meditation, clean house, get born and die-move

Sutra 3.2 "A steady, continuous flow of attention directed towards the same point or region is meditation (dhyana)." (Iyengar translation)
For years my breath have functioned as a focal point, not just in pranayama, but I remember as a kid I use to spend hours experiencing it. Making a sound again and again, to feel how the air moved in me, or spend days breathing on a window and look at the moist-picture fade away again. Breathing in different rhythms and holding my breath, challenging –whatever. Today breath is my shortcut into that state, it is my focal-point when things are tough, it is a revelator (yes I think you should have a word like that) someone who reveals stuff :-) My heart listened when my master told me that the breath is the key that opens up between different layers, for example the mind and the body. The best part of this focal point is that it is always with me, everywhere I go.

Desikachar writes: "Initially our understanding is influenced by misapprehension, imagination and memories. But, as the process of comprehension intensifies, it freshens and deepens our understanding if the object."
I relate to this, when I do yoga I sometimes get to feel the different obstacles disappear. I guess this is why I love intensity; I somehow know that that’s where it happens.

Iyengar makes me understand that dharana (explained in last sutra) is, the achievement of single-pointed concentration and dhyana is the ... maintenance of this concentration. In this maintaining act we move from "one-pointed concentration to no-pointed attentiveness" beautifully put down on paper! For me it fully fits into a huge theoretical universe from Bakhtin, Nishida, Gadamer, Dewey to Cikszentmihalyi, Juncker, Merleau-Ponty and well, so many more. The feeling of "fit" or conjunction is fine. I also love that it is a maintaining act, somehow it makes it ok to get off the beam and the act is to come back. Right now (cleaning house) it seems like life is not meant to be “done” or “tidy” its meant to move, get messy, clean up, start up, tear down, get born and die. From meditation, to theory, to clean house and to be born and die – that’s me :-) and absolutely fine!
Namasté
Jenni Saunte