At witch camp I was given a new idea for integrating cyclical intention work into my life, a new framework for clearly formulating desires and voicing them to that chaotic sea of contingency in which we swim.
The recipe: make intentions on the dark moon, charge them any way that pleases and then release. For the next two weeks think about them casually or not at all. When the full moon comes, celebrate! for everything you desire has already been delivered. (All credit goes to Wildflower, beautiful matron of magic that she is.)
What do I want in the next month?
~ to reduce my necessary belongings to one pack
~ to find a backpack that matches my minimalist multi-functional ergonomic
~ to connect with the flow of the Living River
~ to gracefully close my affairs here in Boston
And on Paul's suggestion, I will also muse upon some six month intentions:
~ to flow along the edge of uncertainty and improvisation
~ to always preserve the highest emotional integrity in my relationships, along with a loving open heart
~ to share my practice with others, beginning first as a yoga teacher
~ to begin learning spanish
~ to engage myself actively in local struggles against empire, ignorance, and overconsumption
~ to immerse myself in a community of spiritual kindred
~ to have a wildly good time with my life
May it always come to pass for the highest good of everyone involved. Word.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
the body - posture & energy
A few nights ago I had an intensely painful headache, which I'm fairly certain was due to wearing contacts for the first time. I never usually wear my glasses all day long, so having contacts in the entire day was way more work than my eyes are used to. I took them out in the evening and took some ibuprofen, but once the pain ramped up it became so bad that all I could do was lie motionless with my eyes closed. The pain was considerable, probably the worst I've experienced in awhile. Quite nearly unbearable.
I have noticed generally that activating contractions and visualizing energy flow in painful areas of my body can help alleviate what I'm feeling. With indigestion, I can use the stomach lock (uddiyana bandha) and intentional abdominal breathing to reduce any pain and assist with the process of digestion. A lot happens in the 3rd chakra, but also in the 2nd. [In fact, I often notice a connection between indigestion and poor posture - sitting upright always makes it easier.]
And sometimes when I am ungrounded, it feels as if my breath is high in my chest and encroaching on my throat. I feel skittish, airy, and I yawn a lot. I can counter that with keeping my breath down (in the hara or tan tien) and a strong focus on mula bandha and the 1st chakra.
And sometimes I also feel pressure or pain in my head, which of course can happen for lots of different reasons. If drinking more water doesn't help, I have tried circulating energy along the microcosmic orbit, up from the shoulders, over the head, and down into the torso. It reminds me a lot of the stories about bad kundalini awakenings. The energy shoots up the spine but can't get out; the crown chakra is blocked. It's like having a knot in a fire hose, and drawing that much energy can damage the circuits, so to speak.
The pain from my headache was intense enough, I felt like I had to do something. So I drag my sorry butt over to the cushion and painfully sit upright. I start to circulate the orbit in 2-3 second steps. As I go through my head and down I feel slight releases in the pressure. As I come back up, right around my shoulders, I feel the pain surge intensely. I am getting nauseous from the pain, I feel like retching. I start to remember the massive knots in the muscles of my back, the cumulation of unspent emotion lodged and calcified in my tissues like smoldering clumps of rage. All the tension, fear, anger, and frustration I felt over the course of this year bottled up and carried like a badge.
So I try something that's been on my mind. It's not that I'm not aware of these emotions as they arise, even though sorting them out is sometimes very tricky. However by pushing them down I am denying them space to play out through my body. It's a simple formula. If I am sad, then weep. If I am frustrated, then rage or hit the bag. If I am scared, cry out. Not as some insipid call for drama, but in order to channel appropriately what I feel. To let my body work through what I have to work through, instead of locking it down and letting it accumulate.
I sit on my cushion, lamely circulating chi along the orbit, and I start to weep and cry. I call out for help, I ask for comfort, I ask for guidance. The tears are falling fast and heavy, hot halcyons of peace. I feel shuddering waves pass through my body. I manage no more than a few minutes of this before I crumple and head back for the bed. I wait there, eyes closed, until the waves subside.
I have noticed generally that activating contractions and visualizing energy flow in painful areas of my body can help alleviate what I'm feeling. With indigestion, I can use the stomach lock (uddiyana bandha) and intentional abdominal breathing to reduce any pain and assist with the process of digestion. A lot happens in the 3rd chakra, but also in the 2nd. [In fact, I often notice a connection between indigestion and poor posture - sitting upright always makes it easier.]
And sometimes when I am ungrounded, it feels as if my breath is high in my chest and encroaching on my throat. I feel skittish, airy, and I yawn a lot. I can counter that with keeping my breath down (in the hara or tan tien) and a strong focus on mula bandha and the 1st chakra.
And sometimes I also feel pressure or pain in my head, which of course can happen for lots of different reasons. If drinking more water doesn't help, I have tried circulating energy along the microcosmic orbit, up from the shoulders, over the head, and down into the torso. It reminds me a lot of the stories about bad kundalini awakenings. The energy shoots up the spine but can't get out; the crown chakra is blocked. It's like having a knot in a fire hose, and drawing that much energy can damage the circuits, so to speak.
The pain from my headache was intense enough, I felt like I had to do something. So I drag my sorry butt over to the cushion and painfully sit upright. I start to circulate the orbit in 2-3 second steps. As I go through my head and down I feel slight releases in the pressure. As I come back up, right around my shoulders, I feel the pain surge intensely. I am getting nauseous from the pain, I feel like retching. I start to remember the massive knots in the muscles of my back, the cumulation of unspent emotion lodged and calcified in my tissues like smoldering clumps of rage. All the tension, fear, anger, and frustration I felt over the course of this year bottled up and carried like a badge.
So I try something that's been on my mind. It's not that I'm not aware of these emotions as they arise, even though sorting them out is sometimes very tricky. However by pushing them down I am denying them space to play out through my body. It's a simple formula. If I am sad, then weep. If I am frustrated, then rage or hit the bag. If I am scared, cry out. Not as some insipid call for drama, but in order to channel appropriately what I feel. To let my body work through what I have to work through, instead of locking it down and letting it accumulate.
I sit on my cushion, lamely circulating chi along the orbit, and I start to weep and cry. I call out for help, I ask for comfort, I ask for guidance. The tears are falling fast and heavy, hot halcyons of peace. I feel shuddering waves pass through my body. I manage no more than a few minutes of this before I crumple and head back for the bed. I wait there, eyes closed, until the waves subside.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The violin is a ruthlessly honest seismograph of the heart
a few gems of interest I found in the book Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch
"Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules." -William Blake
//Anthropologists have found "galumphing" to be one of the prime talents that characterize higher life forms. Galumphing is the immaculately rambunctious and seemingly inexhaustible play-energy apparent in puppies, kittens, children, baby baboons--and also in young communities and civilizations. Galumphing is the seemingly useless elaboration and ornamentation of activity. We galumph when we hop instead of walk, when we take the scenic route instead of the efficient one, when we play a game whose rules demand a limitations of our powers, when we are interested in means rather than in ends.
//A girl child, age eight, complained of the day her third-grade teacher pretended that negative numbers don't exist. While the class was doing subtraction tables, a boy asked, "What's 3 take-away 5?" and the teacher insisted that there is no such thing. The girl objected, "But everyone knows it's minus 2!" The schoolteacher said, "This is the third grade and you're not supposed to know about those things!"
I later asked this girl, "What does a minus number mean to you?" She said without hesitating, "It's like looking at your reflection in a pool of water. It goes as far down as you go up."
"Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules." -William Blake
//Anthropologists have found "galumphing" to be one of the prime talents that characterize higher life forms. Galumphing is the immaculately rambunctious and seemingly inexhaustible play-energy apparent in puppies, kittens, children, baby baboons--and also in young communities and civilizations. Galumphing is the seemingly useless elaboration and ornamentation of activity. We galumph when we hop instead of walk, when we take the scenic route instead of the efficient one, when we play a game whose rules demand a limitations of our powers, when we are interested in means rather than in ends.
//A girl child, age eight, complained of the day her third-grade teacher pretended that negative numbers don't exist. While the class was doing subtraction tables, a boy asked, "What's 3 take-away 5?" and the teacher insisted that there is no such thing. The girl objected, "But everyone knows it's minus 2!" The schoolteacher said, "This is the third grade and you're not supposed to know about those things!"
I later asked this girl, "What does a minus number mean to you?" She said without hesitating, "It's like looking at your reflection in a pool of water. It goes as far down as you go up."
Thursday, July 24, 2008
eyes dilated, waiting for the doctor
It's a promise to myself. An invitation to live a life inspired by the unfolding Now, the eternal Tao, the revelation of spontaneous flowing creativity.
A life guided by play and improvisation, the temperance of poetic anarchism and social lila, a risky naked voyage into the playground which is beyond time, where my unobstructed nature brilliantly gushes out to meet life with sparkly eyes and puppy dog meander.
Here's the juice: to forget this drive to know who I am, to ceaselessly plan my life, my career, and my impact on the world. To abandon that mentality whenever it arises, releasing myself unknowing and uncertain into that dark edge of unborn creation, where nothing is taken for granted or planned or known until the instant the beat drops. My heart's impulses are there, I can feel them and know them, and by this declaration I intend to clear space to allow them freedom to emerge.
Whether social justice or writing, whether yoga or meditation, whether this or that, here or there, I promise to be attentive to that inner voice, to mute out the blaring expectations of this bankrupt and derelict society.
If they ask me, what are you going to do? I shall say: I am living a life without the shadow of my projections.
A life guided by play and improvisation, the temperance of poetic anarchism and social lila, a risky naked voyage into the playground which is beyond time, where my unobstructed nature brilliantly gushes out to meet life with sparkly eyes and puppy dog meander.
Here's the juice: to forget this drive to know who I am, to ceaselessly plan my life, my career, and my impact on the world. To abandon that mentality whenever it arises, releasing myself unknowing and uncertain into that dark edge of unborn creation, where nothing is taken for granted or planned or known until the instant the beat drops. My heart's impulses are there, I can feel them and know them, and by this declaration I intend to clear space to allow them freedom to emerge.
Whether social justice or writing, whether yoga or meditation, whether this or that, here or there, I promise to be attentive to that inner voice, to mute out the blaring expectations of this bankrupt and derelict society.
If they ask me, what are you going to do? I shall say: I am living a life without the shadow of my projections.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
father son & wholly ghost
My parents died when I was a teenager, but that death was not permanent. My mother returned as the inner manifestation of my desire for purity and truth. Quietly, deep inside my heart, I recognized that her death had impelled me down the path of transformation and spiritual surrender. I saw that my search for virtue was actually a dedication and offering made in her memory. I wanted to repay her loving kindness. I wanted to make her proud.
My father, overcome with grief at the loss of his wife, was left alone with a burning and unresolved anger. He suffered through alienation, isolation, and pain. A well of bitterness trickled up inside of him, and after several vain attempts to reconnect and heal our relationship I gave up on him in anger and grief.
Eventually I realized that the image I carried of my mother was blurring into a generic concept of the divine mother. Terrified, realizing that I was losing my connection to her humanity, I set out on a journey of memory and recollection (a powerfully intriguing and curious topic in itself) to reconstruct a sense of who exactly she was, this woman Catarina Vieira. I spent the summer with her sister, Diana, panning for stories hidden amonng dusty neural pathways. Diana, whose presence also triggered strong memories of my own, her mannerisms and behavior so reminiscent of my mother, was a powerfully loving and grounding force for me.
At the end of that summer, I paid a visit to some of my mother's oldest friends in San Jose. It was there, unexpectedly, that I collected a final piece which illuminated the bare soul of my father, and I saw my parents' lives intersecting like rivers of change and causality, matched to each other hopelessly like magnetized tuning forks. At their core, I saw the vividness of the tragedy that pushed them, the forces that shaped them, and the brilliant hearts that struggled to unravel the gordian knot of their own pasts. I am, without fail, a product of their passions, their lives continue in my own.
My mother's image has been restored, complete with the tarnish of her personal flaws and failings. I honor her humanness, her transformation, her fierce capacity to love. Even more surprisingly, my father has emerged from his bitter mourning to become for me a source of joy and wisdom. Once I had feared that time and pain could irrevocably change a human heart, choking it off from compassion and happiness, like sun-baked clay, too hardened to be reshaped. He demonstrated something very powerful to me, something just as powerful as what my mother showed me in her dying - the courage to heal, to renew, to open again after the terrible storm has passed. No matter what age, it is never too late.
It's remarkable how well those two go together, twin lessons of death and renewal. But by now I'm certain, there's something remarkable about my parents as well.
My father, overcome with grief at the loss of his wife, was left alone with a burning and unresolved anger. He suffered through alienation, isolation, and pain. A well of bitterness trickled up inside of him, and after several vain attempts to reconnect and heal our relationship I gave up on him in anger and grief.
Eventually I realized that the image I carried of my mother was blurring into a generic concept of the divine mother. Terrified, realizing that I was losing my connection to her humanity, I set out on a journey of memory and recollection (a powerfully intriguing and curious topic in itself) to reconstruct a sense of who exactly she was, this woman Catarina Vieira. I spent the summer with her sister, Diana, panning for stories hidden amonng dusty neural pathways. Diana, whose presence also triggered strong memories of my own, her mannerisms and behavior so reminiscent of my mother, was a powerfully loving and grounding force for me.
At the end of that summer, I paid a visit to some of my mother's oldest friends in San Jose. It was there, unexpectedly, that I collected a final piece which illuminated the bare soul of my father, and I saw my parents' lives intersecting like rivers of change and causality, matched to each other hopelessly like magnetized tuning forks. At their core, I saw the vividness of the tragedy that pushed them, the forces that shaped them, and the brilliant hearts that struggled to unravel the gordian knot of their own pasts. I am, without fail, a product of their passions, their lives continue in my own.
My mother's image has been restored, complete with the tarnish of her personal flaws and failings. I honor her humanness, her transformation, her fierce capacity to love. Even more surprisingly, my father has emerged from his bitter mourning to become for me a source of joy and wisdom. Once I had feared that time and pain could irrevocably change a human heart, choking it off from compassion and happiness, like sun-baked clay, too hardened to be reshaped. He demonstrated something very powerful to me, something just as powerful as what my mother showed me in her dying - the courage to heal, to renew, to open again after the terrible storm has passed. No matter what age, it is never too late.
It's remarkable how well those two go together, twin lessons of death and renewal. But by now I'm certain, there's something remarkable about my parents as well.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
tantric space
A few more pieces fallen into my hands concerning tantra, enough to provide a new and developing paradigm of sexual energy, although the resolution is still rather vague at this point.
At witchcamp I posted a desire to have a tantric breath orgasm with a female companion, and I was shocked at how easily it came to pass. I had four experiences in total, most of which were restrained in some way - an obvious demonstration of how boundaries and trust function on an energetic level. The first was by far the most intense, but the rest allowed me to explore the gateway into that space cautiously and without expectation.
I began to recognize a peculiar quality to the energy as I connected with another person, which for lack of any better understanding felt like sharing or entering each other's mindspace. I have a suspicion that this connection depends on both partners having a familiarity with their own energy, which was confirmed back at home when I reached out for someone and felt no "push" in return. There must be some kind of energy feedback monitor, each partner opening and moving until the confluence has been finely tuned and we rest "on the same wavelength" so to speak. What that is exactly still remains vague, but all four of these experiences were noticeably similar to my previous random and strange tantric encounters.
It was also clear that there is a delicate foundation of emotional, physical, and spiritual context that must align for a person to feel safe, empowered, and attracted enough to open that energy. Again this was all very similar to the boundaries, fears, and desires work which underlies quote unquote normal sexual encounters. It leads me to think that physical sexual acts work like symbols to unlock and access underlying currents of energy, the same way that movement, gestures, costuming, and speech all help the subconscious mind to access energies for spellwork.
There are still a number of things I don't understand about tantra, but someday soon I will return there for more exploration. One crucial question remains - what exactly can this be used for? Blissful, mind blowing sex still seems rather enticing, but I think there is even more potential than that.
At witchcamp I posted a desire to have a tantric breath orgasm with a female companion, and I was shocked at how easily it came to pass. I had four experiences in total, most of which were restrained in some way - an obvious demonstration of how boundaries and trust function on an energetic level. The first was by far the most intense, but the rest allowed me to explore the gateway into that space cautiously and without expectation.
I began to recognize a peculiar quality to the energy as I connected with another person, which for lack of any better understanding felt like sharing or entering each other's mindspace. I have a suspicion that this connection depends on both partners having a familiarity with their own energy, which was confirmed back at home when I reached out for someone and felt no "push" in return. There must be some kind of energy feedback monitor, each partner opening and moving until the confluence has been finely tuned and we rest "on the same wavelength" so to speak. What that is exactly still remains vague, but all four of these experiences were noticeably similar to my previous random and strange tantric encounters.
It was also clear that there is a delicate foundation of emotional, physical, and spiritual context that must align for a person to feel safe, empowered, and attracted enough to open that energy. Again this was all very similar to the boundaries, fears, and desires work which underlies quote unquote normal sexual encounters. It leads me to think that physical sexual acts work like symbols to unlock and access underlying currents of energy, the same way that movement, gestures, costuming, and speech all help the subconscious mind to access energies for spellwork.
There are still a number of things I don't understand about tantra, but someday soon I will return there for more exploration. One crucial question remains - what exactly can this be used for? Blissful, mind blowing sex still seems rather enticing, but I think there is even more potential than that.
the crossroads
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
~Robert Frost
We are certainly aware, however, that whatever situation we inhabit today, no matter how delicate, bizarre, or banal, arrives with the marks of our previous travels and experiences. Even if the mode of calculation escapes us, the signs are all there - a dream that obsessed us as a child, the struggles we inherited from our parents, a vocation or calling, a traumatic injury that never fully healed, a fear of being alone, too many moments lost in thought.
Even though our memory might be littered with potholes and, quite honestly, fabrications, we can recognize a path through all our choices into the shape of our own present today. This is available within ourselves, if only we choose to search it.
and sorry I could not travel both
~Robert Frost
Every moment we are confronted with a choice. At times, that choice presents itself in the most apparent fashion, maybe a job offer, an invitation or a challenge, and in those moments we are sometimes granted a brief awareness of how that choice functions, of consequence and death.
When something especially lucent or calamitous occurs in our life, we might dimly reflect on the chain of events that led to our attendance of that amazing moment. It defies the powers of our understanding to comprehend the factors that inspire a simple meeting between lovers, let alone the reasons why the economy crashes, or why the weather rains out one picnic and blesses another with sunshine. The intersection of causes remains a mystery because each cause has its own history, and each causal history was itself influenced by countless other factors.
All our best theories are approximate, and the calculations vast.
We are certainly aware, however, that whatever situation we inhabit today, no matter how delicate, bizarre, or banal, arrives with the marks of our previous travels and experiences. Even if the mode of calculation escapes us, the signs are all there - a dream that obsessed us as a child, the struggles we inherited from our parents, a vocation or calling, a traumatic injury that never fully healed, a fear of being alone, too many moments lost in thought.
Even though our memory might be littered with potholes and, quite honestly, fabrications, we can recognize a path through all our choices into the shape of our own present today. This is available within ourselves, if only we choose to search it.
The crossroads is neither past nor future. It is confrontation in the present moment where every choice, whether willing or not, opens new pathways for our future while casting a permanent darkness on others.
Choice, which is the ultimate test of freedom, is inextricably bound to death, loss, and change. This death occupies every moment, but like choice, our awareness of it remains vague except in moments of particular dramatic clarity, usually a physical death, a journey, or significant loss. We experience the little death in a part of our hearts that connects with the possibility, now closed forever, of what might have been.
It is here, at this crossroads of understanding, that we learn the most painful truth about life, and discover that the limit of individual consciousness is the gate to limitless possibility. For this one life that we have chosen leaves a frozen multitude by the side of the road, friendships never made, places never known, love never expressed, struggle never met.
Yet by some intricate design, the crossroads provides wisdom through its mystery. When we learn to embrace the little death, then the moment of choice loses its power to intimidate. This present moment, alive and real out of all our potential selves, suffused with lightness, shines with the brilliant fragility of a dream-like jewel.
We embrace this moment with the voracity of kamikaze pilots, bent not on the destruction of death, but the encounter of life without the coercion of fear.
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