A little after 5 this morning, the sound of the unexpected rain brought me out of my dream state. I was not ready to rise, so I realigned myself into a good savasana and just listened — following no other thoughts — until the morning musical awakening arrived at 6.
I could have thought of it in this language: the rain woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep, but I was still tired so I lay in bed until the alarm went off.
Hotels, I think, were on to something when they started offering “wake up calls,” though the sound of the phone ringing in the middle of an intense dream can be shocking. When did we start naming the sound we use to bring us from dreaming to waking “the alarm?” What perspective does it give to our day to think we need an alarm to start it? Why not at least “alert” or “signal” for the days when the only technology (think about that piece of it) was a jarring sound?
I have been thinking a lot about what wakes me up since Becky passed away. For 21 years, either Henrietta or Becky was lying on or next to me purring before any electronic signal could go off. They knew when it would go off and every morning sought a little petting (and then food) before they heard any signal to start the day. They incorporated it into their rhythm and created a good waking routine around my schedule.
Some of my waking with the cats instead of the electronic sounds must have been me ready to be shifted from sleeping to waking by the cats’ attention, because I am still waking 10-20 minutes before Bose technology utters an automatic sound (usually yoga chants) to make sure I get off to work. I also know from conscious attention to the effects on my sleep from when and what I eat and what I put into my day and until how late, that when I am keeping my eating, practicing, and sleeping schedule steady, I have no need to be called awake by something outside myself to start the day.
I went today with my younger sister and brother-in-law to see the Terracotta Warriors exhibit at the National Geographic Museum. Even with only a few of the warriors and photographs of the site, it is possible to imagine the sheer magnitude of the vision of thousands of these life-sized images living underground at the tomb of the Emperor. I then thought of how vast must have been the Emperor’s yearning for power and the wildness of his vision of this extraordinary tomb for it to have become manifest. Trying to expand my imagination to understand the reality of such ambition and creativity I thought of the principle of iccha shakti. Iccha shakti is the very will of consciousness to be, to creatively manifest, to become diversified embodiment out the universal. Ego and will are not themselves bad, but our very freedom allows us to choose a path that is out of alignment with the principles of joy and unity.
The Terracotta Warriors show the immense possibilities of exercising will. In their very existence and the manner of their coming into being, they evidence both enormous cruelty and disdain for life and a wondrous manifestation of human creativity, collaboration, and effort. One of the goals of yoga, in teaching us the possibilities of our own freedom and creativity, is to lead us to choose a life that is progressively better aligned with nature and with all of beings. This is the path of one who practices, and I find it ever a challenge.
I brought this simple murti the first night after my arrival in India in December 2011. I made the mala she is wearing some time later.
Fostering creativity and wisdom as she does, she sits over my desk for inspiration.
