True Freedom

In 2009, I had a private session with a Yogi. The point of the meeting was to discern what would be an effective practice for me to pursue to guide me on my spiritual journey. At this point I had been studying Yoga for about two years and the depth of my practice was fortified by teaching six classes a week. I was a single parent, newly divorced, but not newly single parenting. I was seeking solutions to my stress and sense that I just kept getting dealt a bad hand in life. I wanted a fix. The solution - a personal practice.

The Yogi asked me some questions about my experience, my struggles. I was my perfectionist self, down playing my pain and insecurities. Discussing only how I have been a victim of others. A victim of a bad hand and yet I was strong and overcoming these challenges with good actions. The Yogi abruptly gave me a practice. It seemed like a pretty short meeting to me and I had a number of questions - how frequently am I to do this practice? How many repetitions of the mantra? How long should I practice?

Fast forward five years. I continued to practice, making it up as I went along. I continued to teach Yoga and to study Yoga. I am sitting in a training as the Yogi teaches how to discern what practice to give a student. He says, "the practice must provide the student with a shift in their tendencies." 
AHA!!!
I got it! All those years ago, not placing an emphasis on how much I should practice was the approach to remove the opportunity for me to just make my practice another task on my To Do list. 

My tendency is productivity. Being productive is how I dissipate the restlessness that I feel most of the time.
As Pema Chodron says we are all looking for ground... all the time a sense of ground. "When I complete this ... I will be able to stop. I will be happy when I find the love of my life. When my child achieves, gets to..." 
We resist the present moment, waiting or in my case, working for and banking on future happiness.
The ability to produce something for my effort makes me feel safe. During Covid shut downs, I did 37 house projects; yard work, replacing windows, painting, replacing decks, etc. 

The restlessness, the sense of an itch that needs to be scratched provokes all of us, probably more than once per day. Having watched climbers for countless hours of my life, I think climbing is one way some folks scratch that itch. After all, climbing up a wall where the holds are going to change in four weeks or so doesn't really have much meaning or produce anything of value, other than giving us a sense of accomplishment and the ability to forget some of those things that agitate us.

So what is the root of this agitation? What is this need for ground? 
Lucky me, I have had some pretty intense moments where I recognized the freedom from this restlessness. Not the freedom born from entertainment or freedom achieved through numbing or productivity... yes I have tried them all frequently. 
No, I am talking about the freedom that comes from a sense of deep internal peace that just receives and doesn't resist the moment. I was heading to an "idyllic pool" described in a guidebook in Red Rocks, Nevada. I finally arrived at a dried up hueco and realized that at the time of year of my pursuit, this is probably where the pool should be. I sat down on the rocks and just stared out to the desert. I journaled some thoughts and wrote some letters. I had nothing to do and no where to be. A peace descended over me. This, I thought, felt, this is what life is supposed to be about, this deep sense of freedom from resisting and striving. 

Why is it so hard to achieve?
Because we are so busy. So judgemental. We live in the idea of needing to fix, to perfect, to appeal, to achieve.
When we drop the need for anything, we are free. It's why kids have such peace in a pile of sand at the beach - at least momentarily. They don't need anything, just the sand and the beach. We adults on the other hand, we need to get the sand off the towel, we need the sand flies to disappear, we need to look better in our bathing suits. We are thinking about the chores not getting done while we sit at the beach.

Freedom is when we accept each breath as it is. When we accept each cloud in the sky as it is. When we have no more tasks that must be done before we rest. True freedom is a state of mind. Freedom is grace.