When I left Queen’s my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I am going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes – what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows – what new landscapes – what new beauties – what curves and hills and valleys farther on. ~L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
I used to begin each new year with a set of resolutions, a plan for making myself new, better, more learned. As if I, or some part of me, were a problem to be solved, I’d establish a firm course of action in order to find a solution to my life. There have been resolutions that involved what to eat or not to eat, what time to rise in the morning, how to spend my free time, and how many books to read that year. Sometimes I fulfilled the resolution all the way to completion, like the year I resolved to start an MFA program. Other resolutions, despite my best initial ideas, didn’t see the end of the year with me. This was the case when I decided that I’d learn to bake the perfect loaf of bread, something that truthfully I never gave more than one attempt. What I’ve grown to see is that the road of the year ahead is never straight and much of it lies at curves and angles that aren’t visible at the start of January. There is indeed checkered light and shadows, and in between lies the colors of a life, waiting to be witnessed if I keep my gaze steady.
As I turn toward 2017, it is tenderness, softness that is tugging at my coattails, so to speak. Just before the year’s end, I read in an article by yoga teacher, Amber Burke, this definition of resolve from the Oxford Dictionaries: to turn into a different form when seen more clearly: as in ‘the orange light resolved itself into four roadwork lanterns.’ or ‘The spidery script up its side resolved itself in just a moment to form a word.’ and ‘Before them was a hint of glimmer that slowly resolved itself into a stripe of blue: the sea.’ In this definition, the lanterns, the script, the sea become clearly visible not because a problem has been solved, but because each has been revealed for what it already is. This is the steady gaze of softness bringing something into its clearest view.
In yoga, we use a drishti, or gaze, to steady and focus the mind and the practice. For example, we may gaze softly at our fingertip in Warrior pose and in steadying the eyes, the mind, too, can rest for a moment and take in the subtle details of the pose. A drishti is not meant really to keep the eyes trained to one thing; however, in gently focusing the eyes, we help to settle the mind into one-pointed softness. In this one-pointed softness, the nuances of the pose that are already there, like the strength of the legs, the lift of the abdomen, or the length of the torso, can be witnessed and even resolved into greater detail. We might say, “in time, the upward pull through the crown of the head and the tug of the tailbone toward earth resolved itself into the expansive length of the spine.” The yoga practitioner who has felt the difference between forcing the muscles to elongate the body, and the length that is resolved on its own, knows that, though both may lead to the same extension of the spine, the second also leads to a kind of softness much like surrender that allows the student to feel the extension with very little effort. In this way, the pose yields greater energy to the practitioner.
I thought, then, perhaps I can resolve to keep my drishti steady this year, so that as I travel the curves and shadows ahead, I can choose to steady my mind and allow whatever is already before me to resolve itself. I am starting this year with my drishti closely on my breath. On the mat, as I watch the breath both when I am moving and when I am holding poses, I’ve discovered that all that is subtle, fluid and soft is somehow resolved before me. So on New Year’s Day, as I moved through 108 sun salutations, I reminded myself to return again and again to my drishti, the breath, and when I was steady on that breath, the fluidity of my body and the quiet steadiness of my mind resolved itself on the mat.
I returned to this drishti this morning, with my daughter sick and demanding of my attention. As I felt myself becoming frustrated and my patience shortening, I recalled my breath drishti and watched, as I made tea and brought cool cloths, as this watching of my own breath and all that was filled with ease in that moment, allowed the fluidity and softness of my body and brain to be resolved in this moment too. It’s a kind of magic, or grace perhaps, in which there is nothing I must control, no problem about me I must solve. In keeping my gaze steady and still on my breath, softness becomes visible in a way that allows me to meet the moment with more presence, more tenderness, more availability for the nuances that I might miss if my gaze, my body, my mind were hardened with the need to solve, change, or get away from whatever is.
My life has been too much running away from, too much solving and changing, and not enough noticing and allowing. This year, I am asking myself to change my gaze from constantly looking at what is not right, what I must do better, how the world must be altered, to a gaze that allows me to see instead something beautiful, to find some ease and light, like when I focus my gaze toward that which is lovable in the people around me, their lovable qualities grow ever more “resolved” before me.
In the Yoga International article, Burke finished by writing, “I’m hoping that once we train our gaze, our world will change. Perhaps what comes into focus as a result of an extended practice of drishti, is something we’ll begin to see easily and everywhere. After all, you learn the name of a new bird, and suddenly the whole earth seems full of magpies you can’t believe you’ve been missing all these years. You learn where the feral cats like to hide, and suddenly you see their eyes gleaming at you from under every bush. You learn the shape of a constellation, and there it is, every night, flickering its stars at you.” There is no straightness of road before us, and the language of last year must resolve itself into something altogether new. There will be shadow and checkered light, to be sure, in the world at large and likely inside your own heart. In mine too, of course. I’m keeping my gaze toward that which is fluid, soft, and allows for ease in my body and mind, because I believe that the best is always somewhere close to the surface, if we can only allow it to resolve itself into clear view.