Being available, as in being open to another’s state of being, is tough for me. Like multitasking in the kitchen when my kids are visiting during a Holiday. Putting dishes away and thinking that just by being in the same room as my young grandson, I’m “being” with him.
My whole operating mode has always been inward pointing. Understanding myself by studying how and why I am, working at coming into balance with myself and my world, has been my life-long focus. What the world is asking of me now, is to stretch beyond that. We all need to stretch in our own ways.
But how? Growth doesn’t happen for me just because I see or feel the need to change. First, I need to have the seed of a real Wish—that is what fuels my inquiry. What I need, is to find my own way in—to where it’s real for me. To where it comes from the whole of myself, not just my wishing or my thinking. I need to find a hook that brings me in front of an effort in the moment. Otherwise, it remains outside of my awareness, allowing old patterns to prevail.
Three Centered Availability
Because I have worked for years practicing sensation, I can use that as a link with my physical self. I can use my mental faculty to visualize a scenario I know I will interact with. And I can use my Wish to engage my feeling, keeping me open.
For me, writing these words is like reading them is for you. They are words, taken in by our thoughts. This is not Work. Work is the putting of something into practice. Which doesn’t mean what is practiced is “successful” it simply means it is worked at.
One chance to practice this in a situation, is to set an “intention” early in my day when I am in a quiet, three-centered state. Something needs to “remind” me for later in the day, when I am physically in a moment of interaction. That is the hardest part, because it’s in the ordinary part of my day, when habits and patterns take over. There needs to be a bridge between this deeper part of myself and the ordinary part of myself.
The Bridge
Madam De Salzmann suggested we take an “impression” of ourselves when in a quiet, deeper place within. For me, this comes at the end of a morning exercise or meditation. She then suggests we project (or visualize) ourselves in the ordinary part of our day. And to set ourselves to do that in reverse when we find ourselves in that pre-determined moment of our day. To hold these two impressions of ourselves together, from both vantage points. I can only do this when I’m present in all of myself—physical sensation, feelings, intention.
I see this as a way to forge a link between my ordinary self and my deeper self.
If I can figure out how to build the bridge between these two aspects of myself, the inner and the external, I may grow the seed of my Wish into a Being who is Available.
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