjer by e-mail at jinjer@isd.net.
Copyright © 2005 Jinjer Stanton. All rights reserved. |
| June 2005 |
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