Postcard from the edge

Sooner or later…every visual artist notices the relationship of the line to the picture’s edge. Before that moment the relationship does not exist; afterwards it’s impossible to imagine it not existing. And from that moment every new line talks back and forth with the picture’s edge.

–Art and Fear

This past weekend I spent three days in the mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina at Havi‘s Dance of Shiva retreat.

(If you don’t know what Dance of Shiva is, I should tell you it’s not really a dance. And it doesn’t have much to do with Shiva. I usually have to use about six run-on sentences, bizarre arm gestures, and the words uhhh and like over and over when I explain it to someone. So let’s just say it’s essentially yoga for your brain.)

Dance of Shiva uses patterns to create new pathways and connections in the brain. It’s good to do it badly, which is why I can’t hep but be in love with it. (Well, that and the crazy epiphanies I keep having.)

Anyway, one exercise we did at the retreat involved challenging your patterns by doing what you don’t normally do for two minutes. The instructions were simply if you normally do the comfortable thing, to do the uncomfortable thing, and vice versa.

Now normally, I don’t push myself into uncomfortable situations. I’m in charge of most of the ways I spend my time, where I go and what I do. You might say I tend to very stubbornly exist in my comfort zone. So in order to do what I don’t normally do, I went and did something very uncomfortable for me.

Basically, I was thinking my pattern was this:

1. Don’t challenge self.
2. Repeat.

So when I went and did this thing that was uncomfortable, I felt anxious and not supported and kind of miserable and angry at being pushed into doing something I didn’t want to do. Even though I was in charge the whole time.

Then I realized these were very familiar feelings.

I thought I was doing what I don’t normally do, when actually I was doing what I always do.

(Dizzy yet?)

As it turns out, my pattern has a few more steps that I never saw before. It looks more like this:

1. Don’t challenge self.
2. Beat self up for not challenging self.
3. Impulsively jump into an enormous challenge with zero support or preparation.
4. Feel completely anxious, terrified and alone.
5. Repeat.

Thinking “I never challenge myself” is such a deeply ingrained piece of my pattern that I didn’t even consider it part of the pattern. I just thought of it as truth. Now that I see this, I can’t not see it. Which is kind of awesome, since observation without judgment is the first step to compassionate interaction with stuff.

It’s like my whole universe expanded just a bit, and now I keep wondering what else is out there, just past the edge?