Salt

!!:26 pm.

I wonder if too much kundalini will cause me to have a nervous breakdown.

This is what I worry about at midnight, when I should be asleep.

Maybe I don’t need to worry about an impending breakdown; the current madness is sufficient.

It’s just that sometimes the energy work—the Reiki–makes me feel so Energized!

I am looking for balance. I need to bring the lights down from time to time–I need to find shade.

I used to find shade, or respite, in a fairly routine spiritual practice. It didn’t matter if I did my practice in the middle of the living room or in a secluded place, the practice itself was a refuge. It wasn’t just something I did, but a place that I went. And going there changed me.

But these days, I find it difficult to stick to anything like a regular practice. I jump all over the place, from mantra to mantra and this to that.

I might freak out about the seeming chaos, but I know better.

I’ve seen this happen before.

It seems like my life is out of control in one area or another, but when the dust settles, there is a whole new facet of humanity to explore, with new eyes and a stronger heart. It’s like dawn after acid.

I am doing a lot of Reiki these days, and kundalini yoga, which is wonderful. I am learning and learning everyday and acting on what I learn to serve in any way I can to bring comfort and healing. But Along with the cozy-rosy warm and fuzzy feelings comes confrontations with my ego.

(Dramatic pause.)

I am learning how petty I can be, how much confusion I can cause, and how easily I can pick up bad habits and destructive behaviors.

And I am learning how to walk away from those wake up calls with my eyes wide open, willing to learn a better way. Only sometimes I linger, because I am like Saint Augustine who wanted to become a saint…but not yet.

Sometimes I like salt.

Quiet

After the meetings, after Facebook and checking email, and after messaging people and making phone calls, it is quiet.

I have to face the quiet.

But I can’t do it alone, so I am with you.

And who are you, anyway?

I get so lost in my own head. I forget that your reality is not my own. You have a completely different world to wake up to, full of different values and different emergent beliefs.

Emergent is defined as something that is coming into being or becoming prominent. or in nature, emergent is a tree or plant that is taller than the other vegetation.

An emergent belief is one that stands out in the basic structure of a person’s days and may even become more prominent or less so with changing times.

My emergent beliefs are that the world is a good place and and I am glad to be of it.

But when I am disconnected from you, I am not entirely me.

I mean, “I am, I said.” and all that self realization stuff; I existentially am AND am more than that, too.

But I seem to be the kind of human that needs other beings to be entirely who I am, even when I am by myself, and I am not entirely sure I’m okay with that.

Barbara Streisand seemed to think people like me were lucky.

All my life I thought I wanted God more than anything in the world, and I still feel that way. But lately I see God in every one I see and all I want to do is give myself away as an offering to that divine light.

I am shaking as I write this.

To be so honest is risky and transformational.

It is the end of the day.

There is no where else to go, no one to talk to, nothing more to do but be

Quiet.

Terrifying.

440 Down Slide

“I had to tune my guitar to something that resonated with my bones.” Said, the elder of three sisters.

I tuned it with an app on my phone, first, so it was in 440 Hz, standard tuning. Then I tuned down until it resonated in my bones. Each string had to have that effect. I don’t know if it matches any scale known to anyone else but me, but it sounds and feels wonderful to me. I’ve been playing it all afternoon. It feels like my heart and soul are singing through the guitar.

Some kind of new song is trying to be born. I have been in labor for two days now. The contractions are getting stronger but there is no real sign of a substantial song, other than this new tuning.”

The sister with the sunbeam hair said, “If you sit back and relax, it will come to you in it’s own time. So many times we fret for nothing; if we just let it be, things work out just fine.”

The sister called Guruji, half for fun in a teasing way and half out of deep respect that would have embarrassed her if the other two sisters had not joked about it, laughed and the room filled with diffuse cobalt electricity.

This was the first gathering of the three sisters since the early days; it had been so long since they had gathered, in fact, that it was not a memory they shared, but a common twinge of homesickness for a home they couldn’t quite bring into focus–something long ago and far away, like a fairy tale with a bit of heartache.

The sisters sat facing one another and pooled their energy.

The galaxies were spun in this manner, and the three sisters fell easily into the rhythm of spinning.

Fall came, and winter, and all the seasons in their turn.

“I just can’t tell what this song will be.” the laboring sister moaned.

“The contractions are stronger.” Said the sister with sunbeams for hair.

“Hum.” Said the one they called Guruji. “I can almost hear the new song. Almost.”

Trout jumped in rainbow river. Fox walked on tiny fox feet five feet over to the neighbhoring den for five o’clock tea with her fox friend, and a wolf swallowed thunder on the ridge.

“Yes.” She said. “I can almost hear it.”

Fragments

The child’s dress is handmade from cotton material that was pink 75 years ago. Its tiny buttons go through tiny, handstitched buttonholes all the way from the bottom to the little scalloped collar.

A pair of black, high top baby-shoes hang by their  laces around the neck of the dress on the hanger. There is 75 year old mud on the bottoms.

How absolutely precious it is to me, a grandmother, to think of my own mother when she wore that baby’s dress and those black shoes.

If I could, I would go back and tell her what a good girl she is. I would pick her up and show her a mirror so she could look deeply and squint in the right direction in order to seee the princess in the looking glass.

I would hold her and tell her I’m sorry for breaking her heart as I have done so many times over the years.

And I would ask her to share a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with me on the front porch of a house that doesn’t exist anymore.

We would sit there, together, and forget the time of day.

Dear Future Self

I woke up almost as close to tears as I was when I went to bed last night.

It is the season of rejection.

What can I learn from all this?

Like a ball of mercury, every rejection bonds to the times I have been rejected before.

It seems like one giant ball of mercury

And I am pushing it up a hill.

No one can push a ball of mercury up a hill. Better to tilt

the hill.

Lion’s Paw Kriya.

I have had an unexpected shift in my view of yoga practice, an easing up of my almost militant approach to doing any given kriya.

At day two of the Lion’s Paw Kriya that I started with my Spirit Voyage Global Sadhana group, I had so much resistance to getting started each day that i rolled up my yoga mat and have been using it as a back rest in my bed.

The first day, I was right there. But by day two I was already finding excuses not to start. And this time I know my reluctance is not laziness. The resistance is a natural reaction to the changing energy in my energy system. This Kundalini yoga is powerful yoga and it is already doing its work. I was resisting, not because I’m lazy or bad, but because the yoga is that good.

I could feel the difference in my energy field as soon as I’d completed one practice. I couldn’t even get through the entire time set for the kryia, but I did my honest best. And what I am saying is that even that small amount of kundalini yoga made a difference in my body/mind and spirit–and in my life circumstances as a result of the shift.

It has been very healing, but it has not been fun to go through the massive cleansing process created by this practice. I feel very grateful for the help and support received over the past few weeks, and grateful to recognize detox when I see it.

Day 15 or day 1—it seems like the same day. I am stronger and more grounded than I think I have ever been because I didn’t give up when I couldn’t be perfect—whatever that means. When I could not bring myself to the mat or think about doing a formal practice I could at least chant a single Ong Namo.

So I did what I could. I chanted whatever mantra would come out of my heart, from that field of Kuru where the yoga actually takes place.

Day One caused my life to be stirred up. So my practice was to try to keep a calm center while I put the pieces of my world back together in a way that would be more conducive to the life I truly want to live.

Meanwhile, I chanted the Ang Sang mantra as much as I could even though I could not do the full kriya. The mantra was like a fulcrum and as long as I kept in the eye of it and trusted that this commotion was just a cosmic detox, I was okay,

My poetic translation of Ang Sang Wahe Guru is this: every cell of my being resonates with divine light–the light from the beginning of all created things and how glorious is the light that leads me from darkness to the source of life,

It is a powerful chant when sung with all your heart, or even listened to if your heart is too broken to sing.

Today I am able to chant; maybe I will be able to do the arm motions and breathe fire along with the rest of the group later on.

All I’m saying is that when I begin a 40 day practice with an intention for good, I am going to ease up on myself and appreciate the work being done on or off the formal yoga format of the kriya and count the days of good, honest intent to practice as part of the process.

I will do my very best to keep up, but it may take time between attempts to digest and incorporate all the energetic changes happening as a result of the bits I can do,

I could make a game of it and call it :Where is the Yoga Working in My Life Today? I could point out (to myself) that it is working on this attitude or that, or this physical or financial problem.

It is a little like watching an inner network buzzing with life, watching the lessons repair one broken connection after.

It is impossible to verbalize, yet I have been talking about it for quite a while.

It boils down to this: If you are like me, you will benefit in the multitudinous levels of the life you are living. The yoga you do will make a signal and the universe (for dire lack of an adequate word) will respond as only a living thing responds.

It is not like putting coins in a jukebox; yoga and its benefits are a living and breathing thing, to be experienced and limited by nothing.