“The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence… It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.” - Thomas Merton
I spent this past summer in Kansas City, performing the role of Christian, in a production of Cyrano De Bergerac. The play was fine, it was for mainly old white people and such is the state of regional theater these days - different essay for a different time. But the real highlight of my time there was what lived across the street from my airbnb. The stunning Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and their incredible grounds, and yummy coffee shop. Everyday before rehearsal, and every night when I got home I would walk these beautiful grounds. I would roam through the sculptures, take in the flowers, and bathe in the moon. At the center of these grounds (not geographically, I’m sure there was something more center center, but spiritually, for me at least) was the magnificent Rodin’s, The Thinker. Maybe you’ve seen it? A giant man so intensely stressed by whatever he’s thinking about, that he’s curled into a ball, even his toes are curled and gnarled because he’s thinking so much. Hunched over, his shoulders rounded into his chest, neck and fingers bent, chasing after some thought or idea… Every day I would walk by this sculpture, and every day I would whisper to myself, “That’s me. I’m The Thinker.”
It didn’t help that when my mom came to visit she too said, “That’s you,” with a freaky air of excitement. Like, a sculpture actually made her understand her offspring better.
“I know Ma, I know. That’s me. I know.”
Often so caught and knotted up in my thoughts I’m unable to break free. That’s me.
I struggle to relax y’all. I struggle to relax on vacation, at home, in traffic, making love, you name it - it’s hard for me to relax. I’m more often the thinker than not, but I’m also the person who has been blessed with the gift of dharma, meditation, and enough loving and liberated people in my community who remind me in action or words to “fall back” (on top of the fact that these words are tattooed on my right wrist, just above where I wear my watch, because peace of mind is more important than the time). Fall back, sit tall, breathe deep, rest, enjoy this moment, chill. It’s not all that serious.
The thing I’m most often wound up tight about is ME. Self-cherishing is most often my main source of suffering.
Yes, me.
When wound up tight like a little ball with all my thinking, me, myself, and I are like my own personal devotional deity. I call it Selfing. There is taking a selfie and then there is selfing. Selfing sucks. It’s me me me, all the time me.
Thinking and over thinking, “This is me, this what I want, this is what I don’t want, this is what I wish were not this.” Me, trying to solve something, me at the center of my thoughts and so I curl into a little ball of stress and scrunch my toes and think obsessively like Rodin’s, The Thinker.
When I think of liberation, I think of The Thinker relaxing and sitting up tall. I think of his gnarled toes letting go and unclenching. His wrinkled forehead, curled fingers, and tight shoulders opening up. I see him getting up off his mantle and lying down in the grass - there is so much grass at The Nelson-Atkins to surrender to, to let go, to lay down and simply rest. No longer needing to chase some thought, no longer needing to get it right or to figure out the next thing to do.
To think less about me is to expand, is to soften, it happens almost instantly.
Like a clenched fist opening. Like a bodybuilder who takes the last week off to rest before a big show. Like a performer who lets go of all the hard work, practice, rehearsal and preparation, allowing the magic to take place. Like that moment when you remember you haven’t been breathing, and so you breathe. (Did you just remember to breathe!?)
How did I forget to breathe!?
In that softening, my perspective starts to expand. Suddenly I can take in others. Only when I relax can I bear witness to others. Bear witness to their suffering and to their beauty, to their genius. There’s no better way to get out of my ‘me-cage’ than to truly bear witness to another person, to let them into my heart, my life.
When we take ourselves out of the picture all that is left is everything.
Softening expands my vision. My heart expands. Softening has the ability to settle the dust. In a softened state, my obsessions and obsessive thoughts relax.
The liberation I speak about, the one we all desire (whether we have named it or not), can only be accessed first and foremost through softening. Not clinging, not effort, not trying harder, not grasping.
It’s like falling from the top of a tree to come crashing down to the ground below. We have no idea how many branches we’ve passed on the way down. The Thinker will replay this incident over and over again, constantly falling from the tree, over and over again.
The practice of liberation says, you fell once, that was enough. You don’t have to fall from the same damn tree over and over again. You get to stop. You get to be free. You get to lie down.
Want to know the best part - The Thinker doesn’t have to become a different person. The thinker doesn’t have to transform or change into someone else. The thinker already is. I already am. You already are. We have all the tools necessary to open up, unwind, sit tall, self-cherish less, soften, and do nothing.
And yes, for sure, making room for a new habit, even a highly desired one is a challenge. Taking off the human drag that thinks way too much about itself is hard at times, it's all we know. We think our stress level at 150% is normal until we realize it’s not. We get so used to conducting our lives this way, we’re not even aware of our discomfort, until we have a moment of rest, until we feel our toes uncurl and let go.
None of this is meant to be heavy, or meant to be figured out by analysis. It’s meant to be practiced, firsthand, meant to be lived. See what happens when you take a deep full breath and relax your shoulders, see how your jaw releases, how you uncurl your gripping hands, and you stop scrunching your toes. When you think less, your perspective and your imagination widen. You see the world more, the world sees you more. When you infuse generosity and compassion into your way of seeing and being in the world maybe the heart can release more too. Inviting more care into our lives.
It’s said that liberation is an accident, and when we keep practicing, when we keep softening, we become more and more accident prone. All of this and more, is possible when we’re not so scrunched over with thinking and selfing.
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