#memphisyoga

I’m driving, windows down, listening to the songs and sounds of night blare their harmonies as they keep me company. The music playing wouldn’t be recognized by iPhones or iPods. It’s the rushing wind on my face. Passing cars. Insects and frogs wailing for mates in the last few weeks of summer. I’ve opted out of the advised 10 and 2 hand position on my steering wheel. Instead, I have one hand at noon and the other surfing the breeze outside the window. This is a place no one can defile. The midnight drive is my meditation. The midnight drive is sacred.

Every day is an onslaught of commercials and advertising for clothes, TV shows, movies, foods, workout programs, those god-awful articles with 7 must read quotes from Oprah, or the mystifying and vague advice of some self-help guru. Every second there is somebody waiting to take control of my mind long enough to get me to click that damned “add to cart” button on Amazon. All of it mental static. All of it promising a better life. All of it lying.

I’ve tried to get ripped, changed my diet, changed my style, read all the books, drank all the alcohol, you name it, I’ve done it.  Why wouldn’t I? Looking around and seeing my classmates, friends, and family members in a frantic search for the golden ticket, why not buy into the myths sold by corporate advertising? I see people on television claiming convincingly to have found all this success and joy through altering themselves and I can’t help but give in, even if just a little bit. Maybe they paid for plastic surgery, or they found a new religion, who knows? My question is: why do all these companies, product advertising agents, and gurus assume to know so much about me? 

I don’t know so much about me. What is me? I sometimes think nothing of me is my own. Somebody else decided long ago who I was going to be, how I would look, and where I would end up buried. My whole life laid out before I was even born. The entirety of it designed to fatten someone’s wallet. 

I’ve pulled the car over. There seems to be no one in sight. Good. I need to be alone because for the first time in weeks, I am going to weep. It’s not going to be a moving or beautiful sort of crying. Just ugly sobs and noises because I’ve held it in for so long.  I turn my head to the left and see what little forest is left in an ever sprawling city. To the right, I can watch traffic lights change.

I am not sure when the shift was, or why it happened, but at a certain point, I stopped caring about happiness. Maybe I have never felt it, but to me, it seems like a carrot dangling in front of a horse with blinders. Happiness is a vague guarantee tacked onto an infinite number of items for sale.  Happiness is what clever business men and guys with white robes come up with to get rich and gain followers. 

I’m not saying religion is bad. I am not saying buying clothes makes a person into a vapid shell of a human. I am saying when someone promises you they can make you happy, they are lying. That said, I wanted to share with you the secret to my happiness. It is my one constant, my north star, my compass in life: I know absolutely nothing. 

Its 4:30 in the morning. Despite tossing and turning, fluffing pillows, laying on this or that side, and counting over 1,000 sheep, I am awake. Wide awake. I’ve pleaded, begged my mind to stop its endless turning and planning and replaying of events and just let me go to sleep. No such luck. My body and mind will not be content until I’ve peeled myself out of bed. I’ve become an angst filled teenager resting in a cocoon of sheets and blankets, never wanting to be that social butterfly. Ok, fine. All my metaphors and similes can’t save me. I’m up.

                  What’s supposed to happen now? I ask myself this, and a thousand other questions. Am I going to make enough money this week? How can I make more? Did I write down all my events in my calendar? What should I get my mother for her birthday? The race of daily thought is on.  If there is anyone to blame for this sort of mental tick, tick, ticking, I have a few choice words I would like to send him or her. This is something exclusive to adulthood. Well, all planning and worrying and questioning, anyway. My mind has always been active, but it craved for a different sort of activity. To catch lightning bugs and set them free. To walk in a field and have nothing more to think about than the sweet smell of honeysuckles. Calgon, take me away.

                  Right now, the witching hour, this is when ideas flood the crawl space of my brain. Filling it to the brim with movie script ideas, government reform plans, shocking revelations about the nature of existence, and maybe even a bit of that all too scarce confidence. Unfortunately my eyes are determined to stay closed. Like someone tied little kernels of cement to my eyelids. It isn’t just my eyes. My whole body is weighted down by insubstantial thought. I can barely get a cup of coffee, or tea, or even water. I am but a waking shadow.

I’ve managed to make it outside. Looking up at the stars, I make tiny prayers and wishes and send them into the wind on eyelashes and shooting comets that one day, I will taste how it feels to burn so bright. A nostalgia of innocence I only hope will last in day-to-day life. The life where emails have to be checked, clients have to be pleased, memos must be read, and lunch is only 30 minutes.

                  Laying down, feeling the cool embrace of mother earth and how she is wrapping my skin in her sweet gravity, I can connect the dots that form the constellations. Time splits open and I’m transported back to my childhood. All the fears and stresses melt away. I could almost go to sleep again, but the sight of the firmament above is just too darned beautiful to close my eyes. If anything could bring me this kind of inner stillness, this kind of solidarity of spirit, sign me up.

                  I’ve heard spiritual practices can breed a calm mind. I’ve heard of a test conducted where this group of monks got together and meditated for peace on earth and violence went down about 1 percent or something, but I never really believed I could do it for myself. I understand concepts like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and unconditional love, and compassion, but when I am in the midst of a traffic jam, or on a deadline, anyone who gets in my way can just bite me. I’ve tried meditation, deep relaxation techniques, massage therapy, hardcore working out, and even mind altering substances. The effects of these efforts were temporary at best. Frustratingly disappointing and permanently scarring at worst.

                  I walk over to the corner of the room, pick up my mat and unroll it, and set an intention for my practice. The questions, the troubles, fears, doubts, anger, love, joy, madness, all of it slides off my shoulders as I breathe and out. There are no shortcuts to happiness. No warps in time that take us to a place where everything is easy, or we are ready. The only moment is now. With this in mind, I start my practice. My intention? Inner peace. My destination? The same place. Namaste