Sensation by Sensation
We know that the flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst, yet we crave stories of overnight success and spontaneous self-actualization, disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming, in the incremental ripening by which we become who we are, the innumerable tiny choices, the imperceptibly small steps by which we pave the path to our own destiny in the very act of walking it. We are each a continuous becoming, our future a rosary of presents strung along the strand of presence — presence with the smallest corpuscles of existence: the smell of a neighbor’s curry slipping through the window cracked in midwinter, the atlas of wrinkles on the hands of the cashier scanning the box of strawberries at the grocery store. Sensing, noticing — the raw materials of presence, and thus the elemental stardust of our becoming.
- Maria Popova in her regular online postings, Brain Pickings
Story by story, I weave my life together.
Sensation by sensation, I stitch my body together again each morning; again this morning.
Some days I can just zip myself into my body suit, root my soles, grow my height and my limbs, send my mind skyward, and off I go.
But today, like most days now, it must be a slower meander, carefully easing my weight into my legs, one by one, pouring myself, thought by thought, breath by reluctant breath, from right to left and back again; the right especially needing my unhurried sinking.
As I re-mind my body each morning in preparation for a day of living in it, I go over some spots repeatedly. Am I going over the same spot too much, I wonder? Mending is lots of going over and over the same spot...thread and needle looping over and under. Mending the mind of the webbing, darning the holes to make whole cloth of me, again, is patient work. I gather lumpy bunches of lagging tissue, and thread by thread, thought by thought, weave them back into the suit I'll wear today. I follow the pattern of my human design, and begin again to make buoyant life out of reluctant flesh.
What I repeat is what I learn.
Repetition builds form into the flesh. Repetition is the work of weavers...repetition and pattern building.
What I repeat is what I learn.
Every day I re-learn to be human; to be my particular pattern-of-patterns that leads me, I hope, through a life aimed at lightness and ease and rich, sensual joy.
I can choose the sound-score that is playing in my head as I go through my life, so why not switch channels now to something light, easy, and joyful? For this day's efforts, standing at the bathroom sink to brush my hair, eye-drops cleansing my vision, I wag my tail to a happier tune than the unforgiving self-recriminations that want to berate me for too much movie watching the night before.
I let the wag turn into a skin-drying shake, then a little, light panting breath, and back to an incrementally slower but bigger and more gregarious swish-swish of my tail. These canine images I have often used with students too, to lighten the mood, to bring lightheartedness to the meaning.
So this morning I add some wagging stitches to my self-weaving, and with fluffier flesh producing fizzier flow of information to my brain, I have a favorable chance of finding more freedom in the next lengthening of my arms overhead. Brushing my hair is not so much of a reach now.
I replace my initial plodding shuffle with a more patient and delicious easing of my body weight into each foot-fall on my way to the kitchen counter to make the morning coffee. And waiting for it to brew, I sip a few breaths.
I begin a more conscious practice, giving myself inner instructions that go like this:
Breathing in, I float my head up.
Breathing out, I sink my weight through my right foot and into the earth.
Breathing in, I float my head up.
Breathing out, I sink my weight through my left foot and into the earth.
Breathe in, float up, lighter and with more kindness in my inner gaze.
Breathe out, sink right, let go deeper, giving more weight back to gravity.
Breathe in, float up, lighter and with more kindness in my inner gaze.
Breathe out, sink left, let go deeper, giving more weight back to gravity.
Breathe in. Lighten up.
Breath out. Let go more.
Float head up. Sink weight right.
Float head up. Sink weight left.
Lighten up while breathing in.
Let go while breathing out.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.