As I think back I think it all began for me when I finally started working out in a gym in high school and I was sorely disappointed with the results. Though I spent those years also playing in JV and Varsity Soccer I managed to graduate weighing only 128 lbs at 6ft. You see I did cycle everywhere and it was Arizona, so I was pretty lean… but I wanted muscle. As any professional trainer will tell you I was going the wrong way though. That takes a strategy and a different sort of directed discipline, and why I think the more deterministic and adrenalined ways of many are not as good as coming from Calm.
This again reminds me of that Aubrey Marcus interview with Jordan Hall recently where they talked of the “spiritual war” we are now in at this time, and their mutual desire to be part of creating a more beautiful world as thinker Charles Eisenstein puts it. I feel they both are not really talking of coming from Calm really. Both in fact I think may have certain blocks to accomplishing that because of things that they probably think harmless or maybe even beneficial to that ends, but it is not just about the destination, but also the journey to get there right?
We must look at the ethicality of those mechanisms and practices within a truly higher or deeper reflective way. It’s of course thoroughly understandable if these are merely transitory tools, however even that must be reviewed as best as possible. In Aubrey’s case his interview a few months ago where he admitted he and his partner enjoy more S&M types of sexual practices denotes just this kind of not looking deeper for me. It helps little the person who he was interviewing further justified his practice of self and other harm even though it be consensual and supposedly cathartic, because that was his “right and freedom.”
It also struck me in the Aubrey and Jordan interview how their conversation about their sense of community could only be seen to come out of certain peak or adrenaline states. What about the mundane, where does that come into play. Most of us have neither the luxury nor the finances to support going to Everest or even many of these high investment type sports. Maybe we can afford the local gym and go balls to the wall until we drop, so somebody can pick us up, but that well seems extreme.
Doesn’t it strike you funny that much of this chat always seems to bring us back to we wish we were where they’re at, and not embracing more where we are at ourselves. This is the start of coming from Calm isn’t it?
For me my truer study of Calm started with Yoga some almost twenty years ago when I went into traditional Kundalini which was aerobic but in a different way, it was more about stamina and resilience.. where you’d hold a few positions for a long time while doing a couple key breathes.
I then moved more into Iyengar Yoga after a few years which is about many more positions and goes more into the dynamics of the body. There I learned more about how aerobic and meditative aspects played together and you can weave an experience together for yourself that is not only beneficial to your body, but your mind as well. Controlled breathes with movements of particular parts reflect what your body thinks of itself at different times. We usually only know this in terms of pain and discomfort, where yoga taught me this also in terms of exhilaration and achieving different positions.
I was even more thrilled when I could take this learning back to my mind and my everyday interactions. That positions related to situations, breathing to the space I create where i’m at for myself and others, and even holding versus releasing a position was something we can practice in social interaction that can be enlightening or constricting.
The best time I can remember for how I was able to share this, was in the work gym for the Verizon Call Center back in the late Noughties (2000’s). Over the 5 years I was there I helped train many of the instructors in how yoga could be used to bring about a certain attentiveness to their workout ( mind you I did this as a gym rat volunteer and not paid) . The result was that pulled muscles and strains decreased by significant amounts in that gym over that time, plus I knew those instructors would go on to share those insights wherever they went next, because they saw results.
I do remember though that I got into a bit of a debate with a Bikram Yoga teacher a couple of times, where they put students in a higher heated environment. I admitted that there was some limited benefit to this for it was what I would call a “hack.” I saw that students could achieve greater states of flexibility quicker, but because this was not as natural progression, students weren’t achieving an appreciation of the process of achievement. This is a Key understanding of How Calm is both achieved but also come from. I also noticed that those who did Bikrim were more prone to push their bodies too hard when not in the heated environment, because they hadn’t quite made that correlation, or it simply was never explained.
I see this as part of a problematic emphasis on the drive aspect, which is extremely tricky, because I even saw for myself that my meditative wind down was much better than my warm up because my body was more agreeable when i “buffeted it a bit” as the Christian Scriptures put it. The key is though, that we see that Calm is a choice, as Eckart Tolle talks about, it is about entering into more of that observer space with yourself. This is not just simply detachment, but “standing back” within to get a better look at things, without any judgement or even assessment really. The self help guru Byron Katie calls this the “Is that So,” stage I believe.
Believe me, as I’ve said about quite a few things I’ve learnt over the years, I want to admit I’ve not achieved any sort of mastery on these things, but I do find I keep coming back to them to get to something more and deeper.