It was a beautiful night, so I went for a longish walk after work. I found myself drawn to the two “Occupy DC” locations — Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square (shown). If it had been cold and cloudy, as it will be later in the week, would I have chosen to be out instead of in my nice house with the cats and a home-cooked meal and a good book? Most likely I would pick home, but still I go out of my way to witness every week or so and to remember that these are real people and this isn’t a one-night stand on only a nice night. I go to witness people who are living the courage of their convictions, to be inspired to serve in my own way, and to ask myself what more I should be doing. I know people questioning the way and the whether and the why of this movement, including those who are sympathetic, but questioning is a form of engaging and is a stage in expansion.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
When I pause to think about it–something I try to do consistently with the fruits of technology–it is an extraordinary marvel that I can be telling stories to the world from a little device I am holding in my hand, one that also has let me speak and exchange notes while I am away from home with friends, colleagues, and business connections.
What I cannot do (more likely because I haven’t yet learned how than it is not possible) is to be my usual careful self when posting entries. I have not done hyperlinks to attrbute my sources, nor have I spell-checked. At home, I would not hit the “publish” button without doing those things.
Under the circumstances of being away from my regular computer, my library, the ability to check my references, and to provide proper citation, but being brimful with enthusiasm for being with my teachers, colleagues, friends, and the practices while I am at the teachers’ gathering, it seems better to post than not, using the means at hand. I sacrifice some of my usual discipline to share the joy.
All of life is like that. We may have ideals of what is proper, what are our standards for appearance, for work, for sharing a meal or our homes. When circumstances limit our ability to meet our own standards, it is part of the yoga to see whether the standards are binding us or serving to help us better connect. I believe that we should always strive to be more precise, more technically accomplished, better able to convey a sense of grace and beauty. But that effort should not cut us off, bring us to a halt, disempower us, prevent accomplishment of things. Most of all, it should not deaden a sense of spontaneity of gesture–the part of art and relationship that reveals our true spark.
I wish you all a day in which you recognize and celebrate inner and outer abundance. Show your body how grateful you are for taking you around in this life-time with a few minutes of self massage (and share with your friends and family).
First, take care of your feet–those of you who are regulars know the routine (sorry no pictures). Then, with reverence and gratitude for the practices, the earth for supporting you, and what and who brought you to the mat, come into balasana (child’s pose).
In balasana — you can also do this sitting in a chair at a desk or table; just put your head down the way you did in elementary school — leaving your elbows and forehead resting on the floor or table, bend your elbows so that you can massage your upper back, neck, and head without having to use the muscles you are massaging to massage them.
Try squeezing the back of your neck.
Or finding some spots that would benefit from giving gentle pressure and motion.
Massaging the scalp usually feels good.
When you are done with the self-massage in child’s pose, come up to vertical to sit on your heels. Then dig your fingers into your hair or the scalp and squeeze. This will help get energy flowing and brighten your day. (Be careful: doing this too frequently might give you big hair.)
Meanwhile, I was on a work telephone call. But I will make time for some nourishing practice for my own body/mind/spirit at the end of the workday.
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.
