Friday, November 13, 2015

Years later: An Update on what I've been learning about Mothering, Elbows, and Surrender

Written months ago- perhaps in March. Held hijack by self-doubt and other odd projections of conditioned mind. Publishing now!

  Aaah, the human experience: so oblivious we can be, and how vulnerable, to the great force of time. I have been lost in the web of being with small beings; Lucas is 2.69 approximately, and Zavi 4.32.
Today on a lark it occurs to me to post to my blog, and I find my blog no longer exists. I have to buy a website from Google in order to get them to re-post my old ramblings. I feel strangely possessive of those old ramblings; they were like a journal that got me through some of the labyrinthine places of my mind. And, like a journal, they were rarely if ever read, and so, delightfully private and anonymous. I have a yearning for anonymity, which keeps pace with my longing for recognition, the two neutralizing themselves to create a relatively normal existence. Ah, the glory of sub-personalities canceling each other out.
  Anyhow, an update; a lot and nothing has happened. Finally got my MFT; not sure yet how I'll use it. I keep teaching yoga privately, and get so close to my students that it feels as if we are both enwrapped in the therapy that is any true brushing together of human souls. One of my students is very, very sick. I get to lean back against my own impotency all the time; realizing that my love is so big that it engulfs me; and so powerless. I would do anything to keep her alive and well, and yet I get distracted by grime in grout, and the banal maintenance tasks of living. (The nitya-karmas: more on that later.)
  Meanwhile, the boys have more teeth, and we have more dental bills. They are big enough to really confuse me. I struggle with being overwhelmingly in love with them and capable of getting infuriated with them. I can be very conflicted around the balance of love and control.  Zavi is quite astute; he seems to smell my ambivalence. When I try to control him, with volume or intimidating glances or a certain sort of grip, he digs in his heels. It's like being on a steep hike with a resistant basset hound.  I sit down on the side of the trail over and over, not sure how to get us to move forward. Positive Discipline classes were ever so helpful, and yet I flail almost daily. There is nothing like surrendering it all to the unknown. There are umpteen books I ought to read. But the poetry of the breath is still the best read out there.
  I am resurrecting this blog because I still have a deep appreciation for the teachings of dharma, and feel I don't get to have enough conversations about it.  So somehow on these pages I at least privately massage my own love of dharma and yoga philosophy into being. It helps that I am helping with the Yoga Immersion and Teacher training at the Shakti Yoga Shala. It keeps me honest as a teacher; keeps me learning, and realizing again and again how much I don't know. Re-reading Anatomy of Movement, and just now figuring out that the spiral structures of the radius and ulna are crucial to their smooth functioning in supination and pronation, which I am learning to keep straight after so many years.  Marveling at how they resemble DNA chains.  Took a remarkable training with Tias Little at Breathe Los Gatos. Learning again about neuropeptides, and still wondering if we can heal ourselves, and how mind-states contributes to immunity. This is strong right now, as I get over a bad cold, and text with my student and good friend who is in relationship with a terribly strong cancer. 
   I want to send this poem out, partially to Lisa, partially to myself, to remind us both to keep remembering to surrender. 

Secrets Places
Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.
Reason says, Nonsense.
I have walked and measured the walls here.
There are no places like that.
Love says, There are.
Reason sets up a market
and begins doing business.
Love has more hidden work.
Hallaj steps away from the pulpit
and climbs the stairs of the gallows.
Lovers feel a truth inside themselves
that rational people keep denying.
It is reasonable to say, Surrender
is just an idea that keeps people from leading their lives.
Love responds, No. This thinking
is what is dangerous.
Using language obscures
what Shams came to give.
Every day the sun rises
out of low word-clouds
into burning silence.

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