Blackstone Yoga Center Newsletter

We don’t pay enough attention to a quickly disappearing pastime that we loved as children, and that’s swinging from the backyard swing. As little children, we were pushed by our fathers, and then we learned how to swing ourselves, climbing higher and higher until our toes touched the leaves. If we went too high, we experienced that fearful backward drop and the swing would veer crazily for a few moments, but then it would settle back into its half orbit at the end of the rope.

When the call for dinner came, we would have to wait for the swing to stop before we could get off. All we had to was stop pushing. And like a clock’s pendulum, the swing would come to rest and we would slide off the wooden seat and run to the house.

The reason we all love to swing is because it is a perfect way to understand the mind through a physical example. We need a physical platform that allows our insight to make the leap to that to which the metaphor is pointing. So let’s look deeper into the joy of swinging so we can find the joy of leaping off our own mind.

When we observe our mind, we notice that it swings from positive to negative, or from one position to its opposite; and we can climb to the top of an expectation, only to find ourselves suddenly going back into a swing of disappointment. The higher we go, the higher we fall. This is the law of the swing. One second we are going to something, the next second that something is retreating from us, just when it was within our grasp.

And there seems to be no way off the back and forth of swinging as long as we keep trying to make ourselves happy. If touching the leaves of the tree with our toe were happiness and the place where we would feel that we had made it, it wouldn’t take more than one swing for us to realize that we couldn’t keep our toe on happiness.

Life in the human mind is like this swing, and we are carried with it back and forth between the positive and negative polarities of existence. It is easy to see this on the swing, but not so easy while in the mind. We push the mind, but blame the pull back in the opposite direction on the external world. The push/pull of the world is not our mind against the world, but our mind against our mind.

We spend our lives trying to touch the leaves with our toe. When we fail, we think we didn’t try hard enough. And if we can’t make it, we may give up trying and just find a lower level of swinging, yet we always feel that we are missing something. And if we do actually touch the leaves with our toe, and think we have finally made it, it doesn’t take long for us to realize that we are still swinging, and “having made it” is just another leaf we couldn’t hold on to.

At some point we cry out: “Stop the swing! I want to get off!” But all we have been taught about swinging is to push. Push this way, push that way, Try this, buy that, do this, do that, one swing after another. Our whole culture is designed to sell us new ways to swing, but no one tells us how to stop swinging.
And then comes meditation and yoga. Is this just one more novel way to swing? In the beginning, it is just another way to push the mind, but after awhile during meditation, one begins to see the whole swinging of the mind, as if one were seated by the tree and watching the swinging.

We learn to follow the mind in its swing through our dramas and entanglements, and we begin to experience ourselves from a different place, a place within that is not swinging. This very act of observing without judgment as an awareness that is not swinging. One discovers that you can’t push the mind and observe it at the same time.

And we ask the question that cuts to the root of our existence: If I am observing the mind push, who is pushing and who is observing? Am I two or one? Who am I?

The answer to this question can only be found as the act of discovery. No one can tell it to you. The answer to this question is your Truth, your living Truth.

And this Truth, we discover, is the real leaves we have been trying to touch with the toes of the mind. As we become established in our Truth, we automatically stop pushing the mind and the swing comes to a stop all by itself. No effort needed, No pushing necessary.

Through meditation we can stop the mind from swinging, because meditation is allowing the mind to come to rest. But don’t just let someone tell you this and be satisfied. This is just another low-level swing. If you want Truth, you have to do Truth.

You just heard the call from the house.Your Self is calling. It’s time to stop swinging now and come in for the best meal you ever tasted…served by your own true Self.

Thank you,
Ed
Om Peace
2/11/07
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