I am again looking at my experience within playing the violin. I remember in my thirties, especially, when had two small children and I spent time practicing. I realized through those years that if I practiced with a part of myself resolving problems, which is myself being in my mind, then when I went to perform I had a harder time focusing on what I was doing. I had to go back and practice the piece again, to clear the emotional memory attachments from the music.
This also taught me, slowly, that the way in which I focused, of which I had control, while I practiced, was very important. I could learn something faster than is believed if I focused without sorting some issue in my life out in the back of my mind while practicing.
It also has created a situation where I sort things out in the back of my mind in other moments in my life.
I also realize when I am doing this if I pick something up to read. The reading process becomes more difficult because I have to constantly refocus myself.
I also realize that there are moments when I naturally understand this process of being caught in emotions in others, as I have moments in the past where I was very calm in the face of emotions, and did not react, and could calm a situation, making the intense emotions small, bringing them down to size.
I think we all have this capacity. We just need to look. There are moments when each of us have done this, not reacted to emotion and prevented a situation from becoming charged with reactions of blame and spite, want and desire, fear and survival. We can see that instead we were that practice of problem solving leading, or remaining in a sense of ease in the community of others.
Within this, I can see where the potential for this is always present, it is always here. This is because we live in a practical physical world. The steps to get things done, are always right in front of us. What separates is from that is what we believe as thoughts, as measures about things, in our minds, our memories.
I was reading this book about education. In the book the conversation went into how the present system is formed and the limitations inherent in the design in terms of allowing a natural potential to problem solve and create in children. I found myself reacting with the words in my head “ how can this be.” This, has a charge behind it, that is more myself from the past as a child, not comprehending that something could possibly exist. It also brings up a memory that has the same colored charge; when I gave birth to my children. In both, there is this color that has the words “ How can this be!, What is this? Why does this exist!” I must have asked myself this question throughout my life.
It was not until I had an extreme situation that I finally turned this question into “ This is not life, where is life?” “ This cannot be life, where is it?” and “ I have to become life, no matter what.” And also the words, “ I am going to lose everything, everyone, it is going to be hard, and yet it has to be done, there is no other choice.”
LOL, I notice in this moment, that that statement of ‘ this is going to be hard’ has created a sense of this being a burden. And yet, I started this blog remembering those moments where I made small an emotional storm. In those moments, where I did not react and was at ease, it was not hard, it just was. In these moments I was calm, and applied myself naturally, without judgement. And, this is the way to practice an instrument. This was the state I had to stand within, to efficiently practice something.
This means overall, that if I practice, or stand here as the practice of life, meaning to always ground myself and breath here, I can accumulate a perfect practice, becoming a momentum of problem solving, calling emotions, and the feeling that justifies the emotion, by name and downsizing them into the practical. We can all do this. It is who and what we really are, it is the potential inherent by design in what we are as physical beings on a physical world.
