a loving meditation on my corporate job: part 2

9:30 am. Expense reconciliationasana. It is really quiet in here. I notice my breathing. I take several deliberate ujjayi breaths. No one notices. No one is here. I am all alone in this office. Everyone in the field today, the two others upstairs in deep meditation, spreadsheetasana.

I empty my mind, becoming present to each small movement I am making. Yes. This receipt does match the statement. Place it on the pile. Gingerly lift the next receipt and examine. Yes. This receipt does match the statement. Place it on the pile. Gingerly lift the next receipt ...continue focus on breathing...and examine. Yes. This receipt does match....

Open new window in Google. Type in 'vegan recipe buckwheat pancakes'. Search. Click. Read. Print.

I recognize I've momentarily lost focus. Breathe and begin again. 

I empty my mind. Gingerly lift the next receipt. Yes. This receipt does match the statement. Place it on the pile. 

9:37 am. Time for a tea break. Child's pose. I enjoy each moment of blissful standing rest. 

9:40 am. Expense reconciliationasana. Breathe. Repeat 108 times to breath, Kundalini style.

10:30 am. Inventoryasana. Check toilet paper stockasana. Reorder onlineasana. I'm flowing through the poses. It's a vinyasa.

10:45 am. I go for a walk outside to breathe some air. I reflect on my progress for the day so far. I feel slightly bored and useless until I remember that I get to go to yoga practice once my corporate job practice is done for the day. And I remind myself how I paid for my yoga membership and for that matter, the organic veggies in the salad I packed for lunch. I remind myself of the nice people I work with. I think about my life for a moment from a view from above and see clearly how privileged I am in every way. Gratitude.

11:00 am. I go back into the office disarmed. Lotus pose at my desk. I make a list of everything I need to accomplish that day. Travel bookingasana. Data entryasana. Photocopyasana. 

I move through the practice one pose at a time. Bringing myself back to breath whenever my mind wanders off. 

4:30 comes. I drive home in deep (eyes-open) Savasana. Relaxed, the practice complete. Restoring my mind and body for the next phase of the day. 

Having practised daily for years, I know these asanas well. Still, they feel a little different each day. One day a struggle, the next I fly straight through, light as a feather. If I tune in my daily tasks become a tool to see what my mind is doing that day. Then I have a choice. I can choose gratitude over boredom. Even in mundane tasks I can choose to be present and alive. It's not easy, but it has become my spiritual practice.

Sit. Stay. Breathe. Feel.

life is a playground. tag, you're it!

My plan is to play through life!

Play through work. Play through "responsibilities." Play on holidays. Play through the smooth times. Play through trouble. Play through sadness. Play like a child, laughing, trying, flailing and falling, growing silent in concentration, using my mind to solve a problem and sharing. Helping others, everyone is a potential friend, and asking for help. I know I don't know everything.

I never want to strive to "work hard" again. I vow to no longer listen to those who tell me that success in life is achieved by working really really really hard (as though I must suffer difficulty and strain to be worthy of success!). I want to work soft. I want to work gentle. I want to work easy. I want to work playfully.

When something takes me in a flurry of interest, I want to get caught up in it, involved in it. I want to be passionate.

I don't plan to beat myself up for anyone or anything anymore. I don't want to fight. I like to play nice. This is my one beautiful life and I plan to love all of it.

A lofty goal. (at least you can see I'm not without ambition!)

Play is a way of interacting with the world that sees everything and everyone as inherently on my side. We are all friends in a schoolyard. We play different games and in each game we play different roles, but it's always just for fun. Nothing is so serious because this too shall pass.

Have you ever looked at your corporate job and thought, "these guys are taking this game waaaay too seriously"!? They are fighting and being rude. They talk to their mates as though the organizational structure is a real thing. They hurt themselves by getting stressed out and neglecting their health and their loved ones!

Can they not see that life is made of tiny moments of ecstasy? Can they even feel ecstasy any more?

But I don't hate the player nor the game! I say, if you can find a game you want to play, get into it! Enjoy! Sweat! Push your limits! But only for the love of it. Only if you can feel your soul delighting as it pours forth through you into the task. If you wake up at 2:30 am grasping for your phone so you can record the dream-load of ideas that was just gifted to you and email your future self at the office ("oh what did I mean by "create pyramid spreadsheet for Alberta possums" anyway?????").

Yes, do it for the love of it. Else, don't put your attention to it at all.

But my process of play doesn't just extend to the workplace. I am playing while I drive my pick-up truck (yes, that's me singing and smiling with the breeze in my face). I am at play when I hang the washing (getting immense satisfaction from using the least number of pegs on the most number of clothes), and when I cook (talking, of course, to the carrots and eggplant as I chop, "you little guys are going to join the other veggies in a yummy curry now and be loved and enjoyed by us all!").

But play isn't really about turning everything into a game. It is more a quality of being that invokes lightness, curiosity, and good humour. 

Play says, "I am open."

As in, "pass the ball, I am open!" "What do you want to do tonight? I am open!" "What do you think about this first draft? I am open!" "How can we resolve this issue together? I am open."

I am open to receive. I am open to feel. I am open to you. I am open to life in all forms that it shows up.

So waddya say? Wanna play?

Love,

R

"If I cannot dictate the conditions of my labour I will henceforth cease to work:" a loving meditation on my job

I am a corporate slave. 

However, as my bum sits in the ergonomically designed chair behind the ergonomically designed computer desk, designed thusly in the recognition that the bum was not meant to withstand such violent lethargy for 8 hours each day, my mind is mostly free to wander (little mental engagement is needed for such tedious and inconsequential data entry).

It wanders many places, but as suggested by my last post, of late it's been exploring the idea of purpose. Purpose. Clearly, my job is not my (capital P) Purpose, which is the inspired action where internal purpose and external purpose merge. My job is an external purpose. That purpose being, of course, to make some money to fulfill other external purposes. My point is not to complain.

I recently dug up a CD done by Ani DiFranco with the words of Utah Phillips (The Past Didn't go Anywhere, 1996, Righteous Babe Records Inc). Phillips was a self-identified anarchist, a beautiful speaker and poet. His unique way of looking at societal structures is really blowing my mind and I am meditating on the following recollection from Phillips of a conversation he had with someone who we would consider to be on the fringes of society.

"...And that's where he said to me (he'd been tramping since 1927), he said, 'I told myself in '27, if I cannot dictate the conditions of my labour I will henceforth cease to work.' You don't have to go to college to figure these things out. He said, 'I learned when I was young that the only true life I have is the life of my brain. But if it's true that the only true life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for 8 hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition? Fat chance!'"

It made me think of this article I read in the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks back about the "modern phenomenon of nonsense jobs."

What are these statements pointing to? Where is it all going? What does it mean? And why am I bringing it up?

These statements point to the recognition that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way much of the world operates. Because, why did I come into this human body? To valiantly serve this corporation in whom I own no stakes and to whose values I am vehemently opposed?

And where is it going? Well, it is going towards a shift. And that shift is on the level of me.

What does it mean? It means I am responsible for the freedom of my own mind and, in time, for the freedom of my own body. 

Of course, I bring this up because, lest I be a lethargic bum on an ergonomic chair, maybe I can start contributing to society in some meaningful way.

Love,

R