Za Wake Up thing--- talking about now, and being asleep

In my Sonoma days,

a nun came to town.

Not the Catholic kind, but Tibetan,
some fearless gal from Canada or Ohio
or something who
had
gone to
Nepal and sat in a cave for
????? a long time
under supervision of the Tibetan Buddhist
path

she'd gotten a lot of
strength wisdom freedom
from
this experience
and her talk was inspiring

after
wards
I joined the line of those
saying, Oh wow, thanks for your
talk, blah blah

And then,
going out to my bike
realized
that the blah balh
blah
had all been said in a state
of
sleep

eggads!
again!

oh, well.

sensing feet and arms and aware of light
and sound
i walked the now not asleep Chris
back into the building
and found the nun
and said,
you know last time I talked
to you about how great your
talk was
I wasn't conscious
now I am
and thanks

She woke up to match me
out of the shaking hands
daze
and we glowed
at each other for a brief
eternal now
moment
and
then I went back out
to my bike

it would be nice to say
i've been awake since
that moment,

but alas,
the learning
and slipping
and re re remembering
(which members?)
happens
over and over

luckily
it's a delight
to come home
each and
ever
y
time


ciao
for
NOW

Chris

ps sign up for newsletter if you wish,
place to right for that

Coming to Austin, art 2

Another day
another 22 minute run through

Sonoma Coast, in the middle of California,
called Northern California,
and near the OAK where the story/ talk
starts
and same time of year, October of 2010

So, I'm in the OAK airport, I'm in line, I've got all sorts of stuff,
I don't travel light,
if you come to dance, this is the full backpack I carry just for a couple
hours away,
and I've got this massage table like thing.

And I'm going to a place I've never been.

I'm on a journey.

The table is a journey.

My life since February 1, 2009 is a journey.

My life since April 13, 1945 is a journey.

This moment is on a journey, and either I'm awake to this moment,
on not.

And learning to wake to each moment,
to lots of moments
is a journey.

And you listen, you sit in a chair,
and if we did a few things besides what you usually do,
it would be a journey.

Yes, yes, listening to me talk, that is a journey, if I'd ever tell the story:
why am I going to Austin,
why am I leaving from OAK,
what's this about living on Orcas Island,
and what's THAT journey about?

Okay.
Let's come out of journeying, just a moment,
feel ourselves in this moment , in this chair,
or standing on this floor.

Can you and I sense the gravity of a spine holding up our head.
Can we find arms and legs and feet, and are our feet touching the ground.

Can we feel gravity.
Can we feel the air coming in and out of our lungs.

Once upon a time: no gravity.
Once upon a time: no breathing.
The womb.
We came out.
Wow: light, gravity, breathing.

Sound there had been all along.

So, I'm in Oakland, and I'm on my way to Austin,
and I'm a little scared.
I don't know anyone in Austin who's willing to depart from
their rut, their pattern, their hurry, their program,
their ongoing life
to welcome me at the airport, to put me up for a few
nights, to orient me to Austin.

They don't give a shit.
They are too busy.
I'm not important to them.
All could be true, or could be stories,
and the two people behind me in the line start the trip
off nicely:
What's the table for?
Feldenkrais and the Anat  Baniel Method.

Oh, we know that well.
We are both accupuncturists and going back to Vermont
and it does our heart good to see body work tables.

What I do isn't really body work, it's

We know, we know, Feldenkrais is fantastic, where are
you going?

Austin.

Do you know people there?

No.

You're moving there?

For the winter, October till April.
I want to work with more special needs children and musicians
as well as the usual aching backs, necks, shoulders.

In the summer you live in the Bay Area here?
(Does everyone know that OAK aka Oakland is in the Bay ARea,
next to Berkeley, but more wild and wooly and integrated and multilevel
and both right across the Bay from San Francisco, and that Bay
in Bay Area, is San Francisco Bay,
second biggest estuary in North America after the Cheesapeake Bay)

No, summers a small island up in the Pacific Northwest,
in Puget Sound, above Seattle, north of Victoria the city
at the tip of Vancover, Canada.
The island is called Orcas Island and I imagine it's beauty
is kind of like Vermont's.

We've heard of Orcas.

So you know people in Austin?

Two, but they won't get back to me, so I'm starting it with
couching surfing this couple I know over the internet.

Good luck.

And the line moves on


And they go to on plane, and I go to another,
and on my plane, more evidence of "good luck"
The people next to me are a nice young couple,
both in jeans,
and by the end of the flight they've had the three minute
elbow shoulder lesson,
and are excited about my work
and the two men in front of us, older
(as in my age, but the usual silver hair that accompanies
"my age" in the chronological sense,
look like lawyers, businessmen,
both handsome, obviously doing well,
and in jeans)

Austin is going to be good.

So, I've got this table.
I didn't always have this table.
I didn't always take off for new towns not knowing anyone.

How did I get the table, the craft, the skills to heal special needs children,
and radically improve the tone and ease and quality of a musician's playing,
and enhance sleep, or dance, or sex, or yoga or tai chi?

When did that start?

How did that start?

Mid fifties.

Why?

Went to a weekend workshop while living in Sonoma.

What am I doing in Sonoma, which is in the middle of California,
though that part is called Northern California?
I thought this was a journey from Orcas to Austin.

Well yes.

And
(damn 22 minutes is up)

And I might have a one man show here,
if I weave in a group lesson,
and someone lying on the table,
and how I learned Feldenkrais
and the whole
Sonoma, Tucson, Atlanta, Arcata, Orcas,
leaving Marlie
living together for five months though
we knew that end was Feb 1, 2009

and so on,
exciting
and
"I don't know" what I'm going

which is fine:
I'm in the discovery mood
mode
manner


tune in this afternoon, all seven readers,
and I'll take a continuing gander at this adventure tale

love
chris


And the journey to love
ah,
and
the one
to waking
ah

we'll see
we'll see
said the blind man

1009: Valentine's Day Offering, second post of the day, hey, hey

Think of “habitual talking.”

You have a partner, and they say a bit, and you say a bit. Usually people say no more than one or two sentences at a time, and then the next person has to chime in with their Very Important Thing to Say.

Sometimes this comes as an interruption, sometimes as just shoveling in the words at the first hint of slowing down or silence on the other person’s part.

Which means the talker has to rush ahead without any gaps, or their “air time” will be taken away. Which means: no time to pause, sense the moment, discover inside what we really want to say.

Most tragic: no time to wait for something besides our bundle of automatic speaking tapes.

Just like in movement: if we speak/ move fast, we have to do what we’ve always done. It’s the way the brain works. So, “normal conversation” almost guarantees two people’s robots spouting back and forth at each other.

Any way we cut it, we don’t have much time to say our bit, and we don’t give much time to the other. And what is said is the same old, same old, as if talking is some mental equivalent of taking a poop.

And another habitual process that contributes to the automatic/ robot nature of most talking is that when we are supposedly “listening,” we are most often formulating our next Very Important Thing to Say.

And it’s a wonder that the divorce rate isn’t any higher, because this description only hints as to how poorly we communicate when the “fur starts to fly” and our talking gets defensive/ offensive, when the couples of life go on the “warpath” / “argument trail” with the one(s) they supposedly love.

Grand if you want to be a robot. But what if you want to wake up?
Perhaps a little something different could come in handy. Like what?

Like this:

Find someone willing to spend some time talking with you in a way very different than “habitual” talking.

With this person, sit down with a kitchen timer, and set that timer to 2 or 3 minutes.

Take turns, so first one talks, the other listens, no interrupting, or face making. The talker can talk about present awareness, or likes and dislikes in their life, but not any either likes or dislikes about the one that is listening. When the timer goes off, the talker stops, and both people follow their breathing for a little while.

Then it’s the listener’s turn to talk and be heard without interruptions. Start the timer again, look into each other’s eyes, and begin, the second person now, to talk.

And how’s this for non-habitual: when we take our turn talking we don’t comment on the other person’s stuff. No advice, suggestions, one ups, theories, explanations.

Just speaking from what comes up in us when we leave the other person’s words and actions and ideas, problems and insights and successes and plans and failures alone.

No feedback, no advice, no criticism. Just staying with yourself for two or three minutes. Being listened to. Being witnessed. But not being helped, cured, fixed, one upped., questioned.

Each person gets to talk without having to live up to anything.

They just get to be. To pause. To explore within. To find out what if means to be present while talking.

This is good. This is big. This is huge, actually, and you’ll know that if you’ve tried to be awake while talking. And if you haven’t, this is your chance.

Good.

Back and forth. Maybe go for 4 minutes or 5, once you get the hang of it.

Back and forth and being present while you talk and present while you speak.

See if this is a kind of food, a kind of “intercourse” in a sweet and everyday meaning of that perhaps overloaded word.


Good.

Day Thirty-Five: Alive, Waking While Talking

Sensing ourselves, arms and legs, even when talking. This is amazing, and can be done.

We are programmed over and over and over to put our attention “out there” when we are talking. And that attention has a huge amount to do with spending a lot of time “up here” in our heads, preparing our next batch of words.

Usually we are preparing our next batch of words while the other person is still talking.

We listen to but the first sentence, or maybe even less, of what another person says before we go “up here” into our heads, to find the right tape loop, the right prerecorded offering that we will send out as our next bit of talking.

So we only partially listen, and then go up into our heads for a batch of words for “our turn.” And these words are very often words we have said over and over and over.

True thinking requires that we become quiet inside, and at least search for a new way of seeing and communicating what we want to say. What we really want to say, not just spout out something.


So this is the game today:

One, when another person is speaking, be quiet inside and sense our arms and legs and spine and follow our breathing and listen to their words, and listen to their hearts and listen for their souls.

Two, when it’s our turn, slow down, say less, search for something real to say, something that isn’t some stored away tape loop we’ve said so many times.

Three, while talking and listening, to be sensing our feet and our relationship to gravity and sensing arms and legs and spine, and our physical shape in each moment. Walking is grea for this, because at each moment one of our feet is pressing into the Earth, and at each moment our shape is changing.

Can we be aware of that?

Aware when talking, aware when walking: a sweet day.

72: What to do?

What to do? Wake up while talking.

Yesterday we were playing with being more awake to ourselves while we are moving our tongues around and talking to other people. But, there is another side to this sweet story.

Yes. The other person.

To person to whom we were talking, also know as, the person we were talking to.

Good.

Waking up in talking is hard, silly, amazing, fun, and one of the last stages of really being awake.

Sitting in your room or cave and being calm and clear, that’s nice, and then we go out and get involved in the world.

We talk.

Presumably to other people.

They listen, or pretend to listen, or do a bad or good job of listening, but they are there.

Can we hear our words and sense the vibration (not spiritually “energy” vibration, but the actual vibration in our throats and chests and head) of our speaking, AND look at and see the other person as they listen.

Watching their interest or disinterest. Watching their eyes. Watching their breathing. Watching their happiness or unhappiness.

Watching them struggling to pretend to listen while actually just rehearsing inside the words they are going to say next. (Just the way we do, so often, so often, so often.)

It’s all good, and it’s a big job and it’s an amazing one, paying attention in the moment inward to real here and now sensations as we talk, and outward to the physical sight and sound of the other person.

This is a game. This is a life: waking up to other people as we are in conversation with them.