Life is Always Communicating
The fundamental operating premise of my faith is that Life is always communicating with me. At various stages along my journey, faith meant anything from “everything is going to work out” to “everything happens for a reason” to “everything is here to teach me something.” And don’t get me wrong— things always work out somehow, meaning can be assigned to any situation, and I typically find a way to learn from what Life presents. Of course, some things work out tragically, even good explanations fail to satisfy the heart, and abuse, neglect, oppression, injustice, and the many ongoing atrocities of modern times seem like pretty harsh teaching methodologies. So there is also that.
I think I first heard the teaching that “Life is always communicating” from Pema Chodron, although I am not positive. I do know that when Life is always communicating is an operating premise, my viewpoint and resultant practices shift from needing to believe in an all-knowing deity who grants or denies my wishes through some kind of transactional arrangement, to curiosity about the various languages through which Life might speak. I shift from the compulsive need to master endless amounts of philosophical and theological data in the hopes that Life will finally make sense, to asking myself whether or not I am listening to what Life is saying. Instead of questioning what lessons I am supposed to be learning, I spend time developing the facility and fluency to respond to Life so that our conversation flows both ways.
If Life is always communicating with me, how does it speak? If Life is always communicating with me, am I listening? If Life is always communicating with me, how do I best respond?
Curiosity. Listening. Response.
Somewhere in the last decade, I realized I was experiencing the asana practice in a new way. Instead of thinking about “one day this pose is totally going to work out and it will move from my “I can’t” to my “I can” column,” I felt the energy of me that lives beneath and beyond my changing abilities and competencies. Cultivating curiosity about this energy is much more interesting these days than pursuing increasingly more difficult asanas.
Even though my surface-level instruction and anatomical knowledge grew more technical, my inner experience grew more expansive as the veil thinned between the poses and principles on the mat and the shape my life was taking off the mat. Listening to, and reflecting on, what was arising as I practiced became more interesting than assigning a metaphoric meaning at the start of class or practice and plugging poses into a sequence to express a theme or to fulfill an ideal or expectation.
I stopped seeing the cues and instructions as right and wrong or as protocols to which I was beholden, but as a means of being in dialogue with myself in, and through, the shape-making. The cues can function as possibilities for responsive action, as a way to send an answer back to Life in the form of triangle pose, but I see them as the doorway to the inner chamber to which the asana is offering access, not as the boundary of the room.
And, so we are clear, I do listen to the news and the realities are bleak. For me, Life is speaking through heart-break, outrage, and the pain of wounds that span generations. Almost everyone I know is dealing with something challenging personally in the midst of our shared sorrows and considering cues and yoga poses is admittedly kinda weird. I don’t think yoga poses change all of the Everything going on. I just think that meditation, mantra, prayer, and poses are ways for me to shift myself a little each day the same way any heartfelt conversation bolsters and supports me in hard times.
So, yeah. Life is always communicating. Keep the faith.
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