Down By the River (Kingman Island)


Near the beginning of my last morning beach walk (I’m now in Houston waiting for my connecting flight home), I met this water snake washed up on the beach. It was still pretty active, so I made an effort to get it back into the water.
It swam into the water, and I hoped I’d saved it. On my return, it had been wave-tossed back above the water line and was looking far more feeble. I tried again, but this time it was just thrown again on the beach and no longer moving.
It made me think about how connected are all of our destinies and how sometimes we can change things and sometimes we cannot.

Last night, I took some lovely photos in the rain when I was walking to get a massage (it is pretty awesome to get a massage on a Monday night; try it sometime and see how it changes your perspective on the work week). After I came home and had dinner, I resisted the temptation to curl up on the sofa with a book. Instead, I got on the computer to take care of email correspondence that had accumulated over the day and the weekend while I was at the workshop with John Friend. I uploaded the photos from my walk and tried to post an entry. I got a message when I was in WordPress saying that the photo upload had failed. I exited from that screen and tried to access the file uploader. I could not get in. I then exited the prompt that I had failed. It would not let me cancel. Next, I exited the admin portion of my blog. The computer was not happy about that, but eventually it seemed to close the program. After that, I could not get back either to my public page nor to the admin page. I tried several times, but to no avail. I sent an email to my website designer–could she get in?
I woke to an email from my website designer saying no problems for her. After I did my morning practice and before heading into the office, I tried again. On my home computer, no access at all to either the public or administrative portions of the site. I reloaded Firefox. That did not do the trick. I scanned my computer, but it showed no errors. I have access to the blog from my Blackberry, my office computer, and my IPad, but not from my home computer–my central place, the place where all my files and photos and bookmarks and maximum computer capabilities are one.
As Alice (in Wonderland) would say, “curiouser and curiouser.” I am sure with research and trying lots of alternatives, we will find a solution to this peculiar glitch.
I think staying fully connected to the ultimate loving ground of our being can feel like this strange denial of access to my blog. We get glimpses. We have studied enough to know what it is on an intellectual basis. We feel connected when we are at a big workshop (or sometimes it looks like every one else has found the bliss and we are the only ones who are not tapping in–note to self, usually that’s not true) or are in class or practicing, but not when we get challenged by daily life.
Two things serve to bring us back to center–the first is to keep practicing and making the effort, just as expanding knowledge and trying different strategies will get me back my full blog access; the second is grace (and being open to receive it). And when grace comes, we then need to keep practicing so that we stay connected and can live in and from grace more and more of the time and remember and reconnect more easily when we get disconnected.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
This vendor was right outside a Siva temple we visited on the day after we went to Rameshwaram. I don’t remember the name of the temple (I was not good about writing down the names of the temples that were added to the itinerary after the fact).
I liked the temple more than many. Partly because it was quiet and peaceful since it is off the pilgrimage path (going to some of the temples reminds me of seeing the Rolling Stones at Wembley Stadium, both for crowds and noise level) and partly because it had all eight versions of Dakshinamurti–Siva as teacher.
I was most ready for dinner after a very long day on the bus to detour to this temple, but alas, the sight of street food brings more fear of disease than it does thoughts of slaking hunger and thirst.
One of the ways I prepare for a restorative workshop is to spend some time looking for new music to play quietly in the background to enhance the fullness of the experience. In the past couple of days, I have enjoyed listening to quite a quantity of new and new to me music appropriate for my upcoming Finding the Warmth Inside: Relax Into Optimal Alignment with Anusara Restoratives on February 25th at Willow Street Yoga Center (click on the link for details and to register). Among the music I downloaded, which I am thoroughly enjoying (though it might be too upbeat for the restorative workshop playlist), is C.C. White’s “This is Soul Kirtan.”
As I was listening at my desk and swaying to the beat, I thought about the non-dual tantric philosophical principle that exhorts us to find the good in everything, to recognize that in all there is still a “divine” spark that is expressed in the creative effulgence of the universe itself. The music is joyous, delightful, offered with love, delivered with a high degree of professionalism–both the musical performance and the recording and presentation. I tried to fathom just how many centuries of human migration, suffering, oppression, bigotry, and then fighting for tolerance, education, equal rights, spirit, and freedom had to occur for this music to be able to exist at all and to be published and embraced, it being an extravagant blend of Indian spiritual/religious practice, American soul and blues (and all its history), and classical Western musical technique.