Fancy Savages with Apps

 Don’t You Get It? It’s Always about who is The Strongest. So How Civilized Are We?

I found my husband watching a documentary on the practice of gavage in the West African country of Mauritania. I sat down against my better judgment. Girls are taken to tents in the desert for months at a time to be fattened up because fat means prosperity and prosperity means desirable.  They drink camel’s milk and eat handfuls of oily grain day and night and when they vomit, which they do, they are encouraged to force more down or it is forced for them.  Poorer girls are force fed in the confines of their homes. Two days later I’m still reeling from the images.

I awoke this morning with the word gavage in my head. It’s a pretty word for a barbaric practice. I shouted at my husband, what the hell is wrong with this world? Girls in Africa are force fed to get fat for market and women here stick fingers down throats to get skinny!  How fucked up are we?

“It’s about who is the strongest. It’s always been that way.”

The strongest: I picture animal kingdom footage of courting lions. Yeah I get it. The most attractive, the most powerful, the one with the biggest capital will win the prize. It’s always been this way. The strongest will survive and reproduce and the strongest offspring will follow suit.

He asks; “So how civilized are we?”

Civilization is an advanced state of human society that includes a high level of culture, science, industry, and government so it is arguable that in many places we are indeed quite advanced and more sophisticated creatures than our forbearers. But how far have we crawled in designer clothing past the lizard mind instincts for survival? Are we just fancier savages?

How strong do we have to be to be strong enough? Do we ever have enough to feel safe or are we expecting the tiger paw in the cave door no matter how many gates and gold bullions guard us? Is it foolish to be content? Half the blogs I read are a mix of survivalist and philanthropist. Ten ways to fix your business, five ways to better health, twenty facts about how to succeed, how to manage your life, your mind, your food, your career, your love life. The most eccentric and interesting blogger I know advises readers how to make millions and subsequently informs them that he is divesting himself of everything as the only peace is to be unfettered, homeless and free of financial burdens.

Once our basic needs are met it seems that over time we might lose the instinct to be the strongest the way we stop growing wisdom teeth and excess hair. Is it really that natural to be competitive? Do we need to feel strong to feel safe? How much do we really need?

There are people who strive to accumulate wealth they will never need.  Is it fear of staying still or is it a basic distrust of the life in front of them? My dermatologist friend tells me that once a woman comes to her office for a cosmetic procedure she will most certainly be back again and again for more. How beautiful must we be to be safe?

I heard an expert talk about life on the planet. He said that 99.9% of life on this planet is already extinct.  I heard another expert say that people who understand how to use technology will rule the world. According to Einstein idiots will run the world and we will all strive to be that idiot to avoid extinction; savages with apps.

“I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots.” – Albert Einstein

And then there’s another mystic; John Lennon -

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

For those of us who do not strive to be strong survival is a tricky game. When unemployment numbers went down this year the numbers indicated Americans had simply given up. We don’t have the luxury of giving up. In truth, we do not control our basic needs. Our air is polluted and our water is owned by someone else. The food we eat is grown on tired soil and much of it is grown with bad seeds, sprayed with poison. We do not have the luxury of constant contentment because we have a duty to be vigilant. It’s a balance I understand as I gaze out the window of a home I love onto a beautiful meadow bordered by magical woods, surrounded by wonderful animals. I have no savings, no pension fund, no financial certainty beyond this month and I have a hard time planning for the future.

Even in my yoga career I was once the strongest and that did make me happy but now what I love about myself in yoga is something else altogether.

What’s going on? I don’t think we need more time to tell. What is unfolding is who we are despite our basest natures and because of them. What’s hardwired will stay in the DNA for now but no matter. If the greatest show on earth is a show of strength, at the forefront is a beautiful benevolence that exists beside Armageddon.  Or that’s what I see. Let it roll.

Guilt and Grace Unfolding With Ben Affleck

 Yesterday I heard that Ben Affleck will eat for a dollar and fifty cents a day to bring attention to the plight of 1.4 billion people in the Eastern Congo who live on less than that.

 

That same afternoon I made my family a decadent dessert; which I burnt.  In my non-sequitur fashion I had noticed dirt on the stovetop when I closed the oven door and began a cleaning frenzy. I guess I hit the temperature control. It seems like the smoke would be a giveaway but I’m so used to my old appliances acting badly that I didn’t bother to wonder why steam was rising through the grate on the stove about a half hour into the hour it was supposed to bake. Actually, rushing and tired and sloppy I had run off several other random tasks at the same time. My multi-level chore style  usually results in a bunch of half assed shit though it suits my disposition.

 When I took the charred mess from the oven amidst the sorrowful stares of my family, I thought guiltily of Affleck’s initiative and that someone in the Congo could have eaten for ten days on what I wasted on that self-indulgent treat.

 I couldn’t let the thought go though I went back to the store and bought the ingredients again, not to be a quitter or let my guys down. Affleck’s initiative nagged at me though I wasn’t sure how his gesture would help the people in the Congo any more than me eating my peas as a youth would help the starving children of China whom my parents invoked at the dinner table.

I was still in a foul mood all day today and though I’ve been cutting myself slack through months of mood swings and exhaustion and the Who gives a fucks, I was feeling like a real pisser. I couldn’t get right and couldn’t blame Ben Affleck for invoking that initiative or myself for not saving anyone or anything or any domestic event gone wrong. In truth I was just sick of myself being so scattered, so pointless lately.  I headed for the woods to get a fix; to get right or maybe to just get away from myself and my first world problems.

An hour without a human soul in sight including my own was a nice respite. It was hot and I raised my arms to retie my hair. Pain shot like a knife through my hurt right arm. It does that when I raise it carelessly ever since I hurt it last winter. Seems there is some damage to the scapula and the clavicle and the rib heads that insert into the shoulder.  I eschew further medical help and pretend I can fix it with the help of yoga and my limited knowledge of rehab and massage. Medical bills aren’t my priority and I figure I’ll be fine some day when I least expect it.

I sat down to take a breath and rub my arm on a weathered bench that sits beside the trail overlooking the lake. I noticed a small silver plaque that read:

A heart with passionate curiosity

And unfolding grace. Namaste

In memory of Vernon Sharp

 In my self- involved stuck in the past way I momentarily wondered that I didn’t know the name Vernon Sharp harkening to a time when the yoga community was so small that we all knew who each other were. Kind of in the way you see a stunning 30 year old in spandex and think that you look just like that because you forgot that you lived twenty something more years than that now and you didn’t notice that time changed you. Or that time had presided at all.

I placed my hands behind my hips, planted my feet in the ground and raised my chest through my arms in the pose called purvottanasana.  I didn’t give my shoulder a chance to weigh in. The soul of Vernon recommended it. As the backbend unfolded and my chest willingly rose to receive the breath, my head fell back and I got an eyeful of chartreuse filtered leaf laced sky. My weighty thoughts took wing.

I bid a fond farewell to Vernon with gratitude for his hospitable seat. Home, I remade that dessert and then dinner from a recipe I’d seen on a cooking show. I didn’t feel guilty but was conscious of my humble riches and bowed my head to the hungry, the sorry and the unsheltered. I thought of Ben Affleck who is worth a reported 65 million but knows that all the money in the world won’t fix the world’s problems and asks us to stand as one heart and mind toward a fairer tomorrow.

I had stood on the bridge on the trail home, thinking about old folks who break a hip and never live again. That had never made sense to me. But after a year of feeling put out by an unrelenting hip pain and then an arm that took my grace and enthusiasm I think I suddenly got how defeated, how hopeless it feels when an aging body weakly lingers in pain and demise. Maybe that’s why I keep pushing past pain. I want to be bigger than this body.

 Last Sunday I cranked up a heart stomping play list after the last student had left and I hit the mat. I brought down some old school Hilary dancing/ yoga interspersed with handstands at the wall to take it down a notch despite my injury.  The right elbow bent to protect the shoulder every time I went up and I knew it wasn’t the best situation but I wouldn’t use a strap because I know that sometimes something has to give so something else can soar. Anyway my soul was so happy I couldn’t imagine it would leave a lasting scar.

I don’t know how the hungry and battered maintain in a way that one once privileged cannot when broken.  I wish the same thing for all of us because maybe it’s the one thing that can’t be taken away; that we know that somewhere in our selves the light always dances in the trees and the music always plays. May discomfort or despair or fear not shut that out before the last light falls and the last notes fade away.

You Can Run but You Can’t Hide

Another Shot Heard Round the World from Boston

I don’t run for sport. I would run only if chased or chasing time.

Others run for pleasure … or to keep depression at bay, which may be the same thing.  They run for the joy of it or the high of it, others, like me, run when threatened, and there are those that run toward danger. We are a diverse people.

Some of us want to burn shit down. We may or may not know why. Some of us put out fires. We may or may not know why. Some want to carry countrymen from burning buildings. I think they know why.

The life is suddenly multiplied with potential.  Technology advances and possibilities escalate. There is greater opportunity for both destruction and construction.

 I’m no longer shocked by violence. The latest act of terrorism that blew up the Boston Marathon did not shock me like it was the first blast, though it broke my heart for the victims just the same.  Violence is no longer a random occurrence in supposedly civilized countries but a fact of life.  But violent acts no longer convince me that my fellow men are criminally insane or emotionally bankrupt.  Cynicism and fear had clouded judgment. Though I am sure that most of Congress is morally bankrupt and that the criminally insane walk amongst us in growing populations thanks to a life that is untenable without anger or drugs, I am hopeful that most of the world is running from danger or into the fire to carry countrymen from buildings. I hadn’t realized how much that mattered.

This life is a peculiar juxtaposition of isolation and information. For anyone with a computer, radio or television there is an onslaught of urgent or at least pressing information that is perhaps relevant but not directly personal which has the effect of both distancing and engaging the observer. You can look away, you can run away but it does not go away. Someone you know will eventually share it. Still you cannot touch it or change it and it doesn’t even care; doesn’t know your name.  Disconnection breeds mistrust. Mistrust breeds loneliness. Loneliness is a catalyst to fear.

The Bush/Cheney years brought fear and negativity to the forefront. Is it merely coincidence that these were the years that made yoga famous as well? I don’t think so. Before my yoga life was a hostile take-over, I didn’t have an enemy in the world. Before George Bush took office, I trusted my country. Before Monsanto stole our food my biggest challenge was addiction to chocolate. Before drug companies and advertisers colluded to poison our bodies and minds, the worst nightmare I had raising kids was to keep them off booze and recreational drugs. Why pontificate? You know the list. It is yours too. Yes, there was naiveté before. Some were running away from life, some starting fires but we didn’t see that unless they were celebrities or neighbors.  We now know that things were not always as they seemed.  Information may be crowding us today but we know what we have to sift through.

My friends own guns. It’s a done deal and it’s not going away: Pilates instructors, massage therapists, song writers; all of them.  I have to accept the new norm. I was with a fellow the other night who told me he left his V.P. job at a large corporation to become a cop because corporate life was a hideous nightmare. He reported that though he grew up a California liberal and still is, he wouldn’t recommend anyone leave their house without a gun after seeing what roams the streets. He was sorrowful saying so.

Thanks to unlimited access to information via the internet, anyone can make a bomb now. Soon or maybe now we can make weapons on our 3D printers.

Despite this or maybe because of this, surrender melts my fear today though today I also called my Senators urging them toward gun reform as the time is now. I won’t stop fighting for what seems right but I can’t keep fighting phantoms.  I cannot explain it other than to say that my extended family and friends are fine people.  The world in front of me has homeless and chained dogs and terrible things for sale but that is not the whole of it or even the most of it. Most of it is beautiful and glorious and wonderful. I can’t stand looking at it any other way anymore.

Though it’s likely you’ll forever hear me shout warnings about the venomous snake in the grass, I will also notice the flower that pushes past rock to feel the sun. My eyes set and truth will follow. I am tired of intruder’s madness. Just like you.

Have you ever noticed the subtle sensation of your skin shrinking back as you open your eyes after savasana?  Even in a safe haven we are built to protect from other.  

I am horrified by my brethren who want to torch us. But I am so tired of wearing protective gear.

We are mournful for the victims stopped crippled or dead in their tracks. We are lifted up by the heroes who continue to run into the fire May we find enough love to believe that the life unconditionally supports our ability to move freely without harm from others because it is clear, we can no longer hide. We are exposed.

Total Recall

In the worst of winter you recall a child;

 

A simple creature who did not rush

But digested the life; one thought with one action.

Not parsing time or pausing to weigh the worth of a task

But wholly absorbed as only one who has nothing to answer to can be absorbed.

 

Who asked for what was wanted without assuming the answer

Who ate only when hungry and drank from thirst not habit

In the times before moral outrage

The short window of innocence

When you constructed your dreams from nightmares;

Manifested desires in fantasy that went unchecked.

 

Before you were restless,

And burn -out became numbness.

 

Remembering what you turn to others to teach you now            

Before you ran to textbooks and spiritual guides

Before you quoted others to make your point

And distractions replaced your memory with advice that crowded out the cells that knew before.

 

When stacking stones was holier than parent’s handclapping at your grammar school play

No one told you consciousness creates matter

But you expected that.

In the days before the whirring machine blocked the flow of your thoughts;

Your fancy created the world

Just hand from pen to paper.

 

You were fertile

But not yet fertilized.

 

Child hood ripostes were correct but you were not so clever yet.

Protected by the castle walls, you could not yet comprehend the battlefield

While chanting songs to ease the smart of other’s glances:

I Know You Are But What Am I

I’m rubber you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks back on you.

It takes one to know one.

You had the words but no comprehension to back them up.

The knowledge you had, had no words to describe.

You made no choices but time chose for you. It would not stop. 

Inner guides met outer guides and plotted to keep you and those did collide at the first reckoning

But age made you sober;

For better where collusion carved awareness

 And worse when you forgot yourself.

In the End It Is the Same.

 

Morning meditation and a minute in when you whisper:

 

Let go of being right, let go of being wrong.

The unsolicited lesson is plain as the bare daylight that’s new by the calendar but not new yet for me.

Being right is an endless defense.

Being wrong is guilty or stupid.

 

I didn’t realize that took up so much room until

A knot in my belly I hadn’t noticed before abated with those words and

I realized I’d been tossing other people’s problems for them lately but forgot to let them go.

 

Isn’t there always something to be right or wrong about?

Life is a continuous wheel of riddles.

Opinions of right and wrong are essential in knowing how to proceed but

If right thought creates right action the gloating might choke you.

If confused thought creates wrong action the guilt might kill you.

 

If I am right without desire to defend that, if I am wrong but carry no shame

I cease to be a storage unit.

And then it’s largely opinion anyway.

 

Let go of being right. Let go of being wrong.

Who said that? I don’t have a face for the messenger in my head.

Overstuffed from a feast of yesterdays, this body is instantly and unexpectedly swept bare.

Conversations past and battles gone by, go by now.

 

And today you whispered; despite and because.

Two sides of the same coin have the same worth and pay the same bill.

Whether heads up or heads down may seem to make a difference,

In the end it is the same.

 

No memory comes but I am aware of itching angry gnats under my shoulders.

I pour imaginary water over them and sense them sink and disperse.

What difference is it what flame beneath the skin pushes us forward?

Positive or negative may be mute where reaction to either compels us to choose the same path.

In the end it’s the same.

The Storm Descends and There is Only This.

 

roblindsaypictures.com

Downloading lessons I once knew but forgot and will forget again is time taken that might be spent howling at the moon.

 And howling would feel better and righter and holier than those efforts that disconnect me from my own downloads forgotten in the dust of bins unused and forgotten. ~Hilary

Unseasonably warm under an almost sunny sky I shun my winter coat and scarf and head down the lake road to the woods that I hope will be empty of visitors today. I am not disappointed and choose the long lingering South Cove trail.

Approaching the highest and farthest point of the forest, black clouds surprisingly storm the sun on a furious gust of wind. An upward gaze at the fast moving masses tells me I’m in for it but I press on undeterred by fury’s company.

The storm is upon me.  Rain makes no entrance but descends with unnatural gravity. I’m dodging furiously flung branches and bracken by trees trained for turbulence; arching and flexing madly to stay upright. This is no breeze but a gale force wind and I am far from shelter, a lone lately delicate human without a phone.  I’m in danger and turn ready for a battle home. Lightening scorches the suddenly pitch sky and thunder’s beating hooves pave my way as I hurl myself up and down the winding path taking my chances with woods as there is no shelter by the lake and though the trees have no thought for this rootless companion, I feel secure on their turf.

Weightless, I’ve left gravity’s heavy domain. Feet that struggle to stay the course on solid earth lift me effortlessly as I navigate twisting hills and valleys, heedless of roots and rocks that trip one up on the most cautious of hikes. I watch myself from outside this self, aware that this galloping wingless flight is not possible. I am nature’s simple creature nimble as the deer scattering up the hill to my right, ears back and eyes narrowed against steely rain.

Not breathless or tired or fearful of falling, I’m sharply aware that the hip that at times cannot even stand a step has been reborn. I don’t falter though the earth has turned to rivers of mud and I do not slip on these shiny rocks or down these ravines and I watch myself do the impossible pressing forward at top speed urged on by the screaming mayhem.

I hit the lake road just as the wind releases its final weapon; hail. I have to make it through the unprotected path between the lake and lagoon. The white caps on the lake threaten the banks and I am strangely curious whether my ankle that cannot run more than a dozen steps on paved surface without seizing will carry me on. I have no choice but to hurl full speed against the wind, hugging the left bank against a wind so strong it threatens to toss me into the snapping turtle lagoon. I beg my legs to hug the road and lean into the wind getting farther than I’d thought before my ankle gives way.

Not self conscious, not unconscious but I am one consciousness while the mind hovers idly by and wonders; is this adrenaline? What a marvelous drug.  No. Adrenaline has carried this body, this mind, this matter through impossible odds and this is not adrenaline alone.

This is the taste of truth, the glimpse of immortality of energy manifest as divine and not separate from but one. I know. I have been here before; a reckless and trusting member of that which makes and moves everything, I’ve been taking my chances, playing the odds in untamed circumstances since I was a kid on a bicycle.

 

Some things you just trust from the beginning.

Home and I realize my hair is tangled with ice and my clothes and shoes can hold no more moisture and what’s this familiar thing still clinging to my face? It’s a shit eating grin.

Quiet.

Confessions of a Modern Meditator.

 

I get it now.

Black is white

Day is night

Wrong is right.

My husband looks away from the television and turns to me;

What is going on! What in the world…..!

And I get it just like that.

There is no ruling from a lifetime past but happy anarchy.

And not worse but maybe better than the lie of safety and reason we supposed

from a prettily clothed and fiercely contained hearth

while outside the door the unfathomable cruelty of men and nature

appeared to randomly batter only those outside.

 

We are all outside now equally homeless and at home;

under the light, bending in the wind, shouting at the stars

in every language with every expletive available.

 

roblindsaypictures.com

I am a modern meditator

My mantra has no Hindu spirit attachment to a past.

I would not know or care to compare

it to any other for which there is no measure anyway.

That is a miserable’s pastime.

 

Here is a tone like a hypnotist’s clue, unspoken,

it’s power unbroken by attachment to anything but the memory

of me when I received it.

 

Sometimes sitting; this hypnotic key and I are not enough.

Momentary protection by the mantra’s magical cocoon is

fleeting impermanence that turns back to an illusion of writing in stone when eyelids open.

So much waits at the door.

The emptiness of this transitory seat is illusion I will not bear.

 

I bring all of it into my quiet place.

I open the door to this inviting home.

 

To ready for a party is hard work of course.

But the resulting harmony of home serves me well too.

I know what to throw out and what to polish.

This home is left the better when the last guest smiles goodbye.

 

Still, this architecture has been battered as it’s not well designed to withstand storms.

It was not made to bend in the wind.

whether by my making or happenstance.

Does it matter?

 

Renovation is made in this hypnosis; this modern meditation.

Nothing outside is a stranger when you invite it in.

You feed the strange what you feed your loved ones.

You must remember to feed yourself as a loved one too.

With all inside, who will tear down your walls?

 

In you go with the rest of it;

With the storm and the sorrow and the mean and the crazy,

With the things you cannot fathom, with the life you cannot grasp.

 

What threatens from remote banks is much mystery perceived as threat.

Though threat might make its home in fear,

It has no grasp in a kindly place.

It has no choice but to amend.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5-RSKcPJHg

 

re-posted on Rebelle Society as Confessions of a Modern Meditator