yoga for knuckleheads #22 "so far, no inner peace"
It's been over a year now, and by this time, after reluctantly beginning yoga, I felt I'd have achieved some measure of inner peace, or soothing zen-like serenity for my efforts, but lately, taking stock objectively after bouts of unflinching introspection, there seems little if any progress on the spiritual aspects of yoga in my life. Physically, I am addicted to yoga because it has markedly strengthened my core, loosened my lower back, opened up my stiff, painful hip, and added a spring to my step, an over-all lightness to my being as I muddle around after my morning sessions.
Yet, spiritually, as I was discussing these prospects with my friend Ethan, a yoga maven, I appear to be the same impatient, restless, judgmental, angry borderline mad-dog I was when I started after getting terminated from my gym for writing scandalously about fellow members and decided to start yoga at Ethan's encouragement. For what it's worth, Ethan, a very easy-going, non materialistic yet at times angry, cynical, confrontational person, claims he has found little spiritual improvement from his decades of yoga and uses it for physical purposes because of the body beating he takes from day-to-day work as a carpenter.
His wife, Contessa, who has been to Nepal, India and Bhutan, seems much more in touch with her spiritual side and thrives on inner peace, congeniality and happiness, near as I can tell, though she admits, when she cuts my hair, to worrying about health and aging, although everybody who knows her feels she looks 15 years younger than she is and is never sick, possibly due to purity in nutrition and nonstop yoga of the highest and most demanding level.
But far as I can tell, Ethan is nowhere near as spiritually lacking as I am, because he does not spend whole days and weeks seething with unreasonably malicious and damning thoughts as I do, nor conducting himself as I do on a daily basis—bad habits I thought would be discouraged and permanently expunged by now from yoga.
I felt that my innate inescapable pettiness would at last be at least curbed to some extent, along with my propensity to fly off the handle and go into idiot rages over tiny setbacks, like spilling things on counters, floors and myself when cooking and eating, or locking myself out of the house, or hurting myself while moving about in inept, mindless clumsiness at the execution of menial domestic tasks, or finding myself fuming and grinding my teeth behind a slow driver in town who refuses to pull over while going ten miles an hour when I'm not in a hurry but just pissed off at a person having the gall and insensitivity to hold me back.
I try to stop myself from doing these things, of course, taking a cue from master guru Reggie and gulping in deep breaths and spewing out stale air. Whenever I feel rage building up over seeming nonsense, or nothing, I try and think of how Reggie handled an aggressive, offensive neighbor who was out of line—he turned the tables by being calm, friendly and I guess subtly manipulative, a mature person who ended up drawing an apology after he apologized even though he was in the right. Reggie took the correct, civilized approach so as to avoid confrontation and malevolent feelings and actions, while I, when told of his experience, informed Reggie I would have “punched the self-righteous prick.”
Reggie admitted that in the past he would have at least called the guy out and perhaps entered fisticuffs, but all that kind of behavior has been eliminated since he started yoga, and in my mind Reggie is absolutely right, a mature, intelligent person who in his acts contributes pleasant and exalted vibrations and emanations in the world, and not a bunch of negative, illogical savagery—possibly the reasons our world is always awash in war among billions of lunatics.
Just this morning, on the beach in Cayucos, in fact, I engaged in a hideous scene in which I should have taken deep breaths, as instructed by Reggie, and instantly figured a way to avoid a really ugly confrontation, but I failed abysmally, most likely, because it had to do with my old dog, Wilbur, who had, the day before, engaged in a fight (after being attacked) with a 160 pound unfixed maniacal Bull Mastiff on the beach.
Well, this morning, before yoga class, I had Wilbur off the leash on the beach beside the pier, and a young man chastised me in a snotty, superior manner for allowing him to pee on child's riding object beside a swing and slide. I asked him what he wanted me to do, clean it off? He said I should. Well, I am fastidious about picking up Wilbur's turds, but if I had to clean off every object he peed on I'd end up dreading walking him and possibly be recognized as a town clown and clean freak.
So I said, “It's none of your goddam business where my dog pees, you self-righteous prick.”
“Oh, that's a great attitude,” he exclaimed with mounting smugness. “You should go clean off that child's toy, it's unsanitary. Little children can catch diseases from your dog.”
I stepped forward, and, instead of explaining that Wilbur had only peed on that object because hundreds of other dogs had, too, I yelled, “Go fuck yourself, asshole!”
“YOU go fuck yourself, asshole!” he retorted, obviously taken aback.
“YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF!" I bellowed, stepping closer, prepared to throw down my leash and sunglasses and invite him to take a punch at a 73 year old varmint.
“YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF!” he bellowed back.
“WANNA DO SOMETING ABOUT IT?” I bellowed.
“FUCK YOU! HAVE A NICE DAY, ASSHOLE!” He bellowed, and walked off.
Well, I was shaking, my heart beating like a parakeet's, and immediately I realized I should have walked away as a few early risers, no doubt tourists staying at the nearby B & B, stared at me in disgust and disbelief, though a few locals in hoodies and beanies drinking coffee along the sea wall, who have seen me walk dogs here for years, chortled and issued me wide grins and thumbs up.
Well, certainly Reggie would not give me the thumbs up, I know that, and I was loathe to mention this indecent tiff when I reported to yoga an hour later this morning, and possibly should have waxed eloquent about my behavior the afternoon before, when, after the master of the aggressive, vicious, maniacal mastiff, pulled him off a valiantly battling holding-his-own 90 pound 12 year old Chocolate Lab/Chesapeake, all I said was, “Wilbur's too old to be fighting super heavyweights, just like his owner is too old to be getting into fights.”
He was a tall, pleasant fellow in a beanie, who corralled his really ugly, nasty dog, who every dog owner on the dog beach hated and feared, and said, “Sorry, man, my bad. Thanks for being a cool dude.”
Yet, spiritually, as I was discussing these prospects with my friend Ethan, a yoga maven, I appear to be the same impatient, restless, judgmental, angry borderline mad-dog I was when I started after getting terminated from my gym for writing scandalously about fellow members and decided to start yoga at Ethan's encouragement. For what it's worth, Ethan, a very easy-going, non materialistic yet at times angry, cynical, confrontational person, claims he has found little spiritual improvement from his decades of yoga and uses it for physical purposes because of the body beating he takes from day-to-day work as a carpenter.
His wife, Contessa, who has been to Nepal, India and Bhutan, seems much more in touch with her spiritual side and thrives on inner peace, congeniality and happiness, near as I can tell, though she admits, when she cuts my hair, to worrying about health and aging, although everybody who knows her feels she looks 15 years younger than she is and is never sick, possibly due to purity in nutrition and nonstop yoga of the highest and most demanding level.
But far as I can tell, Ethan is nowhere near as spiritually lacking as I am, because he does not spend whole days and weeks seething with unreasonably malicious and damning thoughts as I do, nor conducting himself as I do on a daily basis—bad habits I thought would be discouraged and permanently expunged by now from yoga.
I felt that my innate inescapable pettiness would at last be at least curbed to some extent, along with my propensity to fly off the handle and go into idiot rages over tiny setbacks, like spilling things on counters, floors and myself when cooking and eating, or locking myself out of the house, or hurting myself while moving about in inept, mindless clumsiness at the execution of menial domestic tasks, or finding myself fuming and grinding my teeth behind a slow driver in town who refuses to pull over while going ten miles an hour when I'm not in a hurry but just pissed off at a person having the gall and insensitivity to hold me back.
I try to stop myself from doing these things, of course, taking a cue from master guru Reggie and gulping in deep breaths and spewing out stale air. Whenever I feel rage building up over seeming nonsense, or nothing, I try and think of how Reggie handled an aggressive, offensive neighbor who was out of line—he turned the tables by being calm, friendly and I guess subtly manipulative, a mature person who ended up drawing an apology after he apologized even though he was in the right. Reggie took the correct, civilized approach so as to avoid confrontation and malevolent feelings and actions, while I, when told of his experience, informed Reggie I would have “punched the self-righteous prick.”
Reggie admitted that in the past he would have at least called the guy out and perhaps entered fisticuffs, but all that kind of behavior has been eliminated since he started yoga, and in my mind Reggie is absolutely right, a mature, intelligent person who in his acts contributes pleasant and exalted vibrations and emanations in the world, and not a bunch of negative, illogical savagery—possibly the reasons our world is always awash in war among billions of lunatics.
Just this morning, on the beach in Cayucos, in fact, I engaged in a hideous scene in which I should have taken deep breaths, as instructed by Reggie, and instantly figured a way to avoid a really ugly confrontation, but I failed abysmally, most likely, because it had to do with my old dog, Wilbur, who had, the day before, engaged in a fight (after being attacked) with a 160 pound unfixed maniacal Bull Mastiff on the beach.
Well, this morning, before yoga class, I had Wilbur off the leash on the beach beside the pier, and a young man chastised me in a snotty, superior manner for allowing him to pee on child's riding object beside a swing and slide. I asked him what he wanted me to do, clean it off? He said I should. Well, I am fastidious about picking up Wilbur's turds, but if I had to clean off every object he peed on I'd end up dreading walking him and possibly be recognized as a town clown and clean freak.
So I said, “It's none of your goddam business where my dog pees, you self-righteous prick.”
“Oh, that's a great attitude,” he exclaimed with mounting smugness. “You should go clean off that child's toy, it's unsanitary. Little children can catch diseases from your dog.”
I stepped forward, and, instead of explaining that Wilbur had only peed on that object because hundreds of other dogs had, too, I yelled, “Go fuck yourself, asshole!”
“YOU go fuck yourself, asshole!” he retorted, obviously taken aback.
“YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF!" I bellowed, stepping closer, prepared to throw down my leash and sunglasses and invite him to take a punch at a 73 year old varmint.
“YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF!” he bellowed back.
“WANNA DO SOMETING ABOUT IT?” I bellowed.
“FUCK YOU! HAVE A NICE DAY, ASSHOLE!” He bellowed, and walked off.
Well, I was shaking, my heart beating like a parakeet's, and immediately I realized I should have walked away as a few early risers, no doubt tourists staying at the nearby B & B, stared at me in disgust and disbelief, though a few locals in hoodies and beanies drinking coffee along the sea wall, who have seen me walk dogs here for years, chortled and issued me wide grins and thumbs up.
Well, certainly Reggie would not give me the thumbs up, I know that, and I was loathe to mention this indecent tiff when I reported to yoga an hour later this morning, and possibly should have waxed eloquent about my behavior the afternoon before, when, after the master of the aggressive, vicious, maniacal mastiff, pulled him off a valiantly battling holding-his-own 90 pound 12 year old Chocolate Lab/Chesapeake, all I said was, “Wilbur's too old to be fighting super heavyweights, just like his owner is too old to be getting into fights.”
He was a tall, pleasant fellow in a beanie, who corralled his really ugly, nasty dog, who every dog owner on the dog beach hated and feared, and said, “Sorry, man, my bad. Thanks for being a cool dude.”