What Are You Running Away From?

Suppose what you fear
could be trapped
and held in Paris.

Then you would have the courage
to go everywhere in the world.
All the directions of the compass
open to you,
except the degrees east or west
of true north
that lead to Paris.

Still, you wouldn’t dare
to put your toes smack dab
on the city limit line.

And you’re not really willing to stand on a mountainside
miles away
and watch the Paris lights
come up at night.
And just to be on the safe side, you decide to stay completely
out of France.

But then danger
seems too close
even to those boundaries,
and you feel the timid part of you
covering the whole globe again.

You need the kind of friend
who learns your secret and says,
“See Paris first.”

—M. Truman Cooper

Sacred Spaces

Grateful: for ritual, for compassion, for safe spaces to do inner work, for grace, for creativity, for community, and for reminders to approach all of these light-filled qualities with the kind of humility that acknowledges their ever-present shadow.

- CG Jung Institute, 1.6.2013

The Intelligence of Play.

"Who knows what makes us play?  The young of very many species, including our own, spontaneously chase, leap, twist, wrestle and cavort, promoting strength and endurance, instinct, social bonding and adaptation.  Complex play with objects and goals is associated with more complex brains.  But playing is also, apparently, just for the sheer pleasure of play.  An aquarium fish will repeatedly leap in and out of a tiny waterfall.  Ravens have been observed sledding on their backs down slopes of snow, and kea parrots toss rocks in the air.  Elephants kneel to equalize play with a smaller playmate.  Cats, dogs and primates, among others, incorporate objects and obstacles in their play and often have favorite toys.  Dolphins invite play with human swimmers.  Play, in fact, is a principal way in which acquaintance is made with another".  -- from The Book of Symbols

Intuitively, we know how important play is for our ongoing development.  We teach children games and give them time to play.  Hopscotch, for example, has it's origins in myths about the soul's journey from earth to heaven through a labyrinth.  I have no idea why we stop valuing this way of learning for our adult selves, but I think it's a grievous error to do so.  As Ramikrishna reminds us, "The divine mother is always sportive.  The universe is her play... her pleasure is in continuing the game".

The Book of Symbols further elaborates: "Psychologically, consciousness and unconscious interact and impact one another in all kinds of play.  The reverie of play unveils feelings, aspirations, impressions, locked up pieces of experience and potentialities.  Play can evoke the affinity and polarity between psychic opposites, and dynamics of exclusion and integration, separation and reunification.  Alchemy described a part of the opus as "child's play" despite the arduous nature of the work of self-understanding, suggesting that psychic process requires an attitude of play and that the imagination was a primary tool of the adept".

Carl Jung played "children's games" of drawing, sand-tray, making models out of clay, and dialoging with unseen figures, all of which are ways of engaging the unconscious energies of the psyche in order to coax them into consciousness.  Physicists, also, play speculative "god-games" with specialized toys that can only be handled safely because of the agreed upon rules of a specific game.  We could conclude, consequently, that play allows for "evolutionary change, self-awareness, scientific discovery, artistic composition, invention, pleasure, good friends of multiple species and the resolution of many questions" (The Book of Symbols).

Do you remember being a young child and enthusiastically ringing someone's doorbell in order to see if they could "come out and play"?  I believe that THIS is a good intention to have with ourselves and each other throughout the entire course of our lives.  Tremendous creativity and learning can come from play in a way that few other practices are able to facilitate so... playfully.  :-)

Honest Humanity

An honorable human relationship -- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" -- is a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

- Adrienne Rich

Movement Theory!

In this culture, we are typically taught to understand the body as the ultimate biological machine in which the brain functions as a kind of "control" switch board.  Over the past decade of my life, I've been questioning this irreverent attitude towards the body in a really persistent and ongoing way.  My questions are largely intuitive and typically require more experiential learning than theoretical learning. However, once in a while I have the good fortune to stumble upon some fascinating theoretical information about the body that deepens the way in which I experience my own.

Apparently, there are five basic types of human movement that make up something called "The Satisfaction Cycle":  Yielding, Pushing, Reaching, Grasping, and Pulling.  All five of these movements are fundamentally important for human survival and interaction.  BUT - and here's the amazing teacher within this concept - yielding is the foundation for every other movement possibility in this sequence.  In other words: without being able to first yield into something, you cannot push off from it, reach out from there, grasp hold of anything, or pull things back towards yourself.

Why is this so fascinating to me?!  Because what's true in the body is also true in the mind and in the heart, of course!  See if you can make this analogous connection with me: we must first yield into our own authentic desires if we want to be able to move towards, reach out, grasp hold of, and pull them back into ourselves.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I certainly got the message from this culture that being soft and open about what I really wanted to experience in my life would make me an easy target for disappointment.  In recent years, however, I've been able to slowly (sometimes painfully!) unlearn this defensive habit, and experience many tender and beautiful things as a result. It now absolutely stuns and delights me to discover that the movements of my physical body were there all along, revealing this truer picture of things.

So what is yielding and how do we do it?  I imagine we each have to explore this question in our own personal hearts and minds to some degree.  Yet, it's equally interesting to note that Merriam-Webster defines yielding as "lacking rigidity or stiffness; flexible", "disposed to submit or comply", or "productive" (as in "high-yielding wheat").  That's right; yielding can mean "productive"!  As the cornerstone of all other movement possibilities, this makes perfect sense to me.  A seed must be willing to submit to the earth and the rain if it wants to be able to then push, reach, grasp, and pull in all the nourishment it requires to become the fullest (most productive!) expression of itself. We, ourselves, are no different.

Here's how Rumi might also say it: "Let yourself [yield and] be drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray".  I wonder if your heart - or mine - is softening into it's own gravitational pull yet?

Hidden Singer

The gods are less for their love of praise. 
Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing 
but its own wholeness, its health and ours. 
It has made all things by dividing itself. 
It will be whole again. 
To its joy we come together -- 
the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten, 
the lover and the loved. 
In our joining it knows itself. It is with us then, 
not as the gods whose names crest in unearthly fire, 
but as a little bird hidden in the leaves 
who sings quietly and waits, and sings.

-- Wendell Berry

Human Friendship

Without a net, I catch a falcon
and release it to the sky, hunting

God.  This wine I drink today was
never held in a clay jar.  I love

this world, even as I hear the great
wind of leaving it rising, for there

is a grainy taste I prefer to every
idea of heaven:  human friendship.

-Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)