In the interest of buoyant beginnings~ v-day, d-day, and half of the moon
Happy Valentine’s eve.
It has been a minute my friends and so today, a bit of a check-in as well as some thoughts - never a dearth of those, some offerings and a reminder of your sacredness.
This week I turned 48 and after all the initial play I had with symbols and shapes and words and being all ‘four’ infinity laying down ;), i thought on other implications like the preciousness of a life and how time ticks onward.
It is also not lost on me that this is the half-moon life of my grandmother who died at the hearty age of 96. My mind so frequently works in all sorts of divergent ways with numbers and words and all things abstract, so for my linear-minded’s out there, I apologize. And god bless you.
Unlike the human lifespan, however, the moon waxes and wanes, not unlike the force field of the heart and shakti herself…and this all too appropriately felt on this here eve of V-day.
Today finds me swimming in the multiverse that is metaphor, so I’ll share insofar as one can when we are pointing to echoes and ricochets, a little of what they summon.
I have been reluctant to write a whole heck of a lot these days with genocides raging, injustice of every sort, climate crises blazing, and down-right craziness at the helm, but on this eve of the day of days, my mind is wandering and drawing connections about V-day and D-day, and the relationship they hold, so i will say a little something about that.
In so many ways last year felt like demolition after surprise attack after warfare and all we could do was watch. There were times for speaking up and raging and crying and that is the cycle the heart must undergo.
One of the hardest aspects of being human, and quite possibly the seed of so much mental illness, is when the heart in all her oceanic love, has nowhere to direct that forcefield and so it turns in on itself and becomes destructive. Rumi’s classic quote reminds us that our “task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you've built against it”. In its fullest commitment this can feel like demolition against all that is untrue.. Detonating masks and stories and facades of very color, sort, and hue. And in fact, that is a bit how last year felt. And how I have heard it is feeling for so many of you. And certainly some of what we see on the larger stages of life.
For me personally, it has taken my practice into a deeper space still- and isn’t that always the invitation? I have looked into the places of love that wanted to find a landing pad, and heard their stories and where they were connected to something age-old, and then felt that longing swirl back in to feed heart and pelvis in a very palpable way. Meditation, mindfulness and yoga are ways of using the energies life throws our way - alchemizing them with breath and bone- and finding a much better use than war- the war of the mind or the literal war of ‘enemy.‘ By alchemizing the inevitable grief that is present when the object of our affection disappears on the material plane- be it a person, a planet, an ideal of a country, an identity, or a dream- by taking the raw material of that sorrow and understanding its origin which is nothing short of the purest love, we can understand the love that is what we are made of, beyond material realms. In addition to that, we can build and innovate and conjure up parts, qualities, edifices, alliances, countries, that blow our own minds wide open.
January found me in hibernation with a lot of these concepts/ feelings/ processes, and February feels like much more of a jumping off point for me, with birthday, chinese new year and a gentler sort of momentum. I was walking in the backyard and saw a snake skin right around the time the Chinese new year rolled around- thank you uni- and was reminded that we can all stand to don this metaphor and relinquish what is ready to drop off as we head into the year of the snake.
I am usually inclined to look for the mirrored part in myself when I see craziness out there but these days it is a little more tempered. And while I do recommend shadow work if one hasn’t gone down into swampy miasmas and rabbit holes of wretchedness and understood on a visceral level that we are all of similar ilk, right now I am remembering my connection to the light. Chapters of shadow work are so worth the effort and stay with us long after the descent, but in the interest of buoyant beginnings, I am remembering/ feeling/ holding both. A buoy rests on the water’s edge and understands the vastness, depth, and amaranthine blackness of the mystery and power that is ocean below, but at the same time, has front row seat to the parades and charades of cloud, star, sun and all that plays with light above. Today I am buoy.
Here in Mexico, we have been deep in dream world. We are immersed in art and beauty and creation of what is new. While I appreciate those that want to fight, I am in a chapter of something else. The Buckminster quote is rumbling through my bones- “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
What if our new model is love?
Finding more heart inside of institution is new (and yet many cultures that are more connected to land have known this). Blowing it up exponentially so that all structures of empty acquisition and callous capitalist gain are obsolete- this is what we are after. We’ve got some ideas about that and in the meantime, I want to invite you into so many ways to make that very thing happen, because after all, it is a practice. It is a boots on the ground sort of situation- more accurately and certainly more amusingly put- boobs on the ground… Please stay tuned. You are invited to join :)
In researching D-day for this newsletter I found out that d day is not in fact demolition or destruction or detonation day, but a way to track time before and after whichever event of attack (of which normandy was only one). They would say D ,plus or minus depending on before or after, and then the number of days. For example D-2 would be two days before the event. So in the interest of shifting from war-mind (which is an echo in the nervous system for us all- we know this is passed down intergenerationally) I will repurpose the language when I invite you to perhaps the greatest gift you can give yourself for the day of love—>
Mark your calendar for V+4. On the 4th day after Valentines, we will begin the greatest love affair of them all.
The one that involves the cush and your tush.
So much of love starts with the elixir of this time spent in meditaiton. There are ways in and through that help make it more accessible, full of heart, and even fun. The Poetics of Presence breaks down a practice that can be otherwise lofty or even by-passey, and turn it into something accessible, deep, and real.
We begin Wednesday the 19th
: : : THE POETICS OF PRESENCE
February 19, 26th, & March 5th , 6-7.30pm MT, together on ZOOM ~
~ for both the advanced practitioner and the budding novice and gives:
an inroad when meditation has felt elusive or beyond comprehension
a deepening path to an already established practice
an understanding of what it is to hold opposing forces and how that very union gives birth to nothing short of the universe itself
an understanding of physiological and psychological benefits
an experience of the deepest sort of activism there is - personal, social and environmental
an experience of truth in your world that often leads to states of flow, joy and synchronicity and certainly points to all the things in their way
an established practice when it’s been hard to commit, with weekly challenges of personal practice
a love affair to rival all others
Investment:
$ 75-135 Sliding scale
(25 each for those of low income, 35 for medium, 45 for financially comfortable)
I hope you will join us.
: : : EARTHBOUND BROADS
Other boobs-on-the-ground options for weaving in more beauty, more bounty and cultivating something sweet… The flagship program EarthBound Broads will begin this year on March 30. This is perhaps one of the best ways i know to engage practices that have us bring them to real life relational spaces and into deeper places within. Self, Planet, Other.. in that order. Utilizing ancient text , neuroscience and art, it is multi-pronged and multidimensional.
*** Special offer for this week only- 50 dollars off if you join Poetics and EBB both and set yourself up for some real love real time.
: : : ARTFUL YOGA
As ever, the easiest and most economical way to weave beauty into your world is by joining us for one hour on zoom Wednesday mornings and Thursday evenings. Details on website, but always worth a mention.
: : : RETREAT
Our Asheville location is taking a year to bounce back after the hurricane and so The Wilderness Within retreat will be held in San Miguel de Allende this year. First week of August. Email to get on the waitlist.
~ I cant close this newsletter out without mentioning and honoring the late President Carter. I have a certain affinity for this man, perhaps because his accent reminded my of my grandmother’s - they were in fact born about an hour apart from one another in their home state of Georgia, he lived his work with a strong sense of decency and commitment to maintaining character, looked after our planet with great innovation, and foresaw many issues before eruption such as the apartheid of the Middle East. He had an impeccable moral and ethical compass, was ahead of his time with climate change, human rights and advanced the rights of women saying that he thought “now the largest global issue is the discrimination against women or girls in this world.”
I had the great pleasure and honor of making this giant’s acquaintance when he was on book tour down in Austin and was very moved by that. We can all stand to bring to mind leaders that act with such dignity and courage at a time such as this one.
In addition to all of his brilliance and insight, this man possessed a balance that we rarely see on center stage (only the Obama’s might rival) and that is of relational spaces as well. In yoga we are forever interested in the marriage of opposites (something we look deeply at in the meditation series), and President Carter is an exemplary specimen on this front. The word "Hatha" itself is derived from "Ha" meaning sun and "Tha" meaning moon, representing the balance between these two forces. Tantra practices aim to unify polarities such as light and dark, male and female, or physical and spiritual. Carter was not only an incredible leader and rallier of good through linear meansand strong leadership, but he also held the place of relationship and love with great importance. When asked if winning a Nobel peace prize or becoming president was the most exciting thing that happened to him, Jimmy Carter responded “when Rosalynn said she’d marry me— I think that was the most exciting thing.” To place as much value onto matters of the heart as to outward stately ones puts him on par with the greatest of ascended master yogis, as far as i am concerned. And at the least is someone we can all stand to learn from in his soft but unbelievably strong diplomacy.
Lastly i wanted to include a poem that my dear frined Richard sent on my birthday. It might be one you’ve heard before but it is always nice to remember how very sacred this moment, this breath:
Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
The blueprint of your life
Would begin to glow on earth,
Illuminating all the faces and voices
That would arrive to invite
Your soul to growth.
Praised be your father and mother,
Who loved you before you were,
And trusted to call you here
With no idea who you would be.
Blessed be those who have loved you
Into becoming who you were meant to be,
Blessed be those who have crossed your life
With dark gifts of hurt and loss
That have helped to school your mind
In the art of disappointment.
When desolation surrounded you,
Blessed be those who looked for you
And found you, their kind hands
Urgent to open a blue window
In the gray wall formed around you.
Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
Your health, eyes to behold the world,
Thoughts to countenance the unknown,
Memory to harvest vanished days,
Your heart to feel the world's waves,
Your breath to breathe the nourishment
Of distance made intimate by earth.
On this echoing-day of your birth,
May you open the gift of solitude
In order to receive your soul;
Enter the generosity of silence
To hear your hidden heart;
Know the serenity of stillness
To be enfolded anew
By the miracle of your being.
~ from John O'Donohue
With a sprinkling of grandmother energy (couldn’t we all use a dose of that?), a dollop of of valentine love, the buoyed handhold of a nautical flotation device, and an eye on the half of the moon- the place that is neither everything or nothing, I am signing off.
Happy Valentines one and all. I hope cupid’s elves are crawling into the cupboard of your heart this very moment.
Xoxo
Variations on a half of a moon, the mirrors, the metaphors, and the divinely placed ricochets…… Ardha Chandra Chapasana:
