Glorious Chores

Yesterday I noticed a trend in my approach to manual labor—I spend more energy bemoaning it then I actually would spend if I just DID it.
My beloved room-mate, friend and teacher Lisa asked me, “are you tired from worrying over the housework or are you tired from doing it?” Bingo—she blew up my spot—I hadn’t lifted a finger, I'd just been procrastinating...

It was hilarious to see that only an hour later I was happily absorbed in the task of dusting and reorganizing the shelves. It is that first bit of momentum that's hard; getting past that resistance at the point of entry. The obstacle is mental but it feels like a fixed-gear bike going straight up a San Francisco Hill... But once you get pedaling through it you start to flow, right? My writing teacher Rachel Cohen said at some point you just get so familiar with this voice, with the resistance that you just don’t care about it anymore!! And you begin:

I passed down the tall vases and purple glass tea set from the highest shelves onto the counter top and then jumped back to the sink and cleaned and polished everything dry with a dish towel. How it all Sparkled!!

Then I did the thing I did this summer at the ashram when I was doing housekeeping: I would turn around and then turn back and be struck again by how great the polished glass looked on those clean white shelves. Or walk out and walk back in to the room—- bam, great job. I love the instant gratification of a job well done. And the power of our hands and our patience to do work well. I actually looked forward to the layer of sticky gray dust that awaited on the lids of the jars of grains on the middle shelf, and so I got back to work.

Karma Yoga, the yoga practice of just working without being attached to the outcome, is so effective because it brings up ego reactions. Usually ego reactions have a big “I” or “ME” as their subject, if your not already alarmingly familiar with what I'm talking about..! “I don’t wanna!”, "This is going to be hard", and "But I’d rather be..." are all ways Ego intercepts our actions and creates obstacles for us to just work and live. (It's hard to be a tool for divine energy to come into the world when you are blocking it with petty needs...) So doing Karma yoga, doing work just for the sake of working, volunteering at the ashram and yoga centers, has been a big part of my practice. It has started to make me look at the way I block myself by having expectations before I even begin. As I have recognized again, and again and AGAIN! So hopefully I am finally getting the point this time and in the future will see this type of procrastinating thinking as a useless habit. ("You DO LOVE to work! Remember the vases?!" You might have to remind me next time..) So the idea is to use the work as a means to move beyond the ME and the I. When we act outside of our ME thoughts things really get done and it adds to the sense of harmony and joy of all.

Then time started to fly by, my initial resistance weakened and floated to the past I was just in the present finishing up the counter tops and putting away the dishes that had air dried while I did the shelves. It helped that Lisa reminded me to chant my mantra to keep the mind engaged and present. The whole process was a purification, “A privilege not a punishment” she said, half jokingly.

Chogyam Trugpa talks about “Drala” the concept of bringing freshness and beauty into the physical world as a practice. My Grandma was a master of this art. In fact, my family is all sensitive to Drala and it is one of my favorite things in the world—to make things nice by caring for them. Isn’t it beautiful how something so humble can be made elegant by investing it with care and attention? Like a home in a foreign country that is swept and tended to everyday? It has that Drala sparkle! And Drala is not only visual, you can feel it—maybe more importantly is that Vibration that you FEEL. I felt like my Grandma, paying attention to the details, ironing table clothes and napkins, patiently organizing recipes, coupons and receipts, taking coffee grounds out to her rose bushes.

To have all these beautiful objects and a beautiful house to clean is a privilege and to cleaning it turned from a chore to away to worship and to enjoy it. Feeling awake and lively 2 hours after I slowly had started my tasks I felt in commune with my Grandma and that primordial MA energy within us all. It takes time and patience to care for our material lives, but can we step up and not let the I and ME hills obstruct our view of the expansive beauty we are capable of creating in our worlds? Because when we bring it in to the world, we share it with the world, and everyone is lifted up.
My room mate Brooke washes and collects her to-go cups (which she gets when she isn’t carrying an empty jar to drink her coffee from). I’ve really enjoyed using the cups for convenience sake, but also because of the palpable nectar of sweetness, the Drala, of the fact that she saved them. Let’s make the world a better place to live and begin with our own lives. Lets take time out to let the Drala flow!