To Rise and To Fall
Rise Up! That’s what I’m saying to myself. Two day’s ago I said it out loud and looked around to find a platform to get there. I found the table and raised my fist in the air. I felt strong, convicted, and pretty righteous. The winds of the universe spiralled around me as if Zues the god himself was towering over me willing all the energies to align to this single moment. I was fired up. About as fired up as I get. The only problem I really had though was working out what it was that I was really fired up about. It was an energy within. I knew too there were a bunch of ‘things’ coming at me, that this energy emerged with. I knew too that this energy was disruptive, and needed an outlet. The longer I scurried for a way to contain myself, the stronger the feelings got.
It was fair to see I’d reached the proverbial tipping point. To go over the edge would have been to fall from the dining table backwards, arms outstretched, free falling from the turmoil that I had previously embraced. With that I ditched the parachutes, spoke some garbled words of possessed faith and let go. Lucky the yoga mat is thick. Upon the floor I understood it to be the place of surrender. There was no where further to fall. I could feel the proverbial tears of conflict rain down upon me from the heavens above. Indi the puppy licked my eye. Laughing I was feeling bruised and in the moment slightly broken, but allowing myself to fall over the edge also felt unexpectedly liberating.
It’s been a time where that energy to rise up has been stirring more and more in me with every conversation I have. The talk is of exclusivity, divisiveness, broken families, failed relationships, lost income, illness, health, pressure, and our attachments to one day feeling ‘relieved’!. I lay back and allow myself to feel all of it. My beautiful friend said she walked past the towels that had blown off the line and were now stranded on the overgrown lawn - “fuck it” she thought out loud to herself, as she simply kept on walking. She’d had enough. For her too it was too much. She’d thrown the towel in, and as much as the good little workers in us question if we did enough, tried enough, and cared enough, like the towels abandoned and listless on the grass, this rising and consequent fall from uncertain grace, has left many of us with a sense of something unfamiliar. Some would call it defeat.
Another lick to the eye. Again on the mat. I’ve just finished my mornings yoga practice. The practice is not creative, it’s not dynamic, it’s got a structural rigidity to it, that doesn’t entertain my senses. It’s hard work really, at least for the first fifteen of sixty or so minutes as I allow myself to succumb to it’s relentless machinations. Through my body I learn to breath deeply and surrender to it’s punishing monotony. I’ve learned not to rise up further than the end of the mat in the morning. I’ve learned to bring the universal winds in and through me. I’ve learned to centre my awareness in my heart. Let go of my attachment to change what I can’t. And to love unconditionally. Gradually I’ve learned to love this practice.
In Shavasana, on my back, my body alive with every particle of it’s being. My head empty of critical judgement, and righteous vindications. I’m that same towel, not abandoned, nor uncared for. I’m now spread on the grains of sands of the universe basking in sunshine - love and light. I feel it for all. I sense they feel it too. The rains of conflict become rainbows. I’m certain my puppy now has a unicorn horn. Some would call it victory.
We all have roots of interconnectedness. There are times that my voice and yours potentially screamed from the table or even roof tops, a strangled murmur barely to be heard. Those winds carry. There’s too much noise already, and who likes those noisy grammar phones anyway. I’m not for rolling over, and lying down in the face of a challenge. I’m all about skilful means, to navigate these turbulent weather systems, with wisdom. I advocate for leading by example. With our fulfilment, contentedness, joy, peace, and compassion. These things can’t be silenced! It comes from rising up in our hearts, not from our fists. For most of us at least.
In this way we rise up together! No matter how we perceive the interdependent forces of causes and conditions that we uniquely identify as ours from our time and place! I am not you, nor you me, but we are definitely in this together. And there’s no way I’m going to let any of you tell me that your unanswerable outrage, like mine, is worth punishing ourselves to be heard, when we’re all a bunch of warm hearted cotton towels blowing with these winds of change together.
Ommmmmmm