Monday, May 15, 2006Child's Pose Tonight in yoga we did quite a few child's poses. This is a position where you are in complete surrender, prostrate before the universe. It feels good on the back and deeply restful to the soul. The first time we went into this pose tonight, I was struck by a vision so vivid I nearly started crying. I was driving down Highway 1, just north of Santa Cruz. It was a glorious day, as if there are any others up there, and the sun was shining on the alfalfa and brussel sprout fields stretching towards the sea to my right. The heat of the sun on the growing green things made the air potent with a rich loamy aroma. In the vision, as was always the case in reality back then, I was driving my '64 Chevy Impala SS. The windows were open. The windshield was broad and through it I could see the blue blue sky touching the blue blue water, the sun glinting on the whitecaps, the clouds fluffy overhead. I used to drive this road a lot, in the late '70s when I was either a student at Berkeley or Santa Cruz. I'd go up to the City, using the coastal route through Half Moon Bay, and the ride back down south was always like riding the air currents softly back towards the earth. I know I wasn't happy back then. I know that I loved the drive but that my soul was frequently troubled by one thing or another. Unhappiness in love, or money problems -- those things never seem to change in quality although the quantity may become vastly different over time. And I know I was never simple in my approach to life. But I look back on those moments on that drive and still feel the tears well up. I was... I don't know... I was CLOSER, somehow. I was closer to the core essence. I was closer not necessarily to being happy, but to my true self ... despite the money issues and the love life woes. These days it feels like my magnetic fur is ruffled in a million different conflicting ways. I long for some kind of psychic combing-out, something that will make me feel that my spirit and soul are all facing the right way again. As the class progressed I started remembering other times when I felt aligned like that. Times when I was closer to being tapped into my truth despite the external circumstances. I saw myself in my old garden, at my old apartment. I was recently divorced that summer. No boyfriend. Lonely. But still in my soul, somehow. Quiet and deeply content. I see myself back then with a benevolent smile in my heart. I was shed of so much conflict and sadness. I was through the eye of the needle and I had survived. That was just about all. But it was quiet and good. Then I saw myself embodying a particular statue that sits on the dining room table of the man who just treated me so poorly. The statue is of an Indian goddess and every time I sit in meditation, I feel myself strongly there, inside that statue. Back straight. A candle in front of me. Looking into his living room with serenity and grace. As I embodied that statue, I once again felt that sense of being close to something true. And as I felt that resonance, I tried to remember what the point was supposed to be... for me. Like, why I'm here. It's not to run around and go to work and wear lots of hats and make myself and everyone around me crazy. There is and always has been some other core purpose and I used to know it. Or at least be closer to it. I will keep what I think my core purpose is to myself. But I can tell you that whatever it is can't happen when I'm not in that benevolent and CLOSE space. It can't. There has to be an internal downshift, an alignment that enables entry into a deeper world. When I slow down enough to think about this kind of stuff, the sadness flows in like a dam whose levies have been breached. But that's OK. Sadness is better than chaos. Sadness is better than anger. Sadness is real. Sadness is. So yeah. Maybe I just am going to be sad for awhile longer. Maybe I need to find that Highway 1 in my soul and just travel down it for awhile, crying when necessary, trying to figure out what I was so close to all those years ago. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 11:12 PM  
Comments: Post a Comment << Home
|
