DAILY I remain in awe of my mind. Would that it were for its brilliance. No, I remain fascinated, because despite living in it lo these many years, it remains a mystery. I have little understanding of how it really works. What is this mind stuff? It powers the Universe. If I could consciously access the energy of my thoughts, particularly the dark ones, I might have the wattage of a power plant. The mind is a god to honor. If I paid attention, without judgment, I might bring heaven to earth, or perceive earth as heaven. If I honored the gods/goddess of the emotional mind, that engine ruling every thought, could I come to greater understanding? Does the gut rule the brain, (Huna thoughts)or is the mind in my gut? From all we are discovering, it is probably a two way street. Would I face anxious, fear-filled thoughts with greater equanimity if I moved toward, not away from? Learning to embrace and honor the alchemical substance of my Dark Gods? In doing so, accepting my true nature. When caught in webs of thought, which seem real, I miss out on their substance, their vibrant energy. This dance of energies is often submerged under a plot line, or story -board I assume to be true. Often, the worse I feel, the more I believe it to be true. Wise ones go to meditation of their own accord. Others of us are dragged by their Dark Gods, kicking and screaming. Think of the energy available if I could embrace perceived failures, stupidity, carelessness, or regret. I would magically open to the vast unknown, misunderstood Self. In this alchemical-sitting, learning to allow moods and mayhem not to rule, I’d learn of and from my dark gods. I would bow and thank them for their gifts of transformation. … Read more »
Read moreInspirations: Practicing
Clowning Around
I recently went to hear an ex-Cirque de Soleil clown speak on failure. Odd aspects of articulating our humanness never fail to intrigue, and Colin Gee, the clown, actor, and observer of life, was no exception. He also surprised, although with a billing of ‘clown, Cirque de Soleil, and failure,’ how can you not be surprised? His personal portrait revealed the clown’s willingness to fail, in order to reveal vulnerabilities…an elixir that makes laughter grow and love bloom. Is that why clowns are loved? We admire acrobats, who never fail, but we cherish the clown, who must fail in order to win trust. Both work limits in the human condition, and the measure of success, or failure, is very high. Both reveal themselves in bright lights, either in flight with angels, or bottoming out in seas of emotional weight. Neither can pretend. Neither can be half-assed. Both must succeed in un-expected ways. Each works with well-defined constructs, dealing with a force greater than themselves, gravity—lest we forget: the primary mechanical principal of life on earth. Bringing clown-awareness into our daily lives is an important balancing tool to onslaught of push and shove to ‘excellence,’ and to our terrible fears of failure. A base condition for the clown is humiliation, a state of non-grace we moderns shun. Another base condition is listening, listening to audience response, listening to the ego’s ability to relinquish its hold, listening to the character we are inhabiting at any given moment. The ear is another tool we are in jeopardy of loosing as we shout at each other through tweets, and likes, and links. Who has time to listen when we need everyone to hear us? I, for one, am making my list of ‘Clown Rules’ –reminders for each day, before the linking, liking, and licking of… Read more »
Read moreTruth & Lies
Finding the truth is much like finding Nemo. The cartoon film revels in facts of life, seen as a fish tale, revealing truth through laughter. We are shown that the Self we hope to be, and truths we must comprehend are as much the work of imagination and intuition as they are of reality and hard work. Deep truths lie in the balancing and adventure of becoming. Truth, with a capitol T, is no longer the ‘the whole truth,’ if it ever was. Recognizing some of this depends on evolving from the burden of who we are supposed to be to embrace who we hope to be. * This world has always been a magical place of truth and lies, tall tales, and dedicated honesty woven through a human matrix of confusion, bad memory, and desire. We work at defending who we think we should be, bolstering it with stories and warm, if not hot air. We rarely think the lie sits on our side of the table. Rather it is ‘the other’ who exaggerates out of all proportion. We are offended. We grow defended, and desiccated. As our days become drive-by practices in everything from eating to meditating, learning anything new requires true dedication. I propose we spend ten minutes a day practicing the art of lying. This will engage under-used muscle that supports and builds understanding, and use of truth. It is the same with everything. How can we feel compassion if we haven’t been hurt, and hurtful? How do we know who we can be unless we’ve struggled with who we think we should be? When we only tell the truth, when we only work at ‘shoulds,’ when we are only nice, where is the balancing polarity to see and be otherwise? There are fine and righteous things… Read more »
Read moreTake Back The Night
The numinous has been leeched from our bones by the radioactive society we’ve created. We worship the maudlin and horrific, the mundane and safe. We are frightened by mystery and magic. The ancient mystery of the Winter Solstice has departed, gone in pre-Christmas flounce and flurry. What was most sacred is now scarcely noted, roared past as road kill. Ritual re-sanctifies and empowers because we become the catalysts to bring forth healing and transformation. We do not use an intermediary to ask for absolution, which puts power in their hands, not ours. The solstice, like the equinox, are perfect moments to stand still with the Gaia. Take stock. Participate with nature. Re-connect to earth’s cycles. The on-going unspeakable tragedies, some Nature’s doing, all too many man’s creation, tell us we need to re-connect, to one another, to the earth, to our own spirit. It is time to re-invent ourselves, so that communities care for the disenfranchised, cities re-claim their homeless. Let us be different in this long dark night, let us light the light within. If it’s religion that feeds you, make a new space within its old traditions. “The goal in the etymology of the word ‘religion’ is to re-link us to the Universal.” (Jessica Murray in Mt. Astrologer) This is the same goal Yoga propounds– link our Practice to life, become a bridge, or lynch pin to expanding consciousness. We are bits and pieces of an eco system that we need to nurture, not the other way around. This is particularly true during dark cycles, when much of the animal and plant life are dormant. Our dormancy often carries us toward depression, sickness, SAD, even suicide because we’ve misplaced the light within. The Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.” We pass through… Read more »
Read moreDancing Heaven & Hell
The muchness of who we are is created from a dynamic dance born of the resonance of 10,000 polarities. As these polarities flow and ebb, they teach the difficult steps required to execute this dance. When lucky enough, we then perform it with full heart and flying feet. The dance states that if we only look backward, moving forward is difficult. If we only waltz the light fantastic, gliding through dark shadow is arduous. If we only snap a leg up to hold it high, no matter how fabulous it looks, we have only an event, but no sequence. We don’t understand how we got there, or how to leave. We have no ‘prepositional moves.’ If we only dance duets with the prince, we have no idea if we can solo, or, far more difficult, fit in with the corps de ballet. Twirling and leaping faster and faster to make people clap louder and longer, we relinquish an ability to connect to our internal vibration. We fail to hear our true resonance, which is the sum of ALL parts; all steps, styles, and tones. In the outward highly excellent performance, not only do we have no balance, it becomes difficult, if not impossible to dance with others. We can’t identify, or feel their resonance. We have no sense of who they are because it has grown too difficult to dance with our own 10,000 polarities. We grow one-dimensional. We partner poorly, if at all. The prince cannot prevail and hold us up. Yes, the steps seem more difficult, because we are driven to learn them faster, and everyone else is whirling by at such a speed that taking a deep breath before sailing off into a beautiful waltz, is the luxe of a by-gone era. But remember, this dance needs… Read more »
Read moreSerious Sedition
Anymore, our days ask for the rational, the analytical, and heavy time management. To create balance, we must return to poetry and Yoga, dance, and song. What we need most is mystery, and intimacy, nurturing and magic. As technology takes over, and we are more and more indoctrinated into literalness, and linear thinking, parsing each hour into multitudinous tasks that are less and less satisfying, we turn with gratitude to any Practice that nurtures the inner life. We lift our voice in secret songs, and tread the light fantastic across the kitchen floor. Return to Rumi: We are the mirror as well as the face in it. We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity. We are pain and what cures pain. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. Great poetry, great anything, does not have to ‘make sense.’ It speaks via symbolic power, not intellect. What gets fed is an abiding sense of wonder that has nothing to do with rational life. This is sedition of the highest order. That wow of recognition and response travels directly into layered mandalas of bone, muscle, mucous, mind, emotion, and spirit where soul waits. This spiral into the unknown is where heavenly, inexplicable treasures lead toward the imaginative act, where we ache to express more of who we are. This scary vulnerability requires a touch of madness and willingness for chaos. It asks for time to be set aside when we are not producing, not being ‘excellent,’ when we are messy and incoherent. When was the last time you allowed that? Technology tends to honor the fast lane and the literal, the linear and the tidy where language, and whatever other tools are used, gets the job done tout suite. Not a bad thing. But like anything,… Read more »
Read moreWomen Of Wonder
“Breathe, Believe, Battle.” This is a perfect mantra for the London Olympics, the arrival of the woman. The command comes from one of America’s great duo’s, the beach volleyball queens, Kerri Walsh, and Misty May. Kerri offered it to a microphone when they asked, ‘how do you come back from disappointment, and loss to win?’ Kerri said it was the instruction from her old coach, Terry Tanner. This mantra could be the energetic expression behind every Olympic participant who struggles and works to take it to the next level. But it is particularly feminine in its word-order. A man would be more inclined to chant, “Battle, believe, grunt.” Placing the breath first, as undergarment for belief, and belief as the injunction for battle, puts a different spin on the road to winning. As every true warrior knows, the battle is always over self, not over other, and when we begin with breath, it is the feminine giving instruction to the masculine within so that the masculine can then take correct action. We come into being when we breathe. Respiration is life force. Under ‘breathe,’ the fifth meaning in Webster’s New International Dictionary is, ‘to feel desire, aspiration,’ and ‘to express, manifest, to give forth.’ All this takes place within a breath, when we are conscious. With breath, we listen, allowing time and space for thought and spirit to manifest. With life force, we believe…in something: angels, devils, self, others, heaven, hell. To believe is to have a ‘firm persuasion, faith, and confidence’ that we know we have it right. This is the courage it takes to carry us into battle. If setting out to win the Olympics seems daunting, think – Joan of Arc. Every single body that walked through the Olympic gates experienced this transmutation in some way. It… Read more »
Read moreSaying, “Yes!”
The exquisite delight and detriment of saying “yes,” as opposed to no, or maybe, creates extreme polarities of greatness, and failure. We must have said yes to take this incarnation, no? We must have said yes to grow beyond childhood. But as adults, with accrued disappointments and failures, what remains of our ability to express the breath of yes? Are we willing take risks, expand the inner landscape to cajole resentment and pride toward harmony and Grace? Is it even possible to have a life without saying yes? Is it achievable to become fine, aged wine without being foolish along the way? Can we be safe and sort of fine, hedging bets and danger to merely murmur, “perhaps?” This tentative approach keeps all manner of beasts at bay. There may be greater safety, but little possibility for splurges of excitement, or falling into love, and certainly no abandoned-winner-take-all moments. That’s a very high price to not expose, to not step into foolishness. In the Tarot, the first card of the Major Arcana is the Fool. He is shown blithely stepping off the cliff into air. This is the symbol of the Omega moment, calling us to enter life-futue unknown. As we become older and wiser, most of us are loath to step off cliffs, having been through dire consequences of doing just that. But it feels more important than ever to consciously leap with faith, yelling, “YES,” as we spiral into unknown space. Thank hevvins for the Yogic-life which offers every manner of tool to make us braver, more honorable: Yes, I will love when my heart breaks. Yes, I will prevail with kindness when disappointment obliterates ego. Yes, I will try again despite liability. The life we build from the mat, even when it’s not yet possible to express… Read more »
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