The room was still and quiet. For me there was just me and time. Distracting myself from the stillness, I roamed the internet and eventually found myself watching youtube videos of Chris Sharma. I have known Chris. I remember watching him just not let go in Santa Cruz. As I watch his Wanderlust interview and see his discomfort with new moves... Yoga moves, I realize that what we do is what we become good at. But more importantly, how we do something determines how well we will perform.
It is not a matter of technique or strength as much as it is a matter of desire. When we really want something, we will put all of our being into it. All of our strength and all of our know how. Our awareness becomes locked on the process and we are led through the process, rather than conquering it.
Clearly Chris' desire is to always climb the next level. To see what is next and can be done.
What is my desire? As I reflect on this, I realize this has always been a struggle for me. For many years my desire has been polluted with the desires that others have for me. My parents desire for a degree in science, with the end of that came my partners desire for rock climbing, so I too climbed. With divorce I found Yoga, but even there perhaps it has been the desire that others have to be great teachers that has diverted my path to teaching. And in teaching, I have found the prescriptions of yet others to shape what and how I teach.
More reflection reveals a gem. When I sat in the back of a Ford F150 in the blazing sun on warm July days in Rifle, Colorado, I was free. I was writing. I was sharing all the knowledge I had gained from my own experience with climbing. Not the training offered to me from other, but from my own experience. I was alive. I was climbing as I wrote. I was understanding and blending together all that I understood and articulating it. That was fulfilling.
Climbing routes was only a means of learning for me. Practicing asana has only been a means of gaining understanding. Reading book after book after book has been the fulfillment of a desire within me to learn, understand and offer in my own words my perception. Can my purpose really be that simple?
And yet it makes perfect sense because I cannot do anything in my life half-assed. I must do it fully and completely and when I can't put 120% in, I lose interest.
Sometimes I long for those days of climbing again... the fitness, the fun, the travel. But what I really miss is the absolute absorption in learning. Yep... that's me, the perpetual student.
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