Inspirations: Polarities

Full moon’s open us to greater vision, wider eyes of perception, and ‘ahaaa moments’ of realization. Simply standing under a golden orb rising against a purple sky can make the most rigidly intellectual brain crack open in ‘de-light.’ Teilhard de Chardin said, “We must continually change to become ourselves.” Perhaps the moon is becoming her Self by emptying out, re-filling, cycling new to full? This karmic time holds full moon energy thrusting us toward a different life than we have inhabited before. To move forward requires balancing chaos and creativity, predictability against random un-predictability. Our small perceptions are struggling with the pressure of global concepts and quantum leaps. Our present consciousness is like a zit on the chin. We can’t leave it alone. We squeeze it, stare at it, rub and touch it until it bursts. When our consciousness shifts, wide open frontiers of spiritual space, and unknown emotional, mental, physical worlds open. Creating space for new visions is much like creating physical space for more difficult Asana. Before attacking, or cringing, take time to look at the shape to be formed. Where is the balance point? How is it supported? What/where is the weakest link? Usually it’s the place we are tightest, closed against possibility. how do we make space to inhabit the pose with greater strength and flexibility? Like the moon, as we grow more spacious our light increases, and the great thing about living in the light is there are no limitations of time or space. Like full moons, our personal energy is imploding. We are semi-psychotic attempting the expansion into those faster, wider, higher zones. And we cannot simply effort for individual survival. We are to grab hands and cross this street together. The healing dictate of leaving the Piscean Age for the Aquarian Age, is… Read more »

You know the saying, “between a rock and a hard place.” Between Scylla and Charybdis is tantamount to the same, except it’s more nuanced and poetic because Homer wrote it. Scylla is a rock on the Italian side of the strait of Messina. Charybdis is a whirlpool standing opposite, which once upon a time Homer personified as a female sea monster that devoured sailors. ‘Between Charybdis and Scylla’ calls for more tenuous maneuvering than figuring out how to shimmy between ‘a rock and a hard place.’ It is about the avoidance of one danger exposing you to the destruction of another. If Charybdis is the yin ‘monster’ of the chaotic, instinctual feminine, ready to devour whenever we fall deeply into a sea of emotion, then Scylla is the un-yielding yang of the jagged rock of our masculine. This face-off puts action, and stability up against the inchoate, watery feminine. Who wins? Depends on where and when you fall overboard, and who pushes you…no? Since this demanding passage lies within as well as without, it is a journey we all navigate, often. It can be the fine line between attempting perfection, without a willingness to fail. It is the equally difficult journey of doing ‘a slide,’ that is taking a risk knowing it cannot be done well. Before you even begin you know you will slide home by your Charybdian hairs. It is simply all about being on the journey, and making the most conscious, informed choices in each moment, and this comes only by diligent navigation. More often we wreck ourselves on one side or the other, reeling from imbalances of over-reacting. But if our pilot is seasoned, the years of Practice having formed a strong heart, with muscle at the ready, and well-honed instincts alert, then we have a… Read more »

We are in the three days, known as Wesak, that honor Buddha’s birthday. This year the Wesak full moon fell in Scorpio, a powerful symbol for one who transformed life to embody compassionate enlightenment. Buddha, literally meaning ‘one who is awake,’ denotes anyone arriving at supreme compassion and wisdom, transcending desire and suffering. “Oh, if only we could,” we murmur. But no matter how much caffeine, or driven desire spins each moment, that totality of wakefulness eludes. Despite understanding that the yearn to be different, that what, and who I am creates my unhappiness, I continue to wish life different than what is. While appreciating all that most moments offer, there is a twisty angst for it to be better. Great and wise sages through the ages advised that wanting something other than what-is, creates our pain, and our enslavement. But how to shift? How to grow? How to transform? Isn’t that wishing life to be different, enlightened even? Holding the polarity in one of my favorite Yoga poses, Ardha Chandrasana/Half Moon, I ask this imponderable question, looking to the physical for a satisfaction of knowing. If I can feel how to hold four oppositions, creating a firm and contented center, then perhaps I shall begin to hold the oppositions of Buddha’s path. While my chest revolves to open upward, I question the heart, “How do I remain happy just as I am, yet not lose the desire to grow, to be awake?” Perhaps if I were fully awake, I would be only with the moment of opening into Half Moon, knowing that all else will evolve from its centering joy. Even two seconds from now is too far in the future. Perhaps I dis-honor the glory in this moment by moving beyond it, or out of it, when it… Read more »

As I’ve told you before, I’m a yearny kind of gal. When I moved more into Yogini-dom, I began having oh so silent contempt for these yearnings. It translated as, ‘your heart is not content with what is.’ ‘Your mind is not present to what is.’ The ego says, ‘what is’ is insufficient unto the day. All of this is very contrapuntal for Yoga growth. As usual, judgment blinds. There is magnificence that can back-light a good yearn, leading us onward and upward. I heard that magnificence today in Rumi’s words. He writes about a man happily longing for God. A passing cynic (cynic’s always pass at critical moments,) asked if he had ever received any response from God. The man replied, “No.” Shortly after this the man let go his longing and quit praying. One day he dreamed he saw the guide of souls (These too, always pass at critical moments,) who asked him why he had stopped longing. The man said, “Because I’ve never heard anything back.” Khidr, the soul-guide responded, “This longing you express is the return message. The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. That whining is the connection. There are love-dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.” And I add, learn to howl your yearning. Feel the force of your heart for the heart’s true desire, be it God or Dog. (One is simply the other spelled backward.) Allow that yearning to lead onward, and expand the joy, and yes, the grief, for indeed our dark nights draw us into powerful union with soul-self, with Dogs and Gods and one another. Asana: Ardho Mukha… Read more »

In the depth of darkness, what brings lightness? In days of fear, how to drink in courage? In hours of regret, what offers solace, even redemption? Oppositions require partnering. In these days of great imbalance, we must seek, and learn to partner differently so that the extremes do not win. It is a time to face off and see our partner/opponent as parts of self, with as much clarity and objectivity as possible in order to work, and come to fruitful agreements with them. It is the same with any person-partnering as well as idea/feeling collaborations. To build companionship we are required to come from loving intention, knowledge, trust, and acceptance. A ‘partner’ is simply one who takes part with another. The word is from partiner, (influenced by part;) borrowed from OF parcener, from parcon, portion. We live on a planet of polarities, we are born of masculine and feminine ‘portions.’ We must husband a large number of portions and polarities at every moment in order to survive and thrive. But what and who are these ‘portions’ we dance with, how do we come to understand our romance with them? Romance meaning idealization, a clash with reality. ( I do love that the word ‘romance’ came from ‘something written in a vulgar tongue,’ meaning not Latin.) Conscious partnering of our allies and our enemies allows for wholeness. We can no longer remain bits pieces/ portions of one, or the other. We cannot be vulgar, or romantic, rather we move forward clear-eyed and realistic, for wholeness is the demand of an adult, not youth. Wholeness is the wish of the ill to be well. Wholeness is what earth seeks as she battles back from the pieces we have torn from her. The more difficult, read more unbalanced we are in certain… Read more »

Before we can embody any quality, we must experience and understand its opposite. Before selflessness is selfishness. Before mastery is apprenticeship. Before divine union, we dance with the devil, and until we do that dance we have nothing with which to honor ‘divine union.’ We can’t become ‘it’ until we ain’t it. Part of ‘it’ is the Chironic journey of the wounded healer we all share. It is the road we travel on hands and knees until we can walk, and sometimes, with fortune, we are set lose to fly. But no one flies who has not set roots deeply into the earth. Just as with any flying pose, we can’t move into it until we sink down, holding the power of our roots within. As another dark passage closes around earth, it is time for us to open different doors for self, and others. For a while, there may only be small cracks of light shining through, so it is important we understand and learn about darkness. Perhaps we shall be blind in our new decisions. Perhaps we will not be able to get off our knees to take the next step. Perhaps fear will lock best intentions into freeze-frames of doubt. This is the devil’s dance. This is the territory we are to master. This is our apprenticeship into true power. Two extremely difficult axioms come to mind: 1. If we don’t wish things to be different than they are, we won’t suffer quite so much. 2. Only through pain do we change. And clearly, change we must. Therefore let us embrace the darkness, knowing we cannot leave it until it becomes our divine teacher. Let us practice blowing strong, hot breath on tiny flickering flames until they light our way. Asana: Bakasana/Crane Pose. This is a powerful… Read more »

The rich sabor of August comes from more than turned-over earth smells, tastes of warm vine tomatoes, and owl-screams piercing the night. There is something about her heat and somnolence that imbues luxe perception–when we take time. August herself could be one of Titian’s queens, or Rembrandt’s Graces, where more is definitely more, and more is weighty, sensual, and sublime, fat or no fat. We want more from her days for we feel summer slipping from our fingers. I don’t know if we become manic depressive, swinging from extremes of doing, and not doing, or whether the imbalance comes from attacking one issue, letting all else melt in the sun. These slow and simmering hours offer time for greater awareness. The playful hours feed our inner centers where we grow consciousness. Beauty in the outer world transforms the inner, where we grow new roots, informing the Shakti, or impulses of our inner rhythm. These serve as pathways of communication to lead us ever deeper. The bi-polar sweetness of August demands we stop, taste, nap, AND get it all while we can. There’s a part of us that remains a forever-child saying, “School in five days, six hours. How much can I do before I’m locked away?” I need help in creating and holding a balance, and have stationed ‘Guardians at the Gate’ to protect both the quiet of growing Shakti, AND the explosions of work, and adventuring. I need help in honoring both, AND I need them in equal measure. These Guardians have been given orders that when they see me moving off kilter, giving too much attention and time to one, they are to protect the balance, call me to center, and serve my highest good, no matter the whining, or dragging of feet. (We never grow far from… Read more »

Often when the ego is diminished, we feel an ‘insufficiency of gratitude,’ sometimes heard of as ‘the mean reds.’ We feel in those times that there is little call for thanks, or giving. We don’t have enough Self to be expansive, generous, or grateful, having forgetten it’s just the ego, not all of Self. The problem lies in it feeling like all. It is in fact only the ‘little Self’ with the over-sized voice. (heard as whiney & over rated) “Why me?” “Why not me?” “How could they?” It should’a been me!” “ Me Me Me, ohhh ghrrrr, waaaghhhhh.” Loud, voracious, demanding and hungry for attention, it is a raunchy-red-voice that if it is grateful at all, it’s only for one moment before hunger strikes again, needing more strokes, more awards, more acknowledgement. What about a legitimate me? What about a timeless, open-hearted, Soul-Self that sits quietly in the dark behind ‘Big Red?’ Despite nay saying to the contrary, that dark-quiet Self is a complete compadre, a True self with whom we do, and we become extra-ordinary. It can be heroic, but most often it operates un-seen, and un-known, listening, nurturing, observing, saving. It understands all too well our needy-greedy cries, smiling at the Me Me Me-ness. When we turn toward this other entity, this silent, healing, surrendering Self, and move into its well of peace, we are home. We can even be ‘home’ for crazy making holidays, rooted in power that does not rise to the bait of old hot spots, and wound-poking. This lovely, legitimate Self is never diminished by failure, gluttony, or pettiness. And when we remember the shining abundance of this legitimacy, sitting at the head of our table, let us indeed offer up Grace for ‘all things bright and beautiful.’ Asana: Choose the Asanas you… Read more »