This morning I walked up to Cultivate the City with a neighbor. I am going to try more fruit this year–I found a spot for a passion fruit vine; I will put strawberry towers on the sleeping porch; I may put in a golden raspberry; the Concord grape is looking promising. Meanwhile, around the neighborhood, the cherry trees are in full blossom.
I stopped to take a photo of the question. This delightful dog would not move and insisted on attention. He finally moved far enough off of it to have it legible after he insisted I rub his belly. I guess I could have gone without a photo, but it was nice getting the canine love. His human was patiently bemused.
I am curious about the concept of guru, and as usual, when I am curious about something some large part of my exploration is through books. As my latest entry in books about gurus, I’ve just finished reading Rachel Manija Brown’s “All the Fishes Come Home to Roost,” memoir about her years as an American child in an Indian ashram.
The tale a wonderful example of how humor and curiosity can help us survive human challenges and discomfort and how story telling itself can be an act of healing. Finishing the book at the start of guru purnima reminds me of how many of my teachers have been books.
The “shelter in place” signs in my building demarcate suites where designated groups of employees are supposed to gather in the event of a threat to human safety where it would be safer to hunker down in the building than to go out.
While I was sitting through a seemingly interminable, pointless, but only somewhat acrimonious meeting this morning, I was thinking how important it is to have a space within our own consciousness where it feels safe and peaceful even when we are in a situation where staying physically put is the most realistic alternative. This got me thinking about one of the powers (siddhis) that allegedly may arise from a steady, devoted, and long-term practice. That power is the ability to bi-locate–the power to be in two or more places at once.
I’ve long practiced with part of my goal being to cultivate the space of meditation as a way of making bearable the unavoidably painful, such as when confined to bed because of severe illness. In such a situation, though my experience is thankfully limited, going into meditation is a going to another space of consciousness, but does not require staying mentally engaged and present.
When in an unpleasant meeting or stuck in traffic or similar situations, the problem is that one needs to stay mentally and physically alert and present and cannot just go off into bliss.
Then, I think the power of bi-locating is what would serve best. It would enable being simultaneously present and functioning while also being in the blissful and peaceful state of meditation. The space we go to in meditation would indeed then be a “shelter in place.”
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
When we are on our mats, being open to grace — the first Anusara alignment principle — includes being open to the teachings so that we can receive and act on them in a healing and loving way. Adding to that muscular energy by lovingly embracing skin to muscle to bone in a conscious embrace, drawing into our center to recognize our inner spirit, and drawing from periphery to the focal point brings us into optimal balance. This pulsation serves as a way off the mat to open, inspire, and engage us in progressively more intentional and uplifting ways of living.
Being open to inspiration from friends and about town, open to learning new ways to be kind to the earth and to ourselves, is a way of bring the principle of “opening to grace” off the mat. Actually keeping the intention and acting on it has the attentive embrace of muscular energy, which draws us onto our inner light in a loving embrace so that we can better serve.
I was thinking about Anusara principles off the mat, yesterday when I went visit a friend in NW one of whose roommates fosters cats. There is a community garden in the back and the house is warm and friendly. In the bathtub were two buckets filled with water leftover from showers. Instead of using fresh, potable water to flush the toilet, when it is time to flush (honoring the drought axiom about yellow mellowing, etc), the house residents fill the tank with the gray water from the shower.
Find it too complicated an idea to shower with a bucket in the bathtub with you? You can still save water by filling your watering can or bucket when you run the water to warm up enough to get into the shower. That will save a few gallons. Not up to using the water to flush the toilet? Use it to water houseplants or for cleaning floors, etc. Or take it outside to water potted plants.
First step is opening and witnessing the possibilities and understanding where you are ready to expand. The second step is to try to more consistently live your inspiration. I know when I see people living with such intention I take better care to move in that direction, even if I am not ready to go as far.
