Inspiration

In the garden, it is important to grow. In a Practice, it is important to grow. When we stagnate it becomes impossible to blossom. Petals and potential fall unseen back into the earth. Yes, there is always another time, another cycle, a new chance to become, but why not now? If we can but let our tears water us, our pain teach us, our knowledge fertilize the soil, we grow profusely. What of weeding? Who will choose us if our thorns prick? Who will love us if we stink? What if we emerge deformed? When we are attentive we find a gardener right for us. It is possible to bloom without help, but we become lush and fecund with the help of a good gardener. We are more able to grow powerfully when someone weeds, fertilizes, and waters besides ourselves, and as importantly, when someone allows us to do the same for them. Some of us are roses, needing lots of extra attention, and some of us are wildflowers, wanting little, but we all grow as lovers when someone takes time to watch us blossom, and nod appreciation. Most of us manage to survive, despite ourselves, for the will to live is the strongest force there is, next to love. But to move beyond survival, that is the job of a Practice. A ‘growing-practice’ demands weeding out doubt, fears, addiction, and laziness, and a good gardener overcomes by growing knowledgeable, attentive, hard working, and willing to risk. A formidable gardener listens to the plants, converses with them, sees who they want to become, and admires every effort. That is when the garden blazes into glory, and the earth is glad. “The rose is beautiful and scarred…but which is which….Too often we love in spite of the thorns. Let us love……

How big does our ‘Big Daddy’ live within us? How did his dreams forge our days? Have we come to terms with his mythos? Do we hear his voice in our own? When that young man, freckled and feckless or freckled and faithful, decided to have a child, was he ready? Or did he haplessly create life unconsciously, sweetly, accidentally, remorsefully, angrily? We, in our turn, continue that sacred ancestral dance: mother/father-child,father/mother-child. How do those patriarchal-steps go? Be we fathers or not, if we cannot find a way to have our father live handsomely within, we cannot change the patriarchal two-step and it becomes impossible to enter either the outer world, or the inner as the good king, the good husband of the feminine. Without Daddy holding correct alignment in our psyche, we struggle to understand true power, to feel success of our relationships, or to attain ‘peership,’ for these constitute the role of true fathering. “Big Daddy” energy leads the successful way out only when our full relationship with him dwells consciously within. Bringing that tangled relationship to the light of understanding is a lifetime’s ‘onion- work’, peeling layers year by year. Few of us have the dreamed-for-father, and I suspect those that do, have as difficult a time as those with impossible fathering. Cutting that over-sweet, binding, umbilical cord can be as daunting as for those with the fathers they never thought to choose. It is our responsibility to bring them into inner alignment so we do not spend our adult days arguing, fighting, resisting, weak, blind, chewing away at the old childhood relationship. This Father’s Day, as we face our fathers, alive or not, as we call the myth of the father we have created, let us practice our Yoga… be still and accepting, breathe belly-breaths, become……

Yesterday I carried a small blue bowl full of scented oil across the lawn. I held it lightly, mindfully, noting each step, attentive to not spilling. A thought darted through my mind, “Too bad you don’t carry your heart this carefully.” Another zinged in close behind, “Wouldn’t life be lovelier if you paid this much absorbed attention to every moment.” “Ahhhh yes, small blue bowl, I agree. How do you suggest I do that?” “Practice.” “Oh that. I’m not that disciplined/good/attentive/willing/careful.” “If it made you more joyful, would you? If you could remain mindful long enough to carry me lovingly across that great green stretch of grass, might you not Practice holding what delights your heart, even half that long? Do you not wish to become the skillful artisan of your days?” “I do! I do! But…” “The open heart of a practicing Artisan strews beauty along every path it walks. It is not perfect beauty, neither is the Artisan, but she has chosen to show up, to intend, to choose time and time again to stand worthy in her Practicing. Can you not choose the same?” “I’ll try.” “Personally, I don’t care for ‘trying.’ It arouses suffering. We are half-hearted from fear when we only try. Our imagination savors all that could happen from a full-out effort. Trying leaves ashy tastes on the tongue. No, I want you to commit. Failure is fine, for it’s full-hearted. Fall, get up, fall again. Be bruised, and honor those bruises of your commitment.” “No one ever told me they found me more powerful because I was a huge failure.” “That’s because all they were doing was trying.” Asana: Visvamitrasana. Visvamitra was the name of a man who through many failures finally became exactly who and what he wanted to be, a great……

In Memoria: Blood memory of time Coughed in turbulence that tubercular life An arm severed when but a boy. Blood wedding, for Lorca knew. Blood drained in leaches, through dark lesions When memory could hold no more. Those faces– mine. Known to you. You my mother, my friend, My Captain, my child, my slave. Mated in blood, we turn and twist As one another, Time and again, and time without time, Becoming one for the other, one for all, one. Asana: Go where you can be touched by your memories. Find a silence and depth within a pose that allows, even beckons old, darkened corners to stand in greater relief. Press your nose into the window of time and see who appears. Let your breath lead the way.

Are we unwritten books waiting to fill each blank page with our idiosyncratic beliefs and characters? Or, is it a previous plot, a soul’s memoir that leaves space only for prepositions and minor detail? (Oh lordy, those seemingly small, insignificant prepositions that instantly change the face of the moment.) In the vitality of spring the ability to write our pages in present time feels more available, less pre-scripted. Perhaps it is only the excess of green ooze filling every pore that jumps our spirit into that ‘I am’ exultation and creation. With Gaia exploding into life, breathing abundance and authorship of beauty without measure, it feels as if we can, indeed, must attend our blank pages in every moment, lest life careen past, and our flowers fade and die without admiration. Our creativity, mirroring Gaia’s, surges with fascinating verbs, over-arching adjectives, and choiceful prepositions demanding growth and exploration. Winter does not feel the same. We are not called upon to attend such erotic chartreuse chaos. Capricorn’s Saturnine bone structure sets a measured pace. We move within where the imaginal plot holds gravitas, asking our stories and characters to stand outlined in greater precision. It doesn’t mean those pages are easier, but it’s not the same free for all, higgledy-pigged, bawdy-be-in-the-moment cacophony of spring. Does it matter whether we are writing daily/ hourly/moment by moment pages? Does it give us more power to be that kind of a change agent? If the pages are not blank, but written in soul-stone, invisible ink that reveals itself as we follow our own ‘fooking instructions,’ is life less valued, less precious? Either way, perhaps the really worthwhile questions are…”Do I like this plot? Are my characters strong and true? Does my story have something lively and important to impart? Am I in the service……

So much to be said about mothers; choosing one, having one, being one, not being one, leaving one, her leaving. The umbilical cord of DNA connecting us to a known-stranger, who feeds us by & with transfusions, implantation, information, transformations….so that link by link, bone by bone we birth ourselves into being. The parental axis forges desires to either become who they desire, or… who they don’t, who they know & understand, or someone they’ll never understand…and everything in between. If you do not think there is something hugely karmic in choosing to live inside someone’s belly for nine months, emerging only to be totally at their mercy…think again. What is karma other than, ”The continuous working of every thought, word, and deed throughout eternity.” Thus what we do and think, and become, actively creates past, present, future. ( And if you really want to think like a Meta-physician, consider that it is all happening at once…boggling). It does serve to teach us to be fully responsible for each thought and action. The soul of the child choosing the parents is an interesting karmic situation. Can’t you see it? Sitting ‘off-site’ saying, “Eeeny meeny miney mo?” Ironic as that lacksidaisical view is, life is not that haphazard, much as it appears to be. The fateful free-fall of a soul into its karmic lap is as good a reason as any to celebrate Mother’s Day. Let us make it a day of connection, soul to soul dancing, celebrating this life-time together; loving, hating, torturing one another, but always learning. The fabulous invention of this earthly existence as an enormously haunting and powerful school room, where we agree to come not be saved, au contrair, but where we fight for a connected learning experience. Other planetary existences are not as rich in……