Inspiration

As some of you know, I am creating a performance piece for Black Womanhood at the Davis Museum. Part of this exploration has been to re-weave my life back into that of my ancestors, known and unknown, black, white, and brown. My thoughts have traveled and woven around ancestors, both of blood and of choice, those teachers and mentors whose spirits run deep in my veins. Of course when one is wrapped in the energy of something, those things connected to it tend to fall out of books, off shelves, are uttered from the mouths of strangers….the great mysterious synchronicities of the Universe. It keeps us all believing in angels, no? When this page of nine ‘essential truths,’ that I named ‘Caffalisms,’ after Allan’s teacher/mentor, fell out of an old book, I took it as a sign that I might share it with you. I also took it as a sign that I needed to review, and re-vitalize these profoundly essential ideas within myself once again. I’m going to take myself to the mat to read and breathe, and hold each juicy thought in my heart before I take on the rest of my day. YOU? CAFFALISMS…..or Nine Essential Truths 1 ENERGY IS INDESTRUCTABLE, IT ONLY CHANGES FORM. 2 ENERGY FOLLOWS THOUGHT IMMEDIATLY AND SIMULTANOUSLY. 3 GROWTH CAN ONLY TAKE PLACE THROUGH CHANGE. 4 CHANGE IS THE RESULT OF MOVEMENT BETWEEN THE ACTIVE AND RECEPTIVE FORCES. 5 THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS, ONLY THE CIRCUMSTANCES DIFFER. 6 SUFFERING IS A RESULT OF ATTACHMENT TO THE DESIRE THAT THINGS BE DIFFERENT THAN THEY ARE, OR DIFFERENT THAN THEY WERE. 7 WISDOM IS THE PRODUCT OF THE KNOWLEDGE AND ACCEPTANCE OF PAST ECPERIENCES–BEHIND WHICH THERE IS NO ATTACHMENT TO THE WISH THAT THE EXPERIENCES SHOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT. IT LETS GO OF IDEAS,……

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” T.S Eliot The famous lines from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets speak not only of this particular time, but in general of fall’s airy, mutable changes, her dance as it were. October engages the Astrologic air energies of Libra. Her Venus rulership seeks relationship and connection. She also wants the bills paid, and money in the bank. Ayurvedically, air and connectivity grow more prominent in fall’s Vata quality. It behooves all of us, no matter how grounded and stable we think we are, to become aware of the restless, dry, cooling surplus imbuing these days and nights. Because like increases like, when we are at the mercy of changes we cannot control, we feel unstable and may seek out others to fulfill and balance our needs. This attracts and adds to the very thing we already have in abundance, which increases the turbulent imbalances. What we want is to call the opposite of what is already present…to dance the polarities. Acknowledging the season’s mobile, restless, spacey over-flow, how do we create not merely static balance, but a dynamic balance, a dance that serves over-demanding, fast paced days? It is easy to sit, meditating in a cave when we don’t have others we are responsible to, or a self that is multi-tasking as matter of factly as breathing. Perhaps changing one simple moment each day will offer us a still point in the dance?……

Does anyone love doing what they have to do? How do you do that? I can do what I have to do…sometimes, often grudgingly. I can always manage to do what I want to do. Having been superbly controlled as a child, I find discipline to be a thing of no small horror. I want to change, have tried to change, it is time, I must change. Wayward ways—-Be Gone! My new contract is with enacting ritual, instead of discipline. I’m calling a sow’s ear a silk purse, and as I drop my coin of the realm into its silky interior I pray it holds. Rituals speak of magic, of transformative elixirs, and beauty. Discipline is Saturn’s hold of being burdened in responsibilities and hard work. Hmmmm let’s see, which one do I love? Perhaps I need only turn ten degrees to the left to see that what I loath can be/is a thing of beauty? Is my mind that powerful? It can be, despite my lax and loathsome ways. My job, no my opportunity, to create renewal lies before me. I can choose to make a ritual of taking vitamins, drinking water, eating vegetables, doing paperwork. Each time I choose with attention and love, which is all ritual requires, my energy connects me to the task with joy, and expansive gratitude. When marching under discipline’s guidance, I do these things because I should. My energy in doing so obeys, and shrinks, feeling controlled. Which of these nurture and take my body into health? We are all aware of other’s energy, if not our own, even if it doesn’t come to full consciousness. You know instantly the moment someone is happy in helping, and when they do it because they feel obliged. Our energies are powerful and pervasive, and I……

When we are small boats on high seas, how do we navigate towards land, and survival? How do we remain centered, on course, never mind at peace? I have no idea, being neither sailor nor particularly centered, long though I’ve worked at it. The arrival of the Equinox, a breath of pure balance before the Dark Lord of Night overcomes Lady Day, sets our course for the coming three months. This is a timely moment to question the journey we embark upon. Interrogations arise: What am I using for a compass? Do I have one? Do I know how to use it? Am I wearing a life vest? What does it look like? Does it fit? Where are my provisions? What have I grown and harvested that now sustains me? How important is my destination? With a first mate who lives by the axiom, “A good traveler has no set destination, nor time of arrival,” it’s time to discover how to actually do that. The ego that yammers to know ‘if I’m there yet’ needs assuaging. Is the primary criteria, ‘to be safe?’ If so, I have given away power to make really good life-decisions. The old saying, “A coward dies a thousand deaths, the hero one,” is posted to the mast. Have I grown faith and courage-muscles strong enough to hoist sail every day, no matter what winds blow? Are Practices in place so that when we take on water I will still ‘bail/Practice bail/Practice/ bail/Practice? Who’s on board my tiny vessel? Are they fine sailors, strong and true? Will they face fierce storms in loud song? Will they mind the rigging, fighting the good fight? Will they toss me overboard with prayers and laughter when it’s time for Davey Jones? “Avast me Heartey-Hearts, we cast off!” Asana:Parivritta Uttanasa/……

Harvest Moon The moon made the sky round Then plummeted down Through inky blackness, Over streams of geese, Shredding vaporous cloud. She stopped We rose, Hand in hand, Toward her standstill light. Two shadows lifting off the hill, Chagall’s night lovers, Rising on dreams Suspended in longing From many moons attended Waiting harvest Coming this night. Asana: Ardha Chandrasana/Half Moon Pose. Begin from the long low side stretch of Utthita Parsvakonasana/Extended side Angle Pose. As you lift up and out, over the R leg, balancing, with the R arm, parallel to that leg, feel yourself lifting into your dreams, opening your heart to the moon, to that feminine Self within that holds and nurtures your dream-space, no matter the disappointments. Health Notes: When we lose our ability to dream, or to renew lost dreams, we lose our juice, and thus begins the slide away from life. Ardha Chandrasana, strengthens leg muscles and increases balance, and when we open to its fullness, perhaps, it helps us dream again.

I see, despite every desire and intention, I do not surrender gracefully. My mind-energy, that powerful, invisible, elixir of feeling and thought, refuses to grow peaceful, graceful, let alone joyous, at fall’s arrival. Yes! It’s an exuberant season of change. I love change. It’s beautiful, with wind blown gold’s and yellows, colors of wisdom and sunny dispositions. But fall’s plot-line is a short story to winter’s darkness. Perhaps fall shapes and shifts us toward our dying process? Knowing I can choose to have any ideas around fall I wish makes it worse. If I were a sage I could write another plot. If I were a great sage, I could change the mind-energy to even grow ebullient on the summer’s closure of this plot line. I am neither. I am a rube of a metaphysician. Here’s what I know, not what I have necessarily attained: Thought creates our world, real and imagined. Word follows thought, adding power and majesty to the thought. Speaking our ‘thought-energy’ is the next layer of building credibility for belief. The more mindful, read choice-full, we are in our thoughts, words, and expression, the more profoundly we inhabit our lives. It stands to reason that the more consciously we inhabit each thought, the more our inner life responds to conscious ideas, and vice versa. This all works swimmingly until I think of fall, and cave into trauma and indigestion over its arrival. Even as a rube I realize I need to sit, however uncomfortably, with the intensity of my anger, or is it depression? Is it angst covering depression, covering anger? What lies below this hijacked story-line…hijacked because I’ve not taken it into my heart and mind. It remains in my gut where I’ve let it take little bites out of the stomach lining. The last……