So, how is the beginning supposed to go? I don’t know. I realize that I never know how to begin, but something inside me makes me lob something out there because you can’t finish something that you haven’t begun. These beginnings are awkward, at best, but I’ve decided, as I always do, to just start.
Perhaps one of the difficulties that I find with beginnings is that I’m never really sure how things start or where the real beginning is in the first place. Nothing seems to just come into existence, but perceived existence changes throughout time just like a wave. It makes sense that there should be a point when that wave is first beginning but, as in mathematics, the intervals of each moment on that wave, including its beginning, can be infinitely divided into smaller intervals, so that there are smaller points within every point. In the same way, each moment of existence can be divided into micro-moments, which can be divided into nano-moments and so on. So somehow we live every shade of consciousness in some unit of space-time which, when examined closely, consists of infinitesimally small units that flow into one another in a wave of experience.
All experiences are wave-like in this manner. Human suffering is an excellent example of this because not only have all of us experienced it, but we have all paid attention to this experience because of the intensity of the emotions involved. Whatever causes the initial source of pain is more like a wave that sneaks up behind you and breaks on your heart the minute you turn your back to the ocean. It doesn’t seem to build like most waves of experience, but the emotions do ebb as the sea and return to a deeper level of consciousness. However, few emotional experiences end with the ebb of this first wave of emotion and it is the subsequent waves that better illustrate the wave-like nature of human experience.
These waves start out as a memory, thought, smell, movement or really anything or nothing. They are very subtle and the next thing you know, some emotion is exponentially multiplying in your consciousness and becomes more pervasive than your otherwise peaceful and sane thoughts. Then, just about the time you’ve decided that you are going insane, and perhaps long enough for you to come to terms with this new possible reality, the wave leaves in the same way it came. This seems to be a very natural process and you are never given more than you can handle. It is similar to a good yoga class in that you are challenged up to that edge and then the next pose comes. Perhaps you rest or perhaps you are challenged in a new way. It is that challenge, on whatever level it may come, that causes you to grow. It is as if the waves wash over us and gently shape us, washing away that which does not serve us and leaving behind the refined jewel of our true selves.
So, having begun this wave of blog-writing experience, I will leave any possible readers of this blog to meditate on the waves of experience that are passing through this very moment…
A perfect start, Amy. Beautiful.
Also, I know others are standing on the edge of this pool, thinking of jumping in. Some have legitimate issues with blogs that we should all perhaps heed. I don’t know. Things are so strange these days. All I know is that my fear about writing like this in public had to do with spelling. If it weren’t for spell check I would never had made it as a writer, and even with spell check I do weird things. It could be ADD connected, but I make myself feel better by reminding myself that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a horrible speller. He probably had ADD too. Anyway, yesterday I was emailing with Beth Lucas. Since I’ve been ill, she ordered me to take care of myself. I wrote back, “Eye, eye, Captain.” I knew it was wrong, but I also didn’t know it was wrong. That’s ADD for you. Beth emailed me back with an aye, aye, correction. The good thing about ADD is that now I’m connecting aye, aye to that Whitney Houston song, which I see in my head now as…”and aye aye will always love you.” The good thing about blogging here is that we could possibly be connected to CK’s writing. If we’re lucky. So far not so much, but it could happen. The great thing about CK is that you never know what he’s going to write about or what his take will be. Given his musical tastes, etc, I was completely amazed that he wrote this piece on Whitney Houston at his own blog…http://zombiecontentions.com/2012/02/11/we-let-her-out-of-our-sight/
hehehe that was a cool post about Whitney Houston. I remember that movie, but I don’t think I went to see it.
I don’t usually have trouble with spelling and, if I do, I recognize it as wrong as soon as I see it. I think this is because of my photographic memory. I’m not as lucky with numbers though because it’s easy for me to miss the fact that I’ve changed their order.
Those words that sound the same, but have different meanings and spellings should be abolished! lol If the Universe can make all the diversity of life out of 4 nucleotide “letters,” then we can make different-sounding words for different things and then the spelling will be easy. I don’t usually have a problem with those things, but it does annoy me that people weren’t more sensible and creative when it came to naming things. If I had been in your boat, knowing that “eye, eye captain” was wrong, but not knowing what was wrong with it, I would have either left it out entirely or found another way to say the same thing. I used to do that all the time in Spanish, when I would want to say something, but not know the equivalent word for it. I had to find a way to come at the idea using words that I knew. I do the same thing with awkward things that I write. Sometimes I just sit there with it for a long time until I figure out how to fix it.
My ADD hasn’t bothered me much since I started practicing yoga. Sometimes I feel too hyper to want to sit in class and occasionally, I space out, especially if I’m tired but other than that, it has helped me to find creative ways to remember things and it helps me make quick-witted jokes in lab that help those long 3 hours go by faster. I try to use yoga to focus the energy that I naturally have into productive school things. I also give myself little mini breaks when I’m reading because I find that I am most likely to space out to think about something I have just read and that, if I let myself follow the rabbit trail a little ways, not only do I figure things out, but I learn the material. This way, I can let my ADD express itself and have it also help me learn.
Actually, I am probably going to start writing about some of the things that my mind thinks about when I read all these science books, because what I read causes me to figure a lot of things about yoga and all the things that are going on in the body because of it. The post that I just published is a start to this. It was some of the stuff that I thought about last quarter during my anatomy class and I was thinking about that stuff again because the death of a friend brought the fundamentals of human life back to the forefront of my mind. I intend it to be a series about how yoga changes the person in all aspects of their being, probably with an emphasis on the physical, since I know the most about that stuff. I don’t know where it’s going for sure, but that is my intent.