If you’ve ever done yoga, you know that for the balancing poses—like tree pose for example, where you must stand on one leg for an extended period of time—the instructor will tell you to keep your eyes focused on a single point in space, somewhere in the foreground, in order to keep your balance.
The focal point can be anything: A hairline crack in the wall-paint, a tiny speck on the molding, a gleam in a doorknob, a tassel on a throw pillow. It doesn’t matter what you choose, only that you make a choice and commit to it.
And you must choose quickly.
You can’t waste time surveying and considering the million points in space that lie before you—you have to let your eyes fall onto a specific place, lock in, and allow that focus to stabilize you—otherwise you will falter. (Overthinkers, beware.)
When it is time to flow into the pose, there is only this moment, this choice, and if you don’t act decisively, you are likely to wobble and lose your footing.
Balancing becomes an exercise in presence. A practice.
But, of course, if you do fall, that’s also fine. It’s not a matter of life or death. If you stumble, you need only start again. That’s part of the practice: Beginning again and again.
Like most things, the balance poses get easier over time. The more often you perform the action, lengthening into the tree pose, the more you learn how seamlessly the discipline of your mental focus translates into your body: From the soles of your feet to the tips of your fingers, you get more stable, grounded, rooted in the strength of your fixed gaze.
And yet, the focusing, while integral, is not the main thing. Your fixed gaze is in a supportive role: The point in space gives your mind something to do so your body can be free to do what it knows.
Your being, the tangible parts and the formless inner sprit—the entirety of YOU—that’s the main thing. Which is why this applies to people of all abilities. You don’t have to be able to stand on one leg, or even to stand at all, to reap the lessons of focus and surrender.
In fact, I’ve always loved the standing balance poses, not because of the fitness challenge, but because there is a zen quality to the effort: Everything else falls away besides this moment, your breath, and the spot on the wall.
The glorious simplicity of it: Body, space, air in your lungs, and a fixed gaze.
Although I’ve been something of a lapsed yogi this past year (my feet haven’t touched the mat in many, many months), I often think about the power of the spot on the wall in everyday life.
How beautiful that no matter what chaos befalls us, we can always restart and begin again in the very next moment. All we have to do is pick a particle in space and time and narrow the frame of our attention to that miniscule pinpoint. And there we are, centered, eschewing the noise of yesterday and tomorrow and stepping into the gift of right now.
I love that you don’t have to do yoga at all to harness the wisdom of the balance pose. The exercise can be brought forth in daily life. Sometimes it’s by focusing on a speck on the wall. And other times it’s a sentence, a word, a picture, a melody that does the trick.
There are times when I read something so profound and transfixing that it provides a meditative focal point for days on end. Words give me something to concentrate on, so my spirit can do what it knows: Process the learning, and (hopefully) grow.
The most recent example is this quote from Joan Didion that I saw on social media a few weeks back:
When I read those words, “every day is all there is,” everything else fell away.
This tiny sentence was as clarifying as a black speck on a white expanse, a tangerine beacon in a sea of aquamarine. I could feel my breath slow almost to a stop as I focused on it, suspended in the moment, letting my mind roll over the words so my nervous system could integrate the message.
It never ceases to amaze me how the truest things are often the most simple. No jargon, just plain English. No flashing lights, just a fleck of dust in an empty room.
Do you know what I mean: Have you ever seen/read/heard something so mesmerizing that your entire world coalesces around it, even briefly?
These words were like that for me. Everything else blurred into the background, my focus narrowed to a pinprick, the entire Earth crumbled away at the edges.
In this one sentence is everything, everything we need to know to live a life.
Joan reminds us of the yoga of living in the moment. She uses good silver today because tomorrow is never promised.
And yes! Beautiful things can be focal points too, continuously bringing us back to the present—silver flatware shined into a glimmer; an heirloom piece of blown glass; a flower aglow in its decorative vase; the sun making its slow, radiant slump behind the horizon; a feverish pink brush stroke splayed across a stretch of canvas.
All of life’s wonders, they have something important in common; they are always and only enjoyed at the same time: right now.
It is easy for me to forget to “be here now,” as the famous 1978 Ram Dass book implores.2 Reverie about the past and fretful conjecture about what’s to come can take up a lot of space. As Evelyn Waugh once wrote, “Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”
But if we want to be active participants in our lives, to fully experience each day rather than passively letting the weeks accrue like falling leaves, we have to learn the art of paying attention.
Two years into my forties, it’s clearer to me than ever before: The practice of paying attention is the artist’s work.
The objects we use, the people we love, the world we inhabit, the words we read, the art we make, the moments we share, they are all focal points to help us harness our awareness. To bring us into the now, to inhabit each moment.
And then, perhaps we can metabolize the power of our consciousness and transform it into something bigger than ourselves.
To this point, another quote that floored me earlier this year was:
“No matter what tools you use to create, the true instrument is you. And through you, the universe that surrounds us all comes into focus." - Rick Rubin, from The Creative Act 3
I’ve been thinking about this, our responsibility in this world.
How can we use our gifts, whatever they are, to become a flare in the universe, an instrument for the divine to pass through us, a light in the darkness, a point of calm amidst an infinite spool of chaos?
How do we want to express what moves through us, to say to our fellow travelers, “I know you’re weary, but stop, pause here with me, and rest, even if just for a moment.”
What if we can transmute our practice of paying attention into a beacon, a place of respite, a sanctuary for stillness?
How can we learn to observe the spot on the wall and also become the spot on the wall?
I don’t have the answers! But I’m trying.
Trying to be the instrument and to receive the transmissions. To keep all the gears finely tuned. To see the focal point, and become one with the focal point. To turn the volume down on the overwhelming tapestry of a vast, complicated world and turn the volume up on the stark simplicity of a point in space straight ahead.
Maybe that’s not the answer, but for now it’s an answer. And now is all there is.
Be Here Now by Ram Dass was a cultural phenomenon after its 1978 publication. My hippie parents had a copy as did many of their friends. I recall seeing it on coffee tables and bookshelves in people’s homes quite often as a kid in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin is a fantastic book, one of the best I read this year, and I recommend it to any creative, regardless of your medium.
You're welcome. It's so kind of to pick up advice for writers and pass it forward which helps us persevere and continue. Apparently FDR once had his screenplay rejected by Paramount (but got writer's credit for a later one). But his reaction to the rejection is solid advise for writers:
". . .but that rejection taught me something important. A failure, no matter how dismal it may make the future seem, doesn't mean the end of a man's life. I've learnt that the best way to overcome a failure is to put it and all its reminders into the past, and then to attack an even-greater challenge with a deeper determination to succeed."
Here's the source for the FDR quote:
source- http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/FDR _Hollywood_biography_Trivia
You're welcome. It's so kind of to pick up advice for writers and pass it forward which helps us persevere and continue. Apparently FDR once had his screenplay rejected by Paramount (but got writer's credit for a later one). But his reaction to the rejection is solid advise for writers:
". . .but that rejection taught me something important. A failure, no matter how dismal it may make the future seem, doesn't mean the end of a man's life. I've learnt that the best way to overcome a failure is to put it and all its reminders into the past, and then to attack an even-greater challenge with a deeper determination to succeed."
Thanks again for the great post.