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When I go to the strip mall to walk on the broad sidewalks in front of the shops, I'm quite visible to anybody who looks my way. The shop owners and their regular clerks are very to seeing me pass by on a frequent basis. That's why I walk at the shopping mall rather than alone on the family property back in the woods.
I have a need to be seen in person to get this exercise and prey for my health. If I'm not in the public eye where people can see me, I just saunter around any old way, usually favoring my current inflamed joints to spare myself the pain. If I'm in public view I try to straighten up and fly right. I know this about myself. I know what matters to me. I act like I'm still cool so as long as there is somebody around to contradict my personal delusions.
I walk like I do in public for-the-other. Doing it that way is possibly the only way me getting exercise would get done. I don't really care so much if anybody is looking at me strut my stuff, it's the possibility that they could that is enough for me to be ready to mirror that possible glance of curiosity I selfishly cater to in order to be kind.
Granted, infrequently my pretense to be in perfect health and feeling no pain is an absolute lie. If it were up to me alone, I'd stay in bed all day, and even piss in a bottle kept by the bed for that purpose, to keep from getting up to walk fifteen feet to the toilet.
That's part of the motivation for my getting some physical exercise. If I don't deliberately do it. my bodily condition might get to the point where I couldn't get out of bed to do it. That's gonna happen eventually anyway, some unexpected day in the future, if I don't get run over by a big truck or struck by lightning first. Aiiyyyeeee!
There is another reason I walk in full public view on the smooth, wide sidewalks at the Wal-Mart strip mall. It means a lot more to me than just forcing myself to be more conscious of my aging posture and appearance. I have an old friend who is hunch backed from his extreme ambition, and scurries frantically from one place to the other as if he might get attacked by a chicken hawk, even though he's just gift shopping for a souvenir for his kids. I just gotta do mo' bettah than that
To accomplish this ignoble end I practice a self-developed walking meditation I practice inside that willful suit of armor I keep the public at bay with. This is an old habit with me anytime I find myself afoot, and I've been afoot a lot in my life. There have been years at a time when I didn't own a car nor have one available on loan. I don't feel cheated. Endurance in walking and running is why homo sapiens is at the top of the food chain, and when it's gone, it's time to die.
A lot of the meditation books I've read, in the past, use the count of ten for their repetition counts. It may have something to do with the base ten metric system. I use the count of twelve because I'm an American who learned base twelve from childhood. Why reinvent the wheel? I'm no world savior. I can no longer hold myself up as an example of right thinking or any other of the other Noble Eightfold Paths. I too have sinned.
Counting my steps by twelves is one of the activities that's going on right under the public's nose. I start out deliberately exhaling on an odd number and counting "one" simultaneous with my right foot landing on the concrete in order to prepare to inhale three steps later with an inhale on the upcoming even-numbered step on the pavement. That initial inhale leads three steps later to another exhale on a right foot step.
I take breaths in three step increments, I think I do it that way. It's easier to do it than to describe it in writing. That's because when I'm walking I forgive myself a lot if I lose count, and then even more wiggle room to get my breath and my footwork coordinated again. It took a goodly number of tries before I could stroll along as if I'm out for my daily constitutional without having my count interrupted by disturbing incidents along the way. Like a customer unexpectedly exiting one of the shops. When that happens I have to re-initiatize the ritual from Go.
The inhales and exhales I coordinate while I'm walking is not casual. I inhale only while counting even numbers, and exhale only on odd numbers until I reach the even number twelve, and then I restart the count at "one" as the exhale of the number twelve. This is a method for paying strict attention to staying aware of what I'm doing in real time. If I find myself counting, "... thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six..." I immediately know I've drifted off from the main chance..., and I have to start again from "One,"
I don't count every step. I only count breathes. That's why I take two steps and count on the third step both inhaling and exhaling. A typical way of getting the count going while taking the correct steps: Start by stepping forward with my left foot and immediately exhaling and counting "One" as my next right foot strikes the sidewalk; then, I take two steps while exhaling, and on the third step I begin inhaling and silently count "Two", then I take two steps as I breathe in, and another exhale on the odd number "Three". On a twelve count I'll take 36 steps, but only six inhales and six exhales.
This is the first time I've tried to write this out completely, and I may have gotten it all wrong. It's not that I expect anybody to read it anyway. I'm not sure I would read it, but I just might. If I got the time and inclination I'll read just about anything anybody got to say about meditation.
True, it's the practice I do everyday where I feel like I actually learn from the results I often get from trying to do it right. I've learned many techniques from reading about other people's experiences that can be useful. For one thing, when I'm doing my walking meditation as I attempted to describe above, if I keep losing my count, I'll add another task. Like placing the attention that strays upon the rise and fall of my lower stomach while walking, breathing, and counting.
Ideally, as I perform all the chores I've set for myself during my constitutional walks, I focus my attention on my root chakra as it imbues my breathe with the options it exercises with each inhale and exhale. Calling it the root chakra instead of the holiest spot in the human body is another gesture of kindness I'm trying to bring into play. I am is the only-est one who can gnow or appreciate this strange gesture. No blame.
Walking out in public view at the strip mall forces me to walk as near to what I think is normal for a person like me. My body would prefer that I treat it as if crippled sometime when it gets to feeling sad about the foibles of getting old. If nobody was watching I do indeed treat my body like it actually feels.
I do what I do when I am is out and about for-the-other. Walking alone on the family land produces a worn-out, world-weary old man just hobbling along as if he'd be lucky to find his way home. Maybe humming a nursery rhyme to remind me of old wooden rocking chairs in the upstairs alcove above the dining hall, and my age-old friends, the rock and roll grinning idiots.
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
