Karma - Memory + Action

I hung out with a friend recently at Oktoberfest. I realized exactly how long it had been since I'd seen him when he informed me that he'd been living in the Pacific Northwest for over a year already (which I had failed to notice prior to the request to hang out while he was "in town.")

This very drunk guy came up to us in the beer hall tent and asked us if we knew that Jesus and God are the answer to everything that ails the entire world?  (I'm not going to lie, it reminded me a teeny tiny bit of several experiences in my yoga class.) 

"Only in this area," I told the man soberly. Then he wandered off.

Appropos of nothing, Theo told me that in his dating adventures, he has discovered that FOBO is a real thing. I had never even heard of this. I'm familiar with FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. But apparently, FOBO (Fear of Better Options) is a malady that particularly affects the newly divorced. Having never been newly divorced, I'd apparently missed out on this.

Well, riddle me this, Batman: isn't "fear of better options" actually "fear of (missing out on) better options"? So what makes it any different?

Apparently what makes it different is that it has been written about many, many, many times in regards to dating. Who knew? Certainly not me, as I deleted all the apps. ALL. OF. THEM. I'm living my best life here!

(I actually mean that. It's a real relief to not have to pretend to be charming anymore and to just be the Swamp Witch that nature intended. Except for that my hands are starting to get wrinkly, which is deeply upsetting to me. I guess I always considered them one of my best features, probably because I had to stare at them so much when playing the piano. Seeing them grow wrinkly as I age is upsetting. I mean, I have to look at my hands, not my face.)

All right so FOBO: Fear of Better Options. 

Apparently, newly divorced men go nuts and write off lots of great women because they are convinced that an even Greater Person is waiting just around the next swipe. I am assuming that Theo speaks from personal experience here, as he was newly divorced a few years ago.

With FOBO, you compare everyone not only to what you had as a married person, but what you might have in your perfect future.

It's all about memory, and that's where yoga comes in. (You didn't honestly think this post was going to proceed without yoga, did you?)

As it turns out, most people have a profoundly misguided understanding of the concept of karma. We think that karma is a tit-for-tat system wherein if I do something bad to someone, something bad is going to happen to me. It's not that.

I am reading this book by Sadhguru, and I would love to tell you exactly what karma is. But sadly, I cannot, because I understand very little of it. I seem to have underlined every sentence without actually getting it. I only know what karma is not, and it is not that thing above. About 90 pages in, all I can unequivocally tell you is that karma is memory combined with action. It is the memory of all your actions and the trajectory these things are propelling you towards. We operate by rote, by nature. If everything in our nature and habit and experience is compelling us toward a certain future, that is the future we are going to have --- unless we deliberately change it.

How does this relate to what I'm saying? We judge others by our past experiences and we judge our future experiences by our past experiences. What would it look like to refrain from judgment altogether? To be merely an observer?

To change our karma, we have to first be aware of it. What is the path I am on? What are the memories that are guiding my actions? What would it look like to act consciously, instead of from automatic, unconscious memory?

And -- perhaps someday -- what would it look like to form friendships and relationships not from automatic memory + action, but from deliberate consciousness?

Sūrya - Sun

    The Sanskrit word for sun is sūrya. Sūrya Namaskāra A is "Sun Salutation A" and Sūrya Namaskāra B is "Sun Salutation B." If sūrya were a human being, she would be my friend Abbie. She has been many different people in her life: coach, stylist, Lululemon drone. But for me, Abbie is a ball of sunlight challenging me to think differently.

    Two weeks ago, after my ankle had mostly healed and before my milkweed hunt ended in poison ivy welts, I went to one of Abbie's yoga classes in the city. Afterward, we went to the TG Farmer's Market and talked life and philosophy.

    Abbie is really big on manifesting things... like just believing things into being. If you've read The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, you know all about manifesting things. If you haven't, don't. It's not all that great. (Srsly, how self-aggrandizing do you have to be to claim to have "revealed the great mystery of the universe"? And then a few chapters later claim that this mystery allows you to eat whatever you want without gaining a pound?) Nonetheless, since it was an international sensation, I read it. It was definitely thought-provoking. Is there such a thing as willing things into being?

    The flip side of believing that you can manifest whatever you want is the corresponding belief that anything bad that happens (deportation, genocide, rape) is because someone was manifesting a fear of those things happening. And by living in fear, they attracted the worst-possible-outcome. That does not sit right with me at all.

    My sister Lily really believes in manifesting things. I guess I could look at her life and see her point. A decade ago she was homeless, and now she lives in a house I couldn't afford in a million lifetimes. Lily says that rather than living in a state of yearning, you should live in a state of acknowledging that you already have what you want. So my friend Mitch should act like it's a done deal that she has a baby. And Nora should act on and believe in the fact that she already has a full-time, well-paying job. The Secret, Lily says, also means that if you keep telling yourself, "I wish I had a new car/house/job/child/sweetheart/etc," then you are manifesting the energy of NOT having those things, which will just keep you in a state of continued want. You have to instead be grateful that the new car/house/job/child/etc is already yours. Even if you can't see it yet. 

Jen Sincero says basically the same thing in the much better book, You Are a Badass. She bought a car she could absolutely not afford because it was the car to the life she WANTED to afford. And then she created that life around the car. My financial wizard of a brother would howl in frustration at this lack of budgeting.

Like I said, I don't know how much of The Secret I buy, but I do think that there is too much evidence that we attract what we put out to deny it entirely. I don't know if it really matters if you phrase things incorrectly (here are the things I want and believe I will get vs here are the things I am grateful I already have, even though I can't see them). But any time in my life I've gotten to the point of being absolutely THROUGH with something, all my energies have gone into effecting change. So perhaps The Secret is just the desperation that forces you to create an alternate reality for yourself. Or maybe The Secret is just, like -- propelling the Self that is in a different multiverse into this one.

After yoga, Abbie told me, "Everyone always says, 'try harder.' You know, like, 'maybe you don't have what you want because you're not working hard enough for it!'? But what if that's not the answer? What if the answer, instead, is to 'try softer'? What would that look like? And you just kind of believe what you want is on its way to you?"

I thought about some of the things I've wanted in my life.

* It didn't really occur to me to leave Hazelwood until the rest of my Tribe did. Then I packed up 27 boxes of lesson plans and books and told everyone I was not coming back. I was so determined not to come back that it felt like I willed a different job into being at the 11th hour. 

* I spent 10 years looking for a house to buy. Something always made things not work out. But then I got so freaking fed up that I finally announced to the universe, "I am buying a house this month. I don't care which house it is. I don't care if it is perfect or not. This is the month I buy a house." I willed this house into being after 10 years.

* I finally decided that I was done at FZ. It was perfect in its time because it was the resting place I needed, but it wasn't meant to be forever. I spent every day from January through June combing district hiring boards, writing resumes, mailing portfolios, getting interviews, and fielding rejections. And then I got my job. And yeah, it's been hard as hell. And it's a one-year contract. But it's here, now. And as guru Ram Dass says: "Be here now."

Now, look. Sometimes it takes a long time to manifest shit. Abbie said she started envisioning her partner in 2017. He didn't appear til 2020 or 2021. Then she didn't even recognize him at first, she thought they were just buddies hanging out (I remember this because she told me about it at the time). But for me, it feels like the things I've really wanted have materialized only when I've reached a breaking point. Maybe manifesting things is just another way of saying, "Get off your ass and make things happen. Get uncomfortable."

But also sometimes, life just surprises you. 

Yesterday, I was trying to find trucker ballcaps featuring National Park badges online. I know this is a very specific niche, but I wanted to get two of these for Acadia. That's the last Sister Trip Lucy and I took before she had a baby and Sister Trips became a thing of the past. I'd found Joshua Tree and Grand Teton and Zion at TJ Maxx like a year ago. If you know anything about TJ Maxx, you know there's no rhyme or reason to what they carry. Nonetheless, this morning, when I was out trying to buy a lamp, I took a quick detour through men's hats. And there they were: a year after I'd found the last ones --

WHATTTTTTTTTT!?

At the end of yoga that day, Abbie had asked me, "How does it feel to know you're the alchemist of your own life? How wild is that!?"

I don't really think we can take all the credit for jobs that appear when we are wildly desperate or for baseball caps that materialize when we want them to. But what if there is magic in the universe, or something beyond our understanding? What if there is an alchemy that binds together energy and effort and longing and belief, and blends it with whatever is Mysterious and Unknown and Beyond Us?

In T.H. White's book, The Once and Future King, Merlyn puts the boy Arthur through a series of tasks, experiences in the animal kingdom meant to teach him the perils of various forms of government. Arthur's third animal experience is being a lowly ant, tiny enough to crawl through a keyhole. Arthur is extremely frustrated as an ant because he wants to ask his comrades about their beliefs and experiences, but he is stymied. The reason he can't communicate properly is because the ants don't have adjectives... they describe everything in their universe as "Done" (all things positive) or "Not-Done" (all things negative). An ant who was murdered by another ant from an opposing nest is "Not-Done." Similarly, an ant who fell off the ledge of the ant farm and tumbled to his doom is "Not-Done."

You can see why it would be impossible for Arthur to ask anyone in the ant kingdom about his feelings on a subject as complex as, say, Liberty.

Merlyn fortunately whisks Arthur back to the medieval world right before the ants go to battle with their neighbors, but the story stayed with me for the next 2 decades. 

We are living in a world of ants where everything is Done or Not-Done because that is the extent of our ant-consciousness and our ant-vocabulary. But out there somewhere is a Consciousness that exists on this whole other mind-boggling level. Out there is a great mystery that we only catch glimpses of, sometimes through a lesson or a friend or an experience if we're looking and listening being here now. 

Dhyana - Meditation

The 7th limb of yoga is Dhyana. It's basically meditation, to hold oneself present in a given moment.

That's the goal anyway. Here's how the meditation aspect of yoga currently works for me:

Start time: 8:00 pm

8:00 I shouldn't have eaten all those fruit snacks, I can feel them in my teeth. I wonder if I'm getting cavities. FOCUS! THINK OF THOUGHTS LIKE A LEAF FLOATING BY IN A RIVER! I think autumn is on the way, I've definitely seen several leaves falling already. I wonder if it was stupid to put mulch down on my plants because now it's just all going to get covered with leaves.

8:01 At least mulch isn't expensive. I cannot believe the yard waste people won't collect mulch, though. It's got to be the most biodegradable thing in the world. FOCUS!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, THINK OF THOUGHTS LIKE CLOUDS AND WATCH THEM PASS BY!

8:02 I am clearing my mind. I am sitting in a state of being. I wonder when my ankle will feel better enough to go back to the yoga studio? I wonder if I will re-injure myself if I try to take a class. Your ankles are pretty flexed in down-dog, I bet that could hurt. I wonder if I'll end up like Sarah and not be able to practice for months! 

8:03 Man, I am having a lot of thoughts. In that Dan Harris book on meditation, he said that meditating makes him 10% happier. I feel like this would be a lot easier if it made me at least 15% happier, though. Of course, a hummingbird flew right up to his face and stared at him while he was meditating once. Maybe if I sat outside, a hummingbird would zoom right up to MY face! I wonder how many more weeks they will be here before they start migrating back south?

8:04 OMG, I forgot to put new food in the hummingbird feeder. They hate it when it gets cloudy. I was going to do that yesterday but then I got sidetracked. I always do it when I mow the lawn, but I can't mow the lawn because it's raining. Shoot, I forgot to charge my lawnmower batteries. WHY IS IT SO HARD TO MEDITATE!?!?!?!

8:05 Okay, I am ridding myself of paradigms and lenses and thoughts. The true self is sitting here in a state of being and -- 

BELL RINGS TO END MEDITATION

That's where I'm at.

I'm trying to meditate because even if it only makes me 10% happier, that's still 10% better than where I'm currently at.

Right now, I am not happy. My new job is incredibly demanding. My yoga practice has been on hiatus due to an injury. And this happened:

I met a guy who seemed to totally "get" me. Things just felt easy and natural. Then, he admitted that the thought of being with me was literally giving him panic attacks. That's not something you want to hear, blog world.

I broke every rule in my rulebook and agreed to be friends. Maybe just getting to know each other as friends is actually healthier at this point.

I would check in periodically -- he would say that he felt dead inside, that literally the only things he had time to do were fight his ongoing custody battle, try to save his business from financial ruin, and attempt to see his daughter. And that he missed me.

I know what you're thinking -- how did I not see through all this? I don't know. I think it's so rare that I actually feel connected to someone on a whole lot of levels, and I was trying so hard to not see things in black and white, to remain open to what the universe offered... that I just missed all the signs.

On Saturday, I was out with friends. J and A were in the middle of recounting the horrors of online dating when the fact that I had completely tuned both of them out finally registered. Both guys followed my line of sight: there, sitting across from a young woman at an expensive restaurant in the CWE was R -- the guy who'd told me he hadn't been able to even pay himself in 2 months and had no time for anything other than trying to hold his life together. There he was, laughing and chatting on what was very clearly a first date.

"Don't make a scene. Don't make a scene," J-Mo begged me. As if I had ANY interest at all in making a scene!!

"It's not worth it," said A.

I excused myself to go sit in my car and scream. Then I drove home while R. continued unknowingly along on his date.

I always blame myself in these kinds of situations. How could I have been so naive? How could I have been stupid enough to fall for the ole' "Can we be friends and keep talking?" trick? How could I have not seen through the "I'm so busy" schtick? Of course he was dating. 

I never understand this about men. I've told a dozen or more guys, "I've really enjoyed getting to know you and the time we spent together, but I don't think we have quite the right connection to pursue things further. I hope you find everything you're looking for!"

It's really not that hard. You just do it.

Men seem to have this insatiable need to think of themselves as "good guys." It's the only reason I can think of why they are all so hell-bent on "can we still be friends?" If you're still friends with a woman you dated, that means you can't have treated her badly! Otherwise, she'd refuse to be your friend! The fact that she's your friend means you are a Good Guy! No self-reflection necessary.

For women, at least for me, the impetus is so strong to pathologize ourselves. What did I do wrong? Why wasn't I enough? What is it about me that constantly causes men to label me beautiful, intelligent, and empathetic -- but not someone they want to be with?

My mom used to tell me that if people really knew me, they wouldn't like me. She said that she knew me better than anyone else, even myself, and that my friends and their folks wouldn't like me if they knew the real me.

I guess I always go back to that in situations like this. Like, is this why R. ended things? Because the more he got to know me, the less likable I was? Maybe.

One of the limbs of yoga is meditation, but every time I meditate, I wonder how long it will be before I become 10% happier. I wonder if I can survive long enough to become 10% happier. I wonder how long it will be until the next person gets to know the real me and then how I'll pull through that.