Flow

 

 

Just as each inhalation is the body-grounded act of receiving, so too with each exhalation our body teaches us the way of letting go of all that hinders our transformation.

James Finley, The Contemplative Heart

 

I have been experimenting with this during the day, opening myself up to experiencing life as a flow of receiving and giving rather than a pursuit of goals or the accumulation of things or experiences.  Instead of measuring the gains and losses in an exchange with another or in striving to the finish line, I instead open myself up to the possibility that in each experience I am given something and am giving. I help a colleague with a problem and I feel competent, a friend listens to my concerns and I am kind to a neighbor, I brace against a stiff strong wind and after dip into a hot bath.  Life follows the same rhythm of the breath with a flowing in followed by and preceded by a flowing out. 

 

There is a way in which giving can feel like a receiving and a receiving can merge into a giving.  When I taught yoga at the nursing home the giving of my time and attention to the residents folded into an experience of awe and tenderness deepened by their generous sharing of themselves in their fragility and vulnerability. It was a heartbreaking privilege to spend time with people so unguarded and utterly unsheltered in their old age and infirmity. 

 

There is a way in which in this flow of receiving and giving that I find fullness in letting go required by loss.  With my mother’s cognitive decline, I feel the loss of being mothered and a grief over the disconnection that I realize has been there all through her mothering of me.  In this loneliness of motherlessness, I find the gift of mothering myself, and when this is not possible the longing for mothering which in and of itself  brings me closer into a precious true part of myself.

 

A few days ago I heard the lovely chanting of the monks at Plum Village in memorial to the passing of their teacher Thich Nat Hahn.  I considered how lovely it might be to live as a monk, the simple, devoted life organized to create conditions for inner peace, compassion, contentment.  How the giving up of the ordinary life of things for a monk’s life would be so rewarding and purposeful.  Later in the day, I heard a story about the president of a college who earns more than six times as much as I do and I fantasized about how easy life would be if I made that much money.  No worries about a car breaking down, how I will support myself when I am old, and the joy of long vacations, flying first class to wherever in the world I wanted to go!  When I then recalled the earlier monk fantasy that I had had only hours before I had to laugh at myself.  How strongly I sometimes long for the situation, the set-up that will make my life complete. 

 

But I have this new feeling in me now that knows deep down that contentment comes from being in the flow of giving and receiving and not by the having or accomplishing.  It has to do with living the life I am called to live as it unfolds in each moment with receiving and with giving.