Is Your Practice a Line or a Circle?
Looking at our practice, is it dominated by line energy? Or circle energy?
Or is there a balance of line and circle energy? Line energy is associated with what is typically called masculine, yang, or mind energy, although it is important to acknowledge this isn’t about being male or female; we all have a mix of these two types of energy. Line energy is oriented towards doing, getting somewhere. It is goal oriented, assertive and determined. Circle, or more feminine yin, and somatically oriented energy, on the other hand, is represented by being, circling around to right where we are, to connecting with presence now in our environment. It has the flavor of receptivity, respect, and mutuality.
We need a mix of both in our practice, and yet we often find that our meditation practice is dominated by line energy because that is the dominant orientation of our culture. We can see this kind of energy predominant in our culture, and our relationship to the environment, our relationship to each other. We cannot understate how thoroughly the dominant culture in the United States is shaped by line energy and how thoroughly we have all been indoctrinated. The learning is so ingrained that we don’t even realize that it is only one way of viewing the world; it is simply the way life is approached.
Some line energy is absolutely necessary on the path. We wouldn't undertake the journey, make it to our cushions, if we didn't harness this energy. Most of us, however, come to practice with an excess of line energy. When line energy becomes unbalanced it tends towards manipulation and control, and we use our practice to try to manipulate and subjugate our experience, rather than arrive for it and explore how it is. Excessive line energy can pull us out of presence, and we are restless as happiness always lies somewhere else in the future. At its strongest and most unbalanced, line energy can manifest as our own little inner fascist, trying to force life to conform to how we think it should be. Unbalanced line energy can be just passing through, concerned with only our own goals, disregarding our community and environment except for how they can serve us.
We can see this manifest in our practice when we approach ourselves and our practice as a project to be fixed. We have ideas about how our meditation should be and then try force our experience to conform to these ideals. We can call this spiritual idealism, and it is a set up for frustration. When our practice doesn’t measure up to our high standards, we often turn this anger inwards, thinking there is something wrong with us or the way we are practicing. The truth is that life is in essence wild and uncontrollable. At a certain point, with an excess of line energy, we burn out as we see that the wildness of life refuses to conform to our demands. We have come to the end of how far dominance can take us.
Slowly we come to understand that we need circle energy for our practice to be balanced. Circle energy takes us right back around to here and now, with no idea of getting anywhere else. It is supremely relational with our own experience in the present moment, with life, with our environment, with others. It is comfortable with the unknown, malleability, love, and is at home in messiness. It seeks to find happiness not as some future goal but as present right in the here and the now. Circle energy includes embeddedness, the feminine, receptivity, and nowhere to get to.
How do we bring in more circle energy? We can curve the line ever so slightly towards presence, towards a resting in the now, towards a connection with our environment. Land right here and look around with no idea of trying to get somewhere else. What is the landscape of this body mind and heart? In what environment is this being relating? In one retreat I got very very curious about whether I could take one simple step with absolutely no desire to be anywhere else. Just one whole step.
The heart quality of metta helps us settle into the circle. Bringing an intention to love, to include, to become deeply intimate with our experience whatever it is. To love the breath, the step, the back pain, the loneliness, the joy, the feel of the wind on the cheek, the taste of rice…. With this curving towards a circle, eventually we come full circle, a large and wide circle that includes everything, the line curves right into becoming a circle!
