A Costume in Search of a Choreographer
There is a merging, more than ever, between my own asana practice and improvisational dance around the formal language of the asanas.
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Found Exhortation (and Santosha?)
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
John Friend on “The Art of Feedback”
I recently had a project that I did in connection with an organization of which I am a member. The ultimate goal of the project was for me to transmit to another group a report of decisions made by the organization of which I am a member. When I emailed my report, I “cc’d” my organization’s list serve. In response, there were a few heated postings on the list serve about the subject matter, even though I had sent a “cc” of a final report, not a request for new input. These postings in turn generated a number of emails both sent to me personally and postings on the list serve as a whole. The “secondary” emails were as much about how we were responding and communicating on the list serve, as they were about the subject matter itself.
It was hard for me to soften and to listen without defensiveness the emails that were well-intentioned, but stated strong opinions that could have been interpreted as suggesting the report was wrong or inadequate. As I made an effort to finish my project from a place of service, which in my mind included appropriately addressing the after-the-fact postings and emails, I was deeply grateful for the teaching John Friend had offered last year to the Anusara yoga community on “The Art of Feedback.” It is an inspired teaching and one that applies with equal force to the situation I was in this week.
For me, this is a deeply challenging area based on my personal history, but I work to grow. What are your challenges in receiving and giving feedback? How might shifts in how you receive and offer your opinions enhance your relationships and your goals for living and society?
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Windows That Open
When I first got to my room on the fourth floor of the hotel, the airconditioner was straining noisily, and the room was very stuffy. To My great delight — the windows not only open, but have screen and look out onto an unveveloped tract of land with trees higher than my window. I immediately opened the windows and let in the smell of fresh air and the sounds of the forest. There is occasional car noise, but it is muffled by the sounds of wind and rain in the trees.
I thought this morning how often I end up in an office building or hotel where the windows do not open. That cutting off access to the realities of nature, of what is greater than our little world, in order to have a controlled climate seems like much of modern life.
Many I know do not even notice that the windows do not open. Others of us, see the windows and want to know what is outside and to be with the greater energies. We seek to oprn the windows and know. Those who are able and so moved and who are able — rare beings — leave behind the buildings and go entirely on the renunciate path. The rest of us who live the life of householders, seek to have windows that open and spend time each day breathing in the sweetness of what is greater.
Some Idiosyncratic, Feminist Musings About Ayyappa
Ayyappa is the half-brother of Ganesha and Subramanyam. Ganesha and Subramanyam’s mother is Siva’s wife Parvati. Ayyappa’s mother is Siva’s brother Vishnu while he was the woman Mohini. Even in the glossed over versions that don’t get into what a modern reader might think of Ayyappa’s mother, he is the extra and unwanted child of the family, although he is needed to save the world from evil. Ayyappa is the character in the story who represents those who have ever been or felt unwanted or third-wheel or lost or excluded or is somehow missing in society or in relationship, but is still inherently worthy and divine and essential to the functioning of society, even though he is cast out into the wilds of the forest.
Being the god of such, at the festivals at a major temple in Kerala on the pilgrimage route, all castes are welcomed. No need to be a Brahmin.
But only prepubescent girls and elderly, post-menopausal women are permitted; women who have the capacity to conceive are forbidden. Those connecting with the god of the unwanted, the extra, the missing, the cast out, themselves deliberately exclude from access to this god others they make even less privileged. Even for the men of the lowest caste, the step-brothers, the bastards, and the otherwise unwelcome and unrecognized for their intrinsic worth, by the exclusion of all women of child-bearing age/capacity, Ayyappa’s pilgrims get to experience the sense of inclusion and privilege in society of the more powerful and glorified and popular brothers who have never been themselves cast out.
Could this by design? Is it that one cannot really understand what it means to be excluded unless one also experiences the power of being able to exclude in turn? If yes, how easy to pick, in a patriarchal culture, women of child-bearing age as the outcast and denied. (Do they ask any woman who shows up whether she still bleeds? If a woman has stopped bleeding, but doesn’t look “elderly,” does the prohibition still apply?).
I have personally experienced far too many things that have been partly or completely closed off to me, overtly or invidiously, because I am a woman or not of a particular social or religious background, and much where it was worth risking ease to challenge the status quo.
As for an Ayyappa pilgrimage, I’ve seen photos of half a million escstatic and determined male worshippers surging towards the temple for festival (looks something like returning to the tube station after seeing the Rolling Stones at Wembley Stadium in 1982 or the infield on a muddy day at the Preakness only more testosterone than that), and what first came to mind was not, wow, I really want to join that party. Rather, I asked myself where do they urinate and defecate.
I personally cheerfully leave this one to the men (and my more intrepid and determined sisters), even if it makes some of them feel special in part because they have excluded a whole class of people from being able to formally worship. I’d much rather spend time with Kali. Thank you very much.
Maybe I’d go stand outside Sabarimala in off season, when the temple is closed. I’d take a photograph and contemplate what the idea of Ayyappa–god of the unwanted, the unwelcome, the third wheel, the excluded, the extra, the cast out from the benefits but saddled with the hardest task–means to me–both as one who has experienced the pain of exclusion and one who has excluded others (as most all of us do even when we try not to), and how it can inform me to relate to others with more grace and compassion.
