“Clear Eyes, Full Heart… Can’t Lose”
- Coach Taylor, Friday Night Lights
Often when leading a workshop or teaching a class, I will take a moment near the beginning, and several times throughout, to ask everyone to pause and take a breath together. I will then pause and actually take a couple of breaths. Inevitably, I will notice that there are a few people who are not really breathing, which gives me the chance to use one of my favorite lines: “Breathing”, I will say, “is not a metaphor”.
This usually gets a few chuckles from the group, especially from the people who were not actually breathing. I then take the opportunity that levity provides to talk a little more deeply about what happens when we breathe, when we actually take a moment to be intentional about opening up our lungs to receive a full and deep inhale - the way that the slowness of the breath signals to our bodies that we are safe, the way that feeling of safety unlocks some of our mental capacities that shut down when we are in heighten states of emotional distress.
I then ask the group to try again: to sit or stand up straight, to drop their shoulders and open their chests, to lift their heads so they are not hunched over, to close their eyes, and take a few breaths this time. I ask them while they are breathing to not focus on anything besides their breath. I ask them to not think about completing the task of breathing, but to just be in the breath.
When, after a few minutes of deep and focused breathing, I ask them to open their eyes and bring their attention back to the circle, back to their surroundings, it is very clear to me and everyone in the group that something in the energy has shifted. There is more stillness, there is more focus, there is more presence.
Presence, the ability to be truly in the moment, engaged in the reality that is in front of me, free from the distractions of my mind, outside of the delusions that trap me in habits and patterns that serve a reality that has long past or perhaps never was.
Presence, a state of being that is always available to me if I can stop my mind from running so quickly, if I can slow down my heart, if I can steady my nervous system, if I can get out of my own way.
For me, the most reliable way to return to presence is through the wonder of the natural world, specifically the moon. One thing I find so wondrous about the moon is the way that it seems to just show up in the sky, as if out of nowhere. One moment I am walking along, in conversation or lost in thought, the next moment I turn my head slightly and bam! The moon is right there, in full view hanging steady in the sky. Every time this happens I am overcome with amazement, often accompanied by an involuntary yelp.
About a year ago I was living on a small strip of land that cut out into the ocean in a way that made it possible to see the eastern horizon and the western horizon both meet the water. On the evening of the full moon I decided that I wanted to get myself out of an energetic funk by going to watch the sun set and the moon rise. The sun set happened first. I sat by the water and allowed the sadness that I had been holding to melt out of my body as the sun was dropping into the sea. When all that remained of that great ball of fire were the wisps of pink and orange tinted clouds on the western horizon, I drove across the three mile strip of land to look out at the eastern horizon and wait for the moon to emerge, to rise up from the sea.
Before the moon even arrived I could feel the energy in my body start to shift. The anticipation brought into me a giddiness that moments before would have felt unattainable. I waited and I watched. There were clouds covering parts of the horizon so I could not be sure exactly where the moon would emerge. Would I get to see it slowly creep out of the water? Would a cloud shift and reveal it already full and whole hanging in the sky? Where along the horizon should I place my focus?
After about ten minutes of anticipation a cloud began to shift and slowly, the moon began to emerge. I watch in complete wonder and full presence. There was no room for any of the stories my mind had been focused on, no room for the residual sadness that my heart had been clinging to. There was only the reality of my pure delight at the wonder in front of my face.
As I returned home a friend who I had been wanting to speak to called. I had been planning on sharing with him about my energetic funk. All day my mind had been rehearsing the stories I would tell him. But after watching the sun set and the moon rise, those now old stories were no longer available to me. I was so fully present that I would not have been able to pull them out of my brain even if I wanted to.
As I am not a fully enlightened being, my relationship with presence is often fleeting. I am certainly not beyond being pulled out of presence and into a repetitive, and often unhelpful, thought pattern or emotion spiral. Being pulled into distraction happens just as quickly and far more often. And while the sun does set every day, I don’t always have the opportunity to watch it. What I can do, what I try to remember to do, is find other practices that can lead me to that same presence. The one that is most readily available is the practice of my own breathing. It does not necessarily bring the same sense of wonder that comes with the rising moon, but it does connect me back to the truth within myself, it does fill my heart and clear my eyes.
I don’t always remember it but when I do I can be sure that the presence I seek is just a couple of breaths away.