Tried to be more open today. What I read in Maria Popova's blog was an excerpt from Marion Milner's A Life of One's Own. Milner spent 7 years experimenting with how to live. It became a search for an authentic life. We are so programmed to lead the lives required of us by others, including the ever pervasive media something Milner didn't have to contend with in the 1930's, that we lose sight of who and what we are.
What makes me happy?
I'm not sure. I think the first few steps out of the house in the afternoon or early morning when I leave the ceilings behind and come into (or out of) the great dome of sky. Before I start to think, when the infinity of space first collapses the boundaries, I am free of self. It might be for a nanosecond or long enough to take that obligatory deep clearing breath but it is there. Then I fetter myself small with thoughts and half tos and plans and all the chains which take me away from the infinite now.
I think that's when I'm happiest. Not attaining, not accumulating, not doing, just being.
So yoga class. Hard work. She's a good instructor. Knows her stuff. At first her continuous commenting annoyed me. Now I don't mind. She is sharing what she knows and if she doesn't know it, what she should know she shares. We're all on a journey of some sort or another. Noticed today she conducts most of the class with her eyes closed. I love that. At home I do most of my practice with closed eyes. Today she echoed what Milner wrote about, the opening up to the world, the being in the world, the happiness which comes from that.
There are other kinds of happiness, certainly. The giddy joy of falling in love, the quiet happiness of lives shared in complete trust, the happiness of danger averted (or sickness or loss, etc.). There is also the happiness of creating. Painting/drawing when the signposts are there and it is the bringing into being the complete pix within those hard fought parameters, being lost in that creation. That is also joyful.
And there's the happiness of gratitude. Gratitude which bubbles out from an excess of spirit. Not the gratitude of rote. I must be grateful for this and I must be grateful for that. It's a gratitude of excessive life energy or love.
Authentic self is a tough one. Been working on that for years now. I skate up to it, dance with it for a day or two, then revert into the expected self depending on who's doing the expecting. But I think along with creation and gratitude, one of my greatest joys are memories and watching the vultures soar overhead. They hear me, and the come when I call them mentally. They perform an air ballet that delights my spirit and for a brief time, I soar with them.
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