The Freedom Boogie

by Daniel Doen Silberberg | May 22, 2010 | Uncategorized, Zen

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

I was reading Tim Ferriss’ blog yesterday. I always enjoy it. It is often about Tim and all of us doing what we want.  The blog entry brought back a memory.   I was  in my twenties and a student in a Gurdjieff group. I had been given an exercise and asked to do it daily. It was a kind of meditation and required about twenty minutes. That summer I was traveling across country with friends and had to find a way to do it. Part of the excerise was an agreement to make it completely private, that is not to reveal the activity to anyone. Another aspect of it was the discipline of doing it at the same time every day.
We were driving past the small town of Mule Creek Junction, Wyoming. When we passed a small wooden outhouse,  I asked to stop there saying I needed to use the bathroom in order to privately do  my excercise.
The smell wasn’t inspiring but the view and my sense of resolve was.
I hear people say they sometimes have trouble sitting everyday. I think that is a step toward, a way of saying,  that we can’t do what we wish with our lives. But we can. It is our life and barring major disasters we can do what we want. Even during disasters we have choice.
Let’s not give our lives over to a feeling of powerlessness. I think we can do what we want. It may take some effort, but that’s the price. As our esteemed president said “Yes we can.” And he did. I vaguely remember a line from a Staple Singer’s song that went “You know you can can”
Dogen Zenji referred to sitting as the “backward step”.  Let’s take the backward step and the forward one as well.  The forward step is claiming the freedom to do what we want with our lives.  These two steps could be a great new dance. We can call it  “The Freedom Boogie.”