Sphere of Okayness

If this mending broken ankle of mine; this current stressful process of selling & moving out of our house to meet an uncertain future; this new to us used van we’ll soon be driving to California in hopes that it will make it where we’re heading; this long list of logistics to tend to today & tomorrow in preparation to turn our house of 18-years over to new owners and head out on the open road on Monday is not part of my practice, why practice at all?

I’ve been making my slow way through Suzuki Roshi’s book not always so: practicing the true spirit of Zen. This morning I read a chapter in it entitled Direct Experience of Reality. “When you believe you have some problem,” he says, “it means your practice is not good enough. When your practice is good enough, whatever you are, whatever you do, that is the direct experience of reality.”

One of the most valuable elements of my own personal practice centers around inviting whatever is happening into my sphere of okayness. Not okay as in: Hooray! Everything is awesome! I love what is happening right now! But okay as in: Okay, this too is part of life, part of my experience, part of what is going on right now. It’s not separate.

The more I give myself permission to feel whatever it is I am feeling and to acknowledge & accept whatever it is that is happening, the more I am able to get out of my own way when it comes to being able to experience agency, groundedness, and ease. Even when big winds are blowing. Even when life is super stressful. Even when I am met with additional unexpected challenges to field at every turn.

Towards the end of the chapter I read this morning, Suzuki Roshi said: “If you can enjoy your life in its true sense, then even if you injure your body, it is all right.” I felt as though he was speaking directly to me. I feel as though this is what I have been doing my best to practice as of late, ever since I broke my ankle in mid-August. It is clear to me that it is never really the what that has happened that matters most but the how I respond to it and the who I become in the wake of it, as a result.

I am finding, more and more as time goes on and my practice continues and strengthens, that there is a certain contentment, release and sense of spaciousness that comes when I allow the fierce winds (of change; sorrow; anger; fear; confusion) to be as they are. When I go running around attempting to contain them in an effort to make them simmer down or stop, all I do is exhaust myself. It is a profound waste of my time and energy to fight against whatever it is that is going on that I happen to not like or approve of. When I invite those troubling winds into my sphere of okayness, my experience changes right away. It changes my relationship to what is going on and it gives me some wiggle room to re-acclimate and adjust.

The Wisdom of Paradox

What it is to live in a space of transformative change is to engender greater and greater comfort with paradox.

Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams

Definition alert. Paradox: a statement or proposition that seems self-contradicting or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

The topic thread of paradox has been alive for me lately, so here I am to share some of my current musings. Here’s what I’m thinking: there is a fierce rip tide within many of us that pulls us in the direction of feeling as though we need to be constantly and continually choosing sides. Choosing one thing over another thing. Choosing to validate one thing at the expense of invalidating another thing. Many of us have a very hard time allowing multiple realities to coexist simultaneously. Many of us are stuck in either/or thinking to a detriment.

One of the new-ish phrases I’ve been using is Both things are true. I use it when I talk to myself out loud, which I do a lot of, and I use it when in conversation with others as well. I am finding it to be a short & sweet cut through way to acknowledge and make space for the paradoxical realities that exist as a very real part of life and daily living.

As an example, I am now almost 7-weeks out from ankle surgery, which was done to repair a trio of breaks that I incurred during a nothing-special trip and fall encounter I had with some concrete steps at my house. Counting the additional week I had in between my injury and surgery, I have now clocked in a total of 8-weeks spent navigating the world on crutches. Prior to this injury, I had NO idea how much hard work it was to get around on crutches. It is a laborious and taxing endeavor. I have a mildly painful callous forming on both of my hands, from the amount of pressure needed to swing my body around from place to place, and the hip on my affected side is quite unhappy. My back is a little out of whack as well. Turns out, the human body was not meant to spend long stints of time wobbling around on crutches.

But then here also is the thing: crutches are an amazing invention of ingenuity. Thank goodness for crutches! Truly. Without them, I’d be almost completely unable to get around on my own. Crutches allow me the opportunity to get around while my broken ankle is mending.

Crutches are a rough way to get around AND they are a marvelous mobility support. Both things are true.

Tone Matters

I am a big proponent and practitioner of: words matter. And what I mean by that is that I put a lot of gravity and a high level of responsibility – on myself and on others – to use words consciously, choicefully, and with great care & consideration for what is being said.

And equally as important as what we say is how we say it. I would even go so far as to propose that perhaps the way in which we say things is even a little more important than the actual words themselves. Tone matters too.

The other day, my husband Mike had his phone on speaker when he called a friend and co-worker on his small roofing crew to check in about work. When his friend, Corey, picked up the phone, I was immediately set at ease by his tone of voice on the other end of the line. It was a friendly, upbeat, pleasant tone and it felt to me that he was genuinely glad to be talking to Mike. When Mike was off the phone, I asked him to please relay from me to Corey how delightful it was to hear his voice and how I regard it as a skill to develop such an inviting and welcoming tone of voice. It’s a skill many of us do not have, myself included.

I do and can have a friendly tone of voice when interacting with others but it really depends on the situation. Where I have a lot of work to do in developing a kind-hearted tone of voice is when interacting with acquaintances or friends I unexpectedly run into around town when I’m in errand mode, or when confronted with a chatty employee – or someone I think might be chatty – who works in a store I’m shopping in.