Blogaversary

I can’t believe it’s only been a year since I started the ol’ Heavy Metta digs.  After David Foster Wallace’s death and my increased participation in the Yoga4Kidz relay I realized I couldn’t hide under the bed in this life anymore; at some point I was going to have to venture out and say what I wanted to say.  Well, I’m saying it!  I’m saying it so loudly and so often that my throat gets a little sore and my I feel like I have no skin on my body.  This, dear readers, is a sign of misalignment.  My sluggish posting rate is not due to any distrust in the blog-medium or a lack of desire to connect and reconnect with the Tubes and my friends thereon:  it’s because, as the seasons change, I feel that desire to hide under the bed again [especially after purchasing my new wool duvet...snuzzle!], and maybe [given the massive transformations of '09] that’s not such a bad thing.

I’m also preparing some weapons-grade rant-casseroles that I’ll serve up when they’re hot and the cheese is browned.

When DFW died there was this urgency in my heart to finally admit I had no idea what I was talking about but wanted to speak anyway.

The loss of his voice taught me that even a bad book [or song, or yoga class, or blog post] is better than no more books ever.  It seems pretty damn obvious that he didn’t feel the same way, but that’s what it taught me:  just because subjectively you may FEEL that the world would not miss what you have to say, doesn’t follow that that’s true.  I would have shelled out ca$h money for DFW’s grocery lists.  Now, that may be that I suspect DFW’s grocery lists were more exciting and had more sub-clauses than a NYT article.

Or maybe it’s that he knew he could write another amazing book but that he no longer wished to live as he would need to live in order to complete it:  the hideous double-bind of the artist, as explored in this speech by Elizabeth Gilbert.  That’s the side of the coin I’m on right now.  I have less problems speaking my truth than I used to, since I’ve made it a full-year, full-hearted practice…but apparently I have no energetic budgeting skills.  If I teach 14 classes a week I do what I need to do, but if I teach 3 classes a week I spend THE SAME AMOUNT OF ENERGY.  [They're hella good classes but then I go broke and fall down on the ground]

Or maybe it’s that he knew he could write an OK book that people would love but that it had to be something so great, so true and so relevant, that he would change the whole world and if it wasn’t that he didn’t want to do it.  I’m feelin’ him on that.  Not that I have the capacity to teach a class that would change the world or that everybody would love, but that once you get a certain vibration in your work, a high calibre multi-dimensional kick-ass splendid massive vibration, anything less is uncivilized.

Isn’t it?

My teachers claim that if you can align with the true vibration of a place or person or group of people, you will not get tired because you are relying on something greater than your limited individual energy.  The universal supports you.  I would add to that:  The universal will manifest in ways that are *relative* e.g. bad weather, poor health, grief, simple malaise, and if you do not align with THOSE, She will kick your ass.  For example, your intention may be to teach a revelatory inspirational class about the power of personal will as it manifests in arm balances.  However, you have contracted H1N1.  It is not well-aligned, not “skill in action”, to use the force of your individual will to transcend the relative reality.  It will take a phenomenal amount of limited individual agency to sustain this misalignment [whoa, this is closely related to my incubating rant about the core] and you will lose stamina.

Even more importantly, the lesson you will teach is that the universal cannot be trusted, that it has to be manipulated and conquered somehow, in order to achieve something OTHER than is presented, something assumed to be more desirable than reality.  What poisonous hubris!  And what a dangerous lesson to teach to people who are already at the end of their energetic rope in these trying times.  I guess I’ve been afraid to write about this because, as I approach what will hopefully be the last phase of the Anusara certification process, I’m not always sure that what I want to say really is the message that John wants spoken.  I wish I could be as tough as he is, and as Chris is, and in a lot of ways I’m super tough…but they aren’t any of the helpful ways, just the ones that make me pissy and resentful, so I’m trying to let that kind of toughness go.

Look, I’ve experienced for myself the incredible power and purpose of the individual will.  We are stronger, by far, than we give ourselves credit for, and that is the reality of our true nature.  I just looked up at one of my “dream walls” [like a vision board kind of thing, to help me keep my head in the game] and right at the centre was the phrase “DO THE WORK”.  Because at the time that I made it, I needed more juice, more oomph, to help me over certain humps and obstacles like the one preventing me from writing.  The way that phrase resonated in me had an intrinsic enthusiasm and delight that I didn’t have to force.  [Or did I?  It's hard to know, now, in retrospect, whether I was misaligned even then]  If I’d shown that to DFW, would he have pulled himself up by his bootstraps and still been with us…or would it have taken him into even deeper despair, knowing [as he must have] that he had tried as hard as he could, and that “trying as hard as you can” is not always the lesson?

When I make my new dream wall [and I will!] at the centre it will say “LIFE IS EASY”.  Because it will remind me that I already do the work, that my tendency is to do way too much, and worry way too much, and paralyze and exhaust myself.  It will remind me that the universal manifests in diversity *for a reason*, that is, to teach us how to connect even our blackest despair with the highest concepts of art, life and spirit.  It probably comes as pretty cold comfort to the Wallaces to hear that their son’s creative work was a light for me, and it was that way BECAUSE he suffered, but there it is.  Compassion is the higher vibration [rasa] of depression.  Why do we torque reality into such perverse shapes?  Why are the offerings of the highest insufficient for us?  And I want to be clear that I’m not advocating pure passivity here; on the contrary, a worshipful, consecrated approach to even the most unpleasant realities is a tough practice, one that requires [I'm now seeing] incredible discipline to sustain…but it is well-aligned discipline.

So it’s off to the Richmond Oval for this year’s Yoga4Kidz relay, a drop of generosity in an unbelievable ocean of suffering.  I used to think that such “imbalanced action” [i.e. one little Canuckistani yoga relay against impossibly ghastly poverty, illness and despair] was a sign that Spirit was not present in their suffering.  Now I find it almost impossible NOT to see Spirit in the face of such action.  I suppose it’s a matter of perspective, but this blog will continue to try to cleave to *that* perspective, and say even a plugged nickel is better than to just walk away.  Life is easy.  Do what you can.

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