Hi Anita – I think the best dancing happens late in life 🙂

A reflection on this mornings yoga class: “Mats All the Way Down”

The class begins with the unrolling, a rhythmic click-clack of rubber meeting wood. We call it “my mat,” a rectangle of sovereignty where we play out the drama of our breath and bone. We think we are here to move, to sweat, to paint the morning with our effort. But the mat is patient. It does not move. It is the steady substrate that waits for the paint to dry, for the story of the body to settle, until the “canvas” of our being finally shows through the exertion.

But look closer. My mat rests on the studio floor, a larger mat of oak and nails that holds and connects twenty of us in our private struggles. And the floor rests upon the earth, the Great Mat, the ancient weaving of soil and stone that carries the dance of every living thing. It is mats all the way down.

Each one is a reminder. We don’t “use” the mat, the mat holds us. It holds us still enough to realize that we are not the movement, but the stillness that allows it. We bow not to the floor, but to the fact that something is there to catch us.

As it is above, so it is below. The cosmos is the canvas, the earth is the rug, and my heart is the smallest, most intimate mat of all. Each time I step on, I am not starting a workout. I am coming home to the original, unpainted surface. I am remembering that before I was a dancer, before I was a worker, before I was a name, I am held.

….

Have you ever wondered about the way our ‘sacred’ spaces evolved around mats. Whether it’s a yoga mat, a prayer rug, or a dance floor, they all act as a sacred boundary, a designated patch of pure being. When we step onto them, we aren’t just changing locations; we are stepping off the ‘painted world’ of chores, emails, and social roles.

We ‘return to the mat’ because the world is designed to make us forget. The ‘paint’ of daily life is loud and demanding, but the act of bowing or kneeling is a physical way of saying: I am smaller than the paint, but one with the canvas. It is a literal lowering of the ego to touch the substrate.

It’s the Hermetic maxim in action: As Above, So Below. If the ‘canvas’ is the vast, eternal stillness of the universe, then the mat is our personal, microscopic version of that stillness. By touching it, we plug back into the source. Even on the dance floor, where we are all ‘movement,’ we cannot dance without the floor to hold us… We think we are using the mat to ‘work out,’ but perhaps the mat is actually there to hold us still long enough for the canvas to finally show through?

I do not think it a coincidence that so many of our interactions with life and its objects call out to us to remember – with eyes that see and ears the hear…

Hi Anita
That’s quite the analyses… what stood out to me was this part:

You’re actually doing far less “grasping” than you think. What you are doing is something very human: when an idea touches something deep, you naturally want to understand it, articulate it, and make sense of it. That’s not a flaw — it’s your way of staying oriented and safe.

I think that’s one of the most important takeaways. The thoughts and questions that momentarily separate us from the “peace of the sky” are part of a natural process. The clouds and rain are necessary… put another way, life wants us to paint on its canvas!

The “work” isn’t to stop the painting or to clear the sky forever. It’s simply to notice the separation, recognize the masks it creates, and then maybe a giggle: “I see you.”

What was it that stood out to you?

Hi Anita,
It’s been helpful to watch how you’re using these metaphors to map out your inner world. It was also interesting to see how Copilot reflected both of us back to ourselves. I wonder what you saw?

I’m also wondering if you had time to sit with the question touched on earlier – how when you first notice the ‘stillness’ as the observer and the observed are briefly one. Pure sky. Only to dissolve… And I had suggested an irony that the question was the answer? The moment when the mind jumps in, asking, “Why did the peace go away?”

The irony being that the peace “goes away” because the question arose creates the gap. The mind, the words, the question… the thought becomes the speck of dust that makes the mist condense into rain. It’s all very natural, just as it’s intended to be.

Here I hear the laughter of Alan Watts as he viewed this a the “cosmic game” and joke. It seems we play a lifelong game of peek-a-boo with our own nature. We “lose” the sky just so we can have the thrill of finding it again. We turn the formless into form, into stories… some genital rain, and some, when we get so caught up in the weather that we forget we are the atmosphere itself, becoming “hail”.

We forget that we don’t need to hold onto the sky; the sky has always been holding us. Even the retelling of the past is but a cloud drifting by that doesn’t leave a scratch on the blue.

Can you feel the “giggle” in that? The realization that even when you feel “locked in,” the part of you that notices the lock is already free. It’s like searching the whole world for your glasses only to find them on your own nose.

I often wonder if this is why the Buddha is so often depicted with a smile or a belly laugh. He’s like a child delighted to see the face reappear that was hidden behind by his own fingers…

Pondering the thought myself… the peek-a-boo is probably the first game every child plays… and I wonder about all the different faces we took on as our own, I don’t know if we should laugh or cry? Early on, a baby sees the face that hiding as their own… and so delighted when it ‘reappears’. And their is a innocent joy I feel in that discovery…

Yet… It is the ultimate human dilemma, the “tragedy” of losing ourselves and the “comedy” of finding ourselves.

From a babies perspective, I imagine it terrifying, when the face disappears, the world ends. Than latter when it reappears which face did we take as our own and adopt just to survive… that isn’t a joke; it’s a heavy, lonely burden. Crying is the only honest response to the years spent believing we were the mask.

But the “Buddha’s Laugh” comes from the perspective of the one who has finally pulled the hands away. The laughter isn’t a dismissal of the tears; it’s the sound of absolute relief. It’s the “smile” of realizing that while we were busy crying over the lost face, the Sky was never actually gone.

Alan Watts, I think would say we do both. We cry because the game is so convincing, and we laugh because we realize we were the ones playing it with ourselves all along. The beauty is that the “Sky” is big enough to hold both the tears and the laughter.

So perhaps for a long time, you may have seen your mother’s rigid “face” and thought took it as your own. Or perhaps the fingers remained in place, never revealing the face and so were left with mystery… But now, you’re the one pulling the hands away to see the sky that was always there, waiting…

Anita, it’s a big deal that you’re able to name that physical tension, the breath-holding and the tics. That is the territory speaking.

Laing was criticized partly because he looked at the territory (the person) instead of just the map (the diagnosis). Professionals love their maps; they feel safe when they can label a “thing” rather than feel a “process.” You notice that when I use the word ‘God’ I qualify it by noting when I’m using it as a noun or verb. As only a noun the word very easily becomes a knot and double bind, so you can imagine Religious leaders not liking having that pointed out.

Regarding the “No-Self,” I want to offer a different way to look at that knot. Often, what we call our “self” is actually just a map, a collection of stories, masks, and “False Selves” we built to survive. When that map starts to tear or doesn’t fit the reality of our lives, it feels like we are literally dying.

However, as Richard Rohr suggests, the “No-Self” isn’t about disappearing into a void; it’s about the Small Self (the map) falling away so the True Self (the territory/the Spark) can finally breathe. Krishnamurti talked about this too: “the observer is the observed.”

We’ve explored these notions before… where constructs of self fall away, often experienced as the ‘dark night of the soul’ and you realize, sometimes surprised, you are still here. The small self (ego) will frantically ask, “What is this ‘you’ that is still here?” and the “No-Self” just smiles (buddha smile?)… seeing the ‘ego self’ as it is… Yes, I’ve just created a possible double bind (duality)… but it only stays a bind if we hold these words and ideas tightly, as maps… here Self and No-Self dissolve for a breath or two – there was never two sides of a coin – just coin.

I’ve found that when you stop trying to look at your “self” as a fragile object you have to protect, and instead be the awareness that notices the tension, the knot starts to lose its power.

You aren’t “dying” when the old masks slip; you’re just realizing you aren’t the map. You are the ground the map was sitting on… the blank canvas that remains blank no mater what is painted on it. Enjoy the painting, noticing what you painted and others have painted… only don’t mistake it for the canvas (No-Self)…

For now, don’t feel like you have to “work” these terms or master definitions. Maybe just sit with the thought of the map and the territory without trying to solve it. See if you can simply relax into the untying, letting the concepts drift for a bit while you just notice the breath coming back. As No-Self has been triggering in the past, you may resist, and noticing that is part of the untying.

How does your body react when you give yourself permission to just notice the tension without needing to explain why it’s there or the “who” it is happening to?

P.S. We do have things in common… I think we both learned early on to distrust life and love, even if the causes were different. Everyone experiences that at some level, but for those like us, I suspect it its been a defining experience. We also I think share a intention to heal that distrust and not give into it…

Anita, it makes total sense that shame would ‘freeze’ the ability to play with language—when we are constantly scanning for a ‘faulty’ look or a hidden threat, our minds stay literal just to stay safe.

When I used the smile and the sad face, I was trying to describe a ‘double-bind‘ that felt very much like the one you grew up with. In my tradition, we were told we were ‘chosen’ and ‘saved by grace’ an idea that should make someone want to dance and sing! (Smile).

But in the next breath, we were told that dancing was a sin… Tough not thought directly the idea forms that one had to prove we were ‘chosen’ by maintaining a performative gravity, a constant, heavy seriousness. I used the word ‘sober’ not to mean staying away from wine, but as a somber, humorless mask we had to wear to prove we were ‘good’ = chosen.

It’s the ultimate loop: you are told you are free, but then you are given a heavy set of rules to prove you deserve that freedom. You are ‘saved by faith,’ but judged by your ability to stay perfectly in line.

The saddest part is that this double-bind usually isn’t intentional. The people teaching it often don’t realize they are scrambling our internal compass; they are just passing on the ‘hardened’ language they were given.

In that world, to ask a deeper question was to ‘think too much’ something I am still told regularly today… I feel this may be similar to your experience of the notebook of poetry, the child hears shame, don’t be your true self… It creates a quiet kind of ‘madness‘ where you have to develop a ‘False Self’, a solemn, rule-following shell just to survive the atmosphere.

When you get access to you computer again you may find exploring RD Laing notions of double blind, knots and mystification interesting. We all have harden our own hearts if just to survive and navigate the binds… Most of us have experienced the ‘red sea’ crossing at least once to break its hold… the idea is to notice before such a drenching is the only way through… 🙂