A very common experience of being in the human body is to criticize it, think it needs improvement. This body is too old, too round, too slow, too sick, too scarred, it hurts too much, too fat, too ugly, too wrinkled, too bumpy, too imperfect.
Olympic athletes are those of us humans who are zoning in on maximum human capacity for precision, speed, grace, power. By comparison, this group appears to be out there on the edge of the curve, the closest to perfect. Everyone shows up at the same place to compete, to do their absolute best. To win.
The thing is, it’s called the Olympic GAMES. But to a lot of people competing, or watching, it might not be a game exactly. At least it’s not fun. It’s REALLY SERIOUS.
I remember reading when I was a kid about the original Olympic Games being a fight to the death. That does seem quite serious.
Looking at our bodies for some of us becomes extremely life-and-death oriented. I see the flaws, I grip against that picture. I hate it. I decide to fix it, I’ll do anything to bring it up to More Perfect.
Samsara is the word in Sanskrit used for the activity of humans perceiving reality with an agitated or unsettled mind. A continuous flow of birth and death, never ending. Like being trapped in a strange and very creative dream where life repeats itself in different forms endlessly; suffering, achieving, ecstasy, devastation. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
The idea enters for many of us, just like the ancient religions, that it would be nice to get off the treadmill of happy-sad, good-bad. To get past it somehow, feel peaceful and non-reactive to everything.
This includes this body. It gets injured, it changes, it ages, but I long to accept it anyway, to not be affected by its changes like when I’m believing it’s a matter of life or death and it’s freakin’ Very Serious.
But that’s easy to say, not so easy to actually do. Right?
I heard Adyashanti speak once of Samsara as being Closed.
Samsara is a movement AWAY from what is actually happening. It means I don’t like it, I want it to change, I find it unpleasant….I’m against or I want to avoid this person, this thing, this event, this situation. I want to avoid having an imperfect body.
To be truly open to this body, to let go of wanting it to be different…wow, that’s an amazing feat. But possible. Very possible!
In fact, even being willing to let go of wanting it to be different, is an amazing thing to experience.
I remember discovering that I imagined that if I didn’t have the thought that my body needed improvement, then it might become worse. Uglier, repulsive, sick, inadequate…dead.
I believed I had to keep the thought that the body needs to be improved, or else DISASTER. No winning the GAMES! Not even a chance.
What I found, however, was that the body runs itself in the most amazing way, without my improvement plan, without my criticism, without my harping, my judgment, my energy, my hatred, my anger, or my control or planning. This body lives, without me living in Samsara with it.
My critical thinking is not actually necessary for the body to be wonderful as it is. In fact, less thinking about the body has led to greater enjoyment of it.
Kind of like the world. It runs without my opinion. And I find it’s more peaceful the less I give an opinion, the less I judge it and criticize it.
The more Open I am to each moment, to every person I encounter, to the image I see in the mirror, the more power I actually have to facilitate change, beauty, clarity. Now how funny is that?!
The more I see it really as a GAME, a fun game, not a serious matter of life-or-death, the more I accomplish, the more I create.
“Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking. Center your country in the Tao an evil will have no power. Not that it isn’t there, but you’ll be able to step out of its way. Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself”~ Tao te Ching #60
Governing this body, I spoil it with too much mental poking. Criticism and comparison is all around in my consciousness, in the magazines with picture of models, in the news with pictures of amazing athletes. But I can step out of the way. I don’t oppose this body, I don’t attack it for being the way it is, and the hatred of it disappears.
At the moment of the performance, in the Olympics or otherwise, I am so much more in the flow without poking. I only get there by questioning what I think is true. By not believing it is True that this body isn’t good enough, all is empty around me, unknown, mysterious. A Fun Game.
Love, Grace