Energy and Environment - org Feb 22 06

Tonight I taught my first yoga class in a long while. Most striking to my personal experience was how little energy I felt, and how my emotions on entering my door afterward were sad. This could be cleansing, I thought; no need to make more of the sad feeling than it needs to be. Could be stagnant energy on its way out. But unmistakable was how it showed me how low my energy state is, which parallels the borderline sickliness I have been feeling lately, more like the person who has the condtition I have than the person who lives as if he doesn't.

But that is not the point. Upon opening my refrigerator door and smelling the stink that has been growing there for weeks, today I decided simply to find and throw out all the potential culprits. It is a simple act, but one that I had not found the motivation to do for weeks. After pulling out a number of containers into a trash bag, I walked the trash bag outside the half-block to the dumpster. Normally, my trash makes it to the door and waits for me to depart for class to be taken to the dumpster. Today, it went all the way. This in the end is more telling about my energy state than my 'feelings' after class.

Energy shows up significantly in the actions we take. It is the difference between doing the small things that maintain our environments, our relationships, and our lives, and putting these small things off until later, until the problem has grown so big as to demand attention. Simple actions to raise our energy levels have direct impact on the qualities of our lives because they enable minor acts that add up in the end. Walking back into my apartment, having purged that stink from my refrigerator, my emotions were now happy. The energy I gained from Dahn (energy) yoga class manifested in a tangible improvement in my environment.

Next, I did some dishes. For weeks, again, since returning from school, I have tended to leave the dishes undone until the problem of the kitchen cannot be ignored. Today, while doing the dishes, I noticed an element of the experience of doing the dishes that was different than other times: I used less mind. Less consciousness went into formulating a plan for which dishes I would do first, at what point I would stop sudsing and rinse some, and the best order of operations in order to conserve water. Today I began and had a stack of sudsed dishes and was rinsiing them before the first thought (of how this was different from normal) entered my head. What had happened?

The Yoga class had moved my energy from my brain down into my body. Resting in my body, the energy was more available for immediated action. Typically, the thoughts about how to do the dishes and the time it is taking add to the laboriousness of the process. Often, this is the reason the dishes do not get started: The energy that would go into accomplishing the task gets squandered on considering and planning (or excusing myself from) the task. So it gets put off.

The energy, on these days, has its home in the brain. In order for the energy to transfer into my body and thus into action, a process of permission must go on before the brain allows the energy to move into the body. If we pay attention, we can notice that the brain is actually very cunning. For often, we make excuses and put off tasks until later. In these instances, the task does not get done, and notice that the brain never had to give up its energy to the body and the accomplishment of the task. Under the auspices of weighing the decision to act, the brain has actually used up the energy doing what it likes to do best: idly thinking.

Notice that the majority of lifestlyes that have evolved through modern convenience and stay-at-home information gathering and computer-based desk jobs actually promote a general trend of energy movement away from the body and toward the brain. Our body does not need energy to accomplish tasks that can be done through telephone wires and radio waves. We do not need to move. At most, our brain needs to work to figure out how to operate the software or the machinery. This is at least true of my gradualte student life. The prescribed activity involves uses of the brain while the body is sedentary: reading, writing, discussing around a table. The reason my dishes do not get done is intimately related to the encouragement of my energy to be in my brain, ready to read or answer or process at the drop of a hat, rather than in my body, ready to empty my refrigerator when the need be.

Of course this is not to allay responsibility. My energy is my responsibility, as is undertaking whatever activities I personally require to keep enough energy in my body for purposes of everything from cleaning my apartment to creating blood to stay alive (which for me is also a conscious daily responsibility). The purpose of writing under the topic "Energy and Environment" is to show that our energy is not separate from our environments, but actually intimately influenced by and creative of them.

One day when, last semester, I awoke on a Saturday morning in a deep depression, I thought long and hard of how to cheer myself up. Something of the burden of responsibilities of indepenedent life and study and work weighed heaviliy on me, but I had no singular upsetting thoughts. Actually, every indicator I could think of showed an immensely positive trend in my life. I was happy with where I was at. But still I was depressed.

Gradually, it dawned on me that I was lying, practically paralyzed, in an apartment that I had not cleaned the week prior. Dust was on the floor, and the kitchen had not thoroughly been cleaned as I had been doing since moving in. Lying there "depressed," I knew the apartment needed to be cleaned, and this had been adding to my burdened feeling about the day. But, worried by the phantom depression, I was putting energy into trying to root out the source of my sadness before getting up and repressing it under a flurry of activity.

Finding no culprit for my sadness, however, I realized that my depression may be reflecting the abundance of energy stagnating within my un-cleaned apartment. One of the ways we kept the energy fresh in the yoga centers was cleaning constantly; at least every day, and then to fill the time when there was nothing else to do. This created a very clean and pure energy environment, and many students enjoyed coming to class just because it "felt good" inside the centers. Sure enough, when I left behind my presumption of a psychological cause to my depression, and set about tidying, dusting, washing, scrubbing, and letting fresh air in, my condition was "cured." I was happy as if nothing had happened.

We know - at least our bodies know - the difference between good (fresh) and bad (stagnant) energy. While our intellectually-oriented culture often finds the sources of our displeasure in deep, grandiose scars or sweeping ennui about the future and our place in the world, it may often be that our emotions are responding to stagnation in our energy environments - small things that have gone untended - whether in our domiciles or our relationships - that are very much in our power to do something about. In fact, we may be just one yoga class away from making a number of changes that will deeply change our lives for the better.




copyright 2006, andrew varyu

Letter to Bishop: what leads me to respond

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God,

thou wilt not despise.

Ps 51:17

2 - what leads me to respond

I laid in an empty room of a recently-rented apartment, forty miles from any friends or family.

Instead of furniture, there was the sound of frogs croaking in the backyard pool. My body pulsed with over-exertion from the walk upstairs. I laughed. Even if I had wanted to continue working the breakneck pace of the past three years, my body wouldn't allow it.

Instead of blessings, I counted the wonderful elegance with which things had been taken away from me: Six weeks before, my car and belongings were stolen. The day following, our approaching wedding canceled by my fiancee. Meanwhile, the progressive deterioration of my health that had started nine months earlier. The tapering of calls from concerned friends and family removed any obligation toward them. The utter comprehensiveness of loss felt strangely beautiful. I felt my body pulse and buzz, and peaceably readied myself for death.

Hmm, God reminded me. Hmm, there was one thing that hadn't been taken away, but had been strangely supported where things might easily have failed: the letter for scholarship money covering my expenses; the lucky securing of the last available campus apartment in my price range. God was opening one door, only one, while all others quietly shut on rooms full of death. I saw a singular beacon of light beaming through the decay.

"All things come of thee, o Lord." And when only one thing is given, there is little question remaining about what God has created for us. From this stark and unforgettable experience in mid-June of 2005, my priorities were clearly laid out for me. All things involved in bringing and sustaining me at Harvard, and which God had waiting for me there, were the focus of my life. Everything else could be left for dead.

In that beacon of light, God built for me a bridge past a life that otherwise had ended. On the other side of that bridge, now, I am His alone, and every action or decision gets weighed in consideration of the work He has shown as laid out for me. Some involves long-range goals and academic projects; other work involves daily devotionals of ministering to individuals for whom God has found me. As surely as I can tell, one of those acts is unashamedly declaring myself a servant through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of the One True God. With or without ordination, when I remember this, my energy is restored to keep on living. If ever I become sidetracked, death begins to set in again.

My early struggles as an acolyte against hesitant sermons or stultified congregations first awakened my passion for work within the church. This led to crises at each major life-path decision that did not honor what felt like the call to Seminary. After college, responses to a desperate letter to all the pastors who had mentored me through my life assured me that when the call was true, I would be able to answer it without anxiety. Meanwhile, I pragmatically challenged the idea that a young man, practically untouched by tragedy or the complexity of adult life and relationships, could have anything to offer a congregation. Secretly, privately, I welcomed such growth experiences into my life.

The crash of two jet airplanes into the World Trade Center while I slept in New York preceded by two months the discovery in my blood of a fatal and unknown disease. In three months, doctors finally confirmed that the source of my profound debilitation, my 14-hour nights of sleep, and my layoff and relocation back to Seattle was a rare bone marrow disorder known as Aplastic Anemia. For the next three years, I found dependence on my family, practices of yoga and Eastern healing, and a long conversation with God about what I was doing wrong, or how much I should even take responsibility for my illness and its healing.

Ironically � some would say � stories from the Bible became more accessible to me from my yoga practices than through Church itself. Through experiencing and learning to live within the laws of energy, I found principles quoted by Jesus and experiences of the Apostles in Acts to be for the first time understandable. Over a period of months, every sermon and reading delivered at Bethany Community Church in Greenlake recapitulated a lesson I had experienced in the yoga studio, just the week before. I began to accept that the One True God was working in all the world, and was recognizable by faithful people through many vocabularies.

The quality of worship exploded tremendously for me while practicing yoga! At pastors' prompting, I knew now how to let go of my doubt and resistance, and trustfully welcome the Spirit in through my brain, my heart, my complete body as an opening to faith and renewal. Suddenly, there was no need to question or wait for the proof from God about how to know or believe in Him truly. I knew plainly from those feelings of grace, deep cleansing, assurance, and inspiration that I encountered at every service! What before had been a vague affinity for church buildings, community, and attendance now showed herself to be the Holy Spirit, who had been working through my numbed body and brain all along!

With thankfulness, I had no doubt any longer about taking up the gauntlet to investigate a call to ministry. What remained unsolved were only minor questions about the church or denomination to facilitate the inquest. With fond amazement at the workings of God, I found that God had actually placed me in the right church over 16 years earlier; that my mother's best friend, who had lovingly saved me from a near-crisis by taking me into her home, had recently been ordained as a Priest in the Episcopal Church, and that one of the newest Episcopal congregations in Seattle turned out to be the first church I have ever felt was a home to me. It is no exaggeration to say that the church home at COTA feels as much like a family as the two beautiful families who raised me and nursed me through my sickness.

To answer more briefly: I can never say to know for sure the scope of God's plans or vision through the actions He takes in the world and our personal lives. Yet I answer my congregation's call to ministry because, to the best of my ability to discern, God has plans for me in this role, and has seemed to be preparing me for it quite intensively over the past seven years. I accept it happily because it may be the only thing for which He keeps me alive.

I answer the call to ministry in sober acknowledgment of the challenges facing the church today. Echoes of political struggles destabilize our polity, and a new generation addicted to stimulus, proof, and mistrust finds less of value among church offerings. Firsthand work managing yoga studios has shown me what people will pay for tangible improvements to their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Consistent with my experience, my God-given vision involves creating safe and sane ways to incorporate body-mind practices into liturgies, so we may better minister to societies for whom the disconnection of their souls from God is intimately related to sedentary lifestyles, distraction, and a disconnection between their minds and their bodies; and between the lives they deeply long to create in harmony with the Spirit and what they successfully realize.

Sincerely,

Andrew Varyu

5 Jan. 2006

Prepared for Bishop of the Episcopalian Diocese of Olympia

Statement from Aspirant to Postulancy Andrew R Varyu

Submitted Epiphany, 2006