A third of a coconut freddo - cappuccino, mistakingly un-decaf, and I'm lying on my bed for hours tonight, between two and three so far. A mind in tense extension. Deep breaths, including those with long hold times, have only seen me remain awake tonight.
My face feels sun-baked and I love it. I know the skin under my beard does not get the same sunlight - I'm thinking of having it all shaved off tomorrow. Hair too. I'd like to feel evenly-baked.
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Ti
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Mendo
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Al Pa
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Conversations in the Cross:
Morning, 10AM:
Changa's exercises today touched me inside. "The way of magic is to combine a physical action and a story". "Walk, walk, just walk. That is the action. And as you're walking, you're leaving your past behind. That is the story. Walk, walk walk..."
"Open up your arms wide. Now slowly, veery slowly, hug yourself, very slowly. Until you touch your own chest, and you hugh yourself. That is the action. Now feel how here, surrounded by so many new people, you feel safe. Feel how you can feel safe in any environment. In this space, with yourself, you can always come back to it. That is the magic.
In the dark, I can say:
Tonight I travelled the realms of my person, my soul, and the void. And the thresholds between them. My being stepped hopeful onto the soul, hopeful of lightness, carefreeness, joy, freedom. And I danced there. Above the wooden slabs, my body swayed to the music like a leaf to the wind. Across the floor, between the bodies, no buts and no musts and no sorries. Just dance, play, and seeing. Being free.
My soul gasped in trepidation when it was invited into the void. That space, without quality, purpose, nor fate. Could I finally rest? Could I finally stop absolutely everything?
That inner ring felt warm, cozy, neutral. Nothing to see, nothing to do, nothing to be. Just...
Freedom in nothingness.
The summon back to the soul would not move me. Would not budge me. I had found a space of absolute, and I would hold it. I would be held in it. We were merged, and I would not drag myself out to the chaos of the specific.
Will not do it.
Will not do it.
Will not do it.
Aaaahh... fear, I see you appear. I will not deny you.
And you are not of the void. You journey in the outer realms.
So out we go.
Fear pulled me outward. Unwilling yet certain. I followed a tantrum soul as it crawled along the middle ring, angry furled eyebrows, feeling it did not deserve this cruel fate. Fated to be feeling these menial, gross feelings. Again. I know I've done this before... could we just... STOP IT!!???
Aaahh... anger... grosser still... manifested through my soul's fists onto the patient ground. "Anger", I intuited, "is to be expressed in the physical plane. On the personal plane.
"Aw crap", my narrator felt. "That's like... the WORST plane". Certain again, again unwilling. I crawled to the outer threshold, and felt myself before taking action. My belly contracted, my solar plexus pulled back. They did NOT want to go back out there. They remembered what was there. Jealousy, desperation, resentment, loneliness, forgetfulness. And I get to be there, only because I need to take out the anger trash? It did not feel fair.
I breathed into my certainty and took two steps outward. The first stepped the threshold, the second the outer ring, and my body succumbed in wailing tears. Kneeling, angry, wailing, my despair piped out through my voice pipes, and I raged to the world my discontent. A child stuck in time raged in frustration.
Several pillow screams and tantrums and angry walks along the personal ring, I heard I could ask my soul for advice. What could it tell me that would help me? I asked at the threshold. "What am I here to be? What do I do?"
"You are here to be what you are... EVERYTHING that you are".
"So which path do I choose?"
"There is no path to choose. Choose, trust, and be what you are. All that you are."
My questions dissolved into laughter as soon as I heard them answered. And as I integrated them into myself, crossing the threshold became a method of transmitting messages between the rings. Still some trepidation, still a conscious choice at each threshold. But so changed... my crossings to the personal became less tense, less traumatic, and then it became a game. "What *can* I do this time around, that I come out there? What would be exciting?" It became a game.
And I love that.
INJA
Self-deprecation can be a diversion of energy, a "defense" against blame or the fear thereof - acknowledgement of the mistake to mitigate its power. When used with that intent, it feels sneaky, energy-leaky, untrue.
Laughter, no... humor, an attempt at humor to divert the energy, can be a distractive technique. To soften intensity. Divert the energy somewhere else. I wish to take this direction only with awareness of what I am doing, its emotional and energetic impact on myself and on others, and with a full and conscious choice that that's the way I want to thread.
[Bus to Sólheimar]
