Month: March 2022

After recently straining my back, I decided to get back to a daily practice of plank position exercises. The postural technique is not new for me; whether in yoga or martial arts training, I’ve held the pose countless times in work-outs and classes. My physical frame is not that large. So the position known as ‘plank’ has always come easily. Over the years, I’ve found that I can hold it quite long, often more dependent on the fatigue in my arms rather than my abdominal-lumbo-hip muscle complex. Consequently, I’ve always felt that my core was fairly strong.

How wrong I have been! Guided by an on-line recording which urged me to flatten my back as if I was holding a plate of food atop it, I realized, quite suddenly one day, that I’ve not been engaging all of my core muscle group when I have previously moved into plank position. In fact, my back has not been flat, my lower body not aligned with my head and shoulders. Only some of the core muscle complex were previously activated when I’ve somewhat indifferently lifted myself into position. A key component of my core strength complex – my abdominals – were not pulling their weight at all.

Where I thought I was strong, I was, surprisingly, weak.

It’s not fun to discover new frailties, especially ones that once felt were our strengths in our routines. Sure, the insight can enable a person to improve; there is power in the uncovering of potential. But it is also humbling to be shown by life that, no matter the number of years we have breathed, we always have so much more to learn. And things which we thought we knew, some of which we understood to be easy, are not so straightforward after all. What is simple becomes hard. What is known is once more mysterious.

When I first realized the error in how I held plank position, I felt as if I was experiencing my body anew. How could I have missed this? Wow, the proper position was not so effortless, how I breathed not so comfortable, how long I could hold the posture not so predictable. I dropped to my knees after half a minute, and rolled onto the floor in laughter. Just one more example of the insidious influence of arrogance in my life! How many more such conceits had I yet to uncover?

The list appears to be long. Beginning with muscle mechanics, I reach when I shouldn’t, don’t lift with my legs to protect my back, rely more on one side of my body to perform certain functions when I have two fully capable and complementary sets of physical tools. Slow down, my awareness reminds me. Bring attention to action, I tell my seemingly autonomous extremities and digits. You don’t know everything. You didn’t even know what plank position actually was.

Of course there are other areas in my life where routine has been substituted for mastery, assumption replaced insight, pride masqueraded as purposeful engagement. And those parts of my life are not as easy to recognize and change. How I judge, for example. How I compare. The silly desire to succeed – and to be seen as succeeding. The fear I carry for the world and the people I love. Memories of my mistakes. Maybe even a deeply held belief that I am not worthy of unconditional acceptance by the Creator of this world and the prime moving force and spirit behind my being.

Am I really as adept and capable in the central parts of my life where I may think I am most fit and vital?

I know I am not. Fortunately, that is not weakness, at least not necessarily. Because when I am able to experience my days and the world through fresh eyes, I am able to grow. When I am able to grow, I am able to let go. When I learn to let go, I am able to better be: to better be versus always trying to be a better me. I don’t fully appreciate the difference there. I know, however, that an important distinction exists, instinctively sense that ‘being better’ involves a deeper level of participation in my daily habits and activities. It means an openness to learning new things – and to relearning things that I thought I knew. It involves releasing the embrace of the past on the potential for the future.

There can be wonder unveiled by weakness, fresh renewal possible through fragility. My physical plank position is much improved following the realization that I had not understood its form properly. Perhaps other parts of my core, once re-examined, can find similar strengthening.

Shine through. That’s what we all can do.

Some of my best moments in life have been the ones in which I’ve been the most transparent. I’m not necessarily talking about stark “truth-telling”; the full expression of our thoughts or the way that we feel at any point in time is often fraught with bias, loaded with emotion, and misguided by self-righteousness. The question “can I be honest?” is not uniformly followed by insightful, compassionate, and supportive commentary. Rather, it can be an entree to “let me tell you how I really feel”, a typically quick slip on the slick slope of bitterness, jealousy, and other selfish impulses. What I may be thinking or feeling at any moment should be subject to filter – or perhaps only shared with a counselor, spiritual sage, or some other objective professional or person whose role is only to listen, not to be changed.

The state of being ‘shined through’ is very different. In such a state, I am neither self-serving nor judgmental. There is no desire to be right. There is only presence. Like a bulb turned on from an influential source, there is current, then connection, and finally light. The incandescent bulb in your table lamp takes no credit for the current coursing through it. It seeks no reward for its role in day-to-day activities. It simply bridges, a thin filament of linkage converting electricity into luminescence. A switch is thrown and a resistant thread of metal heats until it glows. Electricity, thrust into an airless or inert space, is transformed into light.

It is no easy task to be airless. The space of our consciousness is anything but inert. We are constantly surveying our environment with our senses, processing a steady stream of information from the world around us, thinking, thinking about our thinking, assessing our situations, reasoning, reacting. We are so busy staying busy that we too easily can mistake what is us versus what is flowing through us. Consequently, we can miss opportunities to be filaments in the cosmic flow of interconnectedness. Or, when we serve as those bridges, we can misinterpret the experience. That was me, I might think. Look at me. The light from your table lamp never asks to be looked at. Instead, it allows you to see.

“That was great advice.”

Like most of us, I’ve been thanked for my advice more than once. It warms me to remember such occasions now. But some of my best advice I don’t recall giving. For others, if I do remember the situation, I am reminded of how I felt after I shared the perspective than of the insight itself. Where did that come from? I distinctly recall thinking at different times in my life. Oh gosh, I hope that was helpful. Who was I to say that? It feels good to be appreciated, yes. It feels strange, however, to be thanked for something that I either have forgotten or something for which I have no reason to be extended acknowledgment.

“I have no idea why I said that,” I once told someone, in response to a time-delayed note of thanks. To someone else: “I said that?” To another: “You may be remembering that wrong. It was probably someone else because, well, honestly, I think I was probably too focused on myself to have given anything resembling good advice for someone else.” That last statement still applies today.

Which is perhaps why I am drawn to the word “diaphanous”. And to the current circumstances in Ukraine, to the combative nature of communications in the United States, to the seemingly cyclical propensity of our species to overlook the advice of our ancestors. Some of best and worst guidance in history is memorialized in print, in audio recordings, and even in film. It is there, it is right there, before us, and with us. How can we let the past teach us? How can we seek to learn from both it and the present in a spirit of giving, of growing, rather than one of owning, of holding?

“Seeing through” something is very different to “shining through”. The first is potentially intrusive, is proudful, is more about what I can perceive rather than how you can benefit. The latter – shining through, the original meaning of the PIE word root bha – embodies the potential for radiation, for luminosity, for participation in a causal chain that depends on me but is not about me. Who or what wants or needs to ‘shine through’ our current world and its challenges? We can answer “nothing”, or resort to the breakthrough of “evil” or “tragedy”. But those are excuses, aren’t they. They represent a refusal to stretch ourselves in directions and ways that we are born to do. Because can choose to be part of the solution, not just bystanders to or recipients of the challenges. We can decide to reach out, in smalls moments and large, to others. We can answer the call of our time with a declaration in favor of goodness, of virtue, of the spirit that binds us to each other, to everything around us, to what has come before us and what will come after us. We can be the conduit for goodness to shine through.

It is nice to learn in our lives that we have made a difference in the world. It is nicer to know that we sometimes have made a difference despite our individual desires or needs to do so. Instead of indifference, or inaction, let’s try consciously to become part of the path of what is good and what is possible. Let’s never forget that light only shines when there are filaments of change willing to reach out and be energized.