Practicing the Undivided Life

Yesterday I wrote about closing the gap between ourselves and ourselves—the gap that finds us living at some distance from our true life. This morning, I’d like to offer a few practices for moving in this direction of an undivided life.

I use the word ‘practice’ with a very particular meaning. A practice is any activity we can do repeatedly in order to move toward a desired goal. But practice is also a way of life not simply a task we do to accomplish something else.

When I was a boy, I played the saxophone in my high school band. I liked being in the band and I liked the idea of playing the saxophone, but I never really enjoyed actually playing the saxophone. I rarely practiced and I never got very good. (The highlight of my musical career, in retrospect, was the day the band director, Mr. C, stopped the entire band rehearsal when I had just muffed a solo, turned directly toward me and said: ‘Rynick, stop sucking that horn and start blowing it.’ He was really upset but was not malicious. And I, somehow, I knew what he meant—knew he was inviting me to show up in a world of vivid experience—even if I couldn’t do it at the time.)

On the other hand, I had a friend whose brother loved to play the trumpet. Playing the horn was his escape from a chaotic family life and from the overwhelming demands of everything else. My friend’s brother would go to his room and play for hours ever day. Needless to say, he got to be a fine trumpet player and, last I knew, had built a life of playing for himself.

So it is with practice. If you do it as an obligation and just to get something else (praise or achievement), you will not be present enough in the activity to learn what you need to learn. And you will not have fun.

I’m coming to believe that having fun is essential to productive activity. If it’s not fun, we can do it, but we won’t do it very well or effectively. Having fun is being fully engaged and feeling alive in the doing. Fun can be hard work and fun can be challenging. We human beings love an engaging puzzle or game, one that requires our full attention and rewards us with the satisfaction of accomplishment even as we fully lose (and find) ourselves in the activity itself.

These following practices are invitations to move closer to yourself, to close the gap between the one who watches and the one who does. But the practice itself is not something other than what you are doing in the moment. The practice is the time to be doing what you are hoping to learn to do. Picasso is quoted as having said: ‘I am always doing that which I do not know how to do in order to learn how to do it.’ So it is with all of us.

Practice #1: Sit quietly and breathe. Find a quiet place where you can be undisturbed for several minutes. (In a pinch, a bathroom is a great option.) Come into an upright and dignified posture—feet resting fully on the floor and your weight balanced on your sits bones. Take a moment to notice whatever sensations are present in your body. No need to relax, just notice. Then turn your attention to the sensation of your breath coming in and out of your body. Long or short breath, easy or labored breath is fine. Just be with the breath you are in this moment. Don’t work hard. (Remember, this is so easy you can do it in your sleep.) Do the best you can to rest your awareness in the physical sensation of the breathing. Do this for a minute or two, a let that be enough.

Practice #2: Investigate the gap. Next time you are aware of watching yourself—of standing back from whatever you are doing and judging how well you are doing—stop for a moment and ask yourself who it is who is watching? Who is doing the judging? Who is the one who is making these certain pronouncements of your inadequacy? Who is sure you can’t or shouldn’t have or musn’t? These voices in our heads often boss us around with such an air of authority or pretense of helpfulness that we rarely question their provenance. So ask: ‘Who is the one who is making the pronouncement?’ If the answer comes back ‘Me.’ or ‘I am.’, keep asking. Who really is this ‘me’ who is judging? Keep asking and asking and see what you learn.

Practice #3: Give yourself to what you are doing. Pick a relatively simple repetitive physical activity. Washing the dishes, vacuuming the floor, walking, driving the car are all great possibilities. Decide to use this activity, for a short time (five or ten minutes) as a practice. Then, as you do this activity, allow your focus to be on the activity itself rather than on the outcome of the activity. In the washing of the dishes, give up the idea of ever finishing and allow yourself to be present to the sensations and actions of the moment. Touching each dish. Water splashing out of the faucet. The slippery soap. The sounds of squeaky hands on plates or the gentle sound of each dish as it touches the dish rack. Really notice what is going on—as if you were someone washing dishes for the first time. Join in your life and appreciate the time for what it is.

These are all practices that move us toward an undivided life by inviting us to be what we long for—right in this moment. No need to wait for some other time. Do the best you can. Don’t worry if you are doing it right or doing it well. As my QiGong teacher always said “Better to do it wrong than not to do it at all.”

If you do any one of these activities on a daily basis for thirty days, your life will be forever changed.

I’d like to close this morning with one of my favorite poems by the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa:

To be great, be whole; exclude
Nothing, exaggerate nothing that is you.
Be whole in everything, Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.
The whole moon gleams in every pool,
It rides so high.