This pilgrimage is shortly coming to a close. I do not know what it will bring nor what I will bring home (I actually wrote this entry on December 16th). What I do know is that I will be eager to share all the learning and visions and use them to seek more peace and joy, fairness and health, love and compassion. May your most heartfelt, true wishes be realized in the new year.
My friend Dan just posted an insightful piece about the sweetly humbling (without diminishing) perspective on the single life or the whole collective human being in the context of the whole universe. It resonated with the passage I had read for group practice last Wednesday from Ramesh Menon’s rendering of the Shiva Puranas, which talks about all the units of time from a nimesha, a human moment, to the life of the highest Siva principle–an immensity of infinite time that is incomprehensible at a human consciousness level.
Uma, the goddess, top of the tattvas.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Somehow the selection seems very much yoga inside the Beltway.
Thursday night, I took a dance improvisation workshop at Dance Exchange, the second in a series of three workshops. One of the exercises we did was in groups of two. The game was to do simultaneous improvisation. Without designating a particular person as a leader, each dancer was to try and stay in synchronized movement with his or her partner. When we were done with the exercise, some of the dancers talked about their goal having been to be in control of the lead or trying to push their partner past his or her edge. I had been innocently (or perhaps naively) unaware of these dynamics, as I had been seeking to find where the dance could be the leader rather than either partner.
After the workshop, when I was walking to the metro with the teacher and another participant, both of whom are performers in their 20s, I raised the issue of people trying to push others past their edge (I’d held off raising it in the group as it seemed too many were in a different space). I said that knowing that my partner was a lot less flexible than me, though lots stronger, and knowing his competitive edge, I never would have tried to push him beyond his physical limits.
The teacher said he liked being pushed past where it seemed like a good idea; it made him get to another place. I agreed that it is good to try to expand, to go beyond what we think are our limits. I have been taught, though, by my teacher John Friend, not to blow past my limits. Rather, in the practice of Anusara yoga, we seek to be intimately and exquisitely aware of our edge at every moment, and then expand it. The game with the partner using this paradigm would have been to find the edge and then see if the dance could expand it rather than to try and exert control or see if we could push our partner past his or her limits at our partner’s risk. When we operate in a paradigm of straining and striving, or we push for control or try to compete with ourselves or with others, that is where we get injured. I’ve had my share of dance injuries, I added, but to continue dancing through the decades, I cannot be blowing past my limits, though I am still growing. I was not sure that what I said felt relevant, but I could also tell that it was information that went into the thought mix for later.
For the past few years, my friend X has hosted a Day of the Dead celebration. This year, it had not been in his plans. Enough of asked, though, that he is hosting a small dinner. The Halloween of candy and costumes has not had a big draw for me; it was never made much of in my childhood. Taking the time, though, to sense the thinning between the worlds and to take time to honor my ancestors is of great meaning. Having been privileged to be invited into the festivities of the Day of the Dead has enhanced my consciousness of this time of year.
Today, when I practiced, I first reflected on those friends and family who have left their physical bodies in the past year–some quite significant to me. Thinking of those friends and family led me to think of others long gone in body, but not in spirit, and others who are still living, but with whom the connection remains only in memory. To all, I offered honor and recognition of their part in my being. Of all, like the taste of the sugared skulls that are part of the Day of the Dead, I am consciously thinking some, among whatever memories may arise unbidden, of what was sweet.
