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The Murtis Rearranged Themselves Again
It’s an idiosyncratic grouping, but it is my weaving of stories for the moment.
I believe the brass dish under the cactus on the left was a wedding present, though I am not absolutely certain of that. It was a long time ago.
The cloth with the tassels came from a shaman in Peru; I was there for 9/11.
I bought the gray scarf when I was in Costa Rica on a retreat with John Friend from a world-traveling fellow yoga practitioner who had brought an array of beautiful scarves to Costa Rica from Thailand.
Other things were brought home from India–mostly by me, but one a treasured gift from a friend.
The porcupine quills were also an inspired and loving gift.
The square of marble under the cactus on the right I found on the street in the neighborhood. The cactii came from a yard sale over a decade ago. They were being sold for only blooming once a year.
The bit of mother of pearl comes from Centerport beach on Long Island. I went there last fall the day before my father’s memorial service.
Other things came from vendors at Eastern Market and one from New York City.
The chestnut is from Stanton Park. I picked it up on my way to work one beautiful day last year.
The heart-shaped stone came from Arizona when I was on a meditation retreat some time late in the last decade. I’ve been to some really lovely places on this planet.
The mala Kuan Yin is wearing I strung and designed: rudraksha beads from my first meditation mala (which had broken), labradorite, and emeralds on silk thread.
The jet beads belonged to my grandmother Rose.
There’s a story about the lump of black and red rock behind Ganesha, but I think I’ll leave that for another day.
Last Night I Slept At My Parents House (and akrama)
I slept last night in the room that I slept in as a child. My mother now uses the room to store some of the vestiges of her old antiquing business. The carpet, wallpaper, and curtains from the 1960’s are gone, but the bed is the same one in which I had slept. The picture on the wall is a kit for making a stuffed animal that my Grandma Rose had bought me (probably when I was about 8) at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that my mother decided would be better as framed art than a sewing project for me.
The neighborhood looks different–it is far more developed as is everywhere near a big city–but the bones are the same.
It is a challenge not to feel the weight of my history and ancestry when I return. Taking the time to meditate when I woke helped me stay fully in my adult self.
When we meditate, we ideally dissolve our individual consciousness into the luminous spaciouness of universal consciousness. In that space, where we are temporarily not experiencing ourselves as an individual, we are also not experiencing our individual self in the sequence (krama) of time. The luminous spaciousness of meditative consciousness is sequenceless (akrama) and, as universal consciousness, is the place in which the sequences of being in time and space arise.
What I experienced this morning when I meditated was that I did not have to be flooded with the emotions of my, to try to graciously describe, emotionally challenging childhood. In the space of meditation I could bring to my day an acceptance of all of my life and be where I am at present, coming to a place of recognition that although I lived all of my history, it neither defines me nor binds me from expanding into a space of growing love and light.
