Earth. Wind. Sea. Sky

10/19/16
 
First quote before discussion began after the sit,
 
“Wake up my heart! The world is passing by;
Life froths and flows by, free for the asking.
Don’t sleep in your body, oblivious,
As the caravan of life goes by your house.”
Rumi
 
..
 
Last night was my first meditation session upon returning to town. The hurricane was of course amongst topics discussed. Our teacher spoke of naturally arising biological response to threat. Often we discuss anxiety that arises out of the accumulation of daily stressors, when not released, becoming chronic illness, like the bipolar disorder with which I daily grapple.
 
Several of his students and patients had said to him they were frustrated with their inability to master their anxiety as the storm loomed, fell and departed. They found their meditation practice could not free them from its grasp. He smiled and laughed as he recounted saying to them, meditation is a tool to process these natural impulses. Don’t fault your practice or yourself for experiencing what evolution has crafted us into as beings. It’s not like being uncomfortable in a crowd, he jested. It was a legitimate threat.
 
Our 3rd Tuesday of the month is free form meditation upon awareness itself or what he calls, meditation that is not meditation. We are encouraged to enter the place between effort and effortlessness.
 
..
 
I am Daniel. This is my story.
 
I come into the body, become the earth.
 
Youth is trod to dust that falls from my flesh through a sieve of years. My white skin shorn to red lips, puckered about the breach.  
 
Purple at the center of the heart, fades to bluish green shadow, to a surrounding beachhead of yellow where life and death circle and retreat from each other. All awash in black.  
 
The scar is opaque, imperfect, guileless art. They are clear in contours, features that find names from their shapes and defining moments, pock marked upon this Atlas.
 
Hear the cumbered breath draw across grave markers, into cellars where worries dwell in wake of storm, anticipating the tidal arms that are surely next to come calling.
 
Here, where my hair sways in the caress of errant air, I am less strong at these upper limits, where I am thin as a rising tongue of flame.
 
My strength lies at the base of the stone, where troubled electrics are quickly stilled within dense grounding.
 
Beneath feet and miles, still within the mute barrow of earth. I hold the past, too close to witness.
 
I come into the breath. Follow its rhythmic motion with the ticking of the clockwork sentient I am, a silent thought of “out” preceding and following a thought of “in.” I become wind.  
 
I follow the breath, it crosses the threshing floor of my unseen vestibule, parting to the chambers of lungs where cilia beat a swaying rhythm, like flora waving drunkenly in sunken depths.
 
I become sea, where treasures of men are revealed to be the refuse that they are. Where demand of life alone stands naked, shivering with necessity. Eyes bold and fixed, hands folded to fists, in want of satisfaction.
 
Where focus goes, awareness follows. Energy flows in the wake of its singular vector, waters flowing ceaselessly into the breach, knowing no mercy in their revelations. They meet where two eyes become one vision.
 
In the stillness of self, the life stream washes over me. I become sky. I am the white hot circle that slides across the night.
 
I am love I have offered from phantom fingers, released with force of ceaseless hope that it will reach you.
 
I know indifference feigned is a carapace perfectly crafted, ill-fitting in places. Before anything, its gait betrays its ease of step or armored thickness. I have walked heavily and lightly and every jig I danced to the joy of beloved friends is why I am.
 
I feel my breath touch you across the room. My poetry couched in hearts ventricle petals on a breeze of voice that flows from turgid tunnels of throat.  
 
Dare to wonder where it goes as I am music that dares to touch your soul. You are a ghost that I do not know. Will you reach. Will you touch me.
 
Fearless to those who love. Fearsome to those who fear. Look into the deep wells of Narcissus’ lake and see me there. I followed CoehIo to the banks. I want to witness you loving yourself. Give these troubled waters peace.
 
I desire to pen new lines, but allow the fire to smolder. Resist the pull that reaches from the depths of the underground sea, allow a day and an hour to wash over me. No longer possessed of the urgencies of youth.
 
My weapon is the weeping broom, the broad conch of ear that gathers and holds, the narrow eye of thread, the closed mouth of god.
 
Who is to know by what great gusts of whimsy or deliberate architecture our lives are made and unmade. What spindle holds the unraveling spool of years. What seismic surge causes the spike to rise through the socket of the eye and become the mantle of the skull. What scale holds the measure of such terrible exactitude and wondrous science. Which of these two colossal feet holds the greater balance of weight.
 
..
 
My teacher just published his first book. We discussed that experience during the break. Stressful. Exciting. Gratifying. Agreed editors are a pain in the ass, necessary evil, with a laugh.
 
This friendly elderly gentleman who stinks of cigarette smoke had been explaining the 12 steps to me and why he felt they worked.
 
I told him that he should collect his observations and publish them. He laughed and said he’s thought about it. He asked me what it is like be an author in an offhand way. I said,
 
“How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.. for me who goes in singing with a sword among defenseless men..prisoner among growing shadows and trembling wings. I feel that I am he, and my arm of stone defends me.” Pablo Neruda
 
Class resumed. We discussed the forms that nervous energy takes within the body and how to facilitate and recognize the release of that energy. It could manifest as anything. A feeling of heat, of pressure. A brief muscle spasm, a muddling of thoughts. It comes as pain.
 
A smile in a seeming mirthless moment. A laugh that is timed inappropriate. Will you mistake me for the memory of what hurts you. I am not barbs along the course of venom. I am not the harbinger of what you’ve known.
 
My blade is clean and straight to purpose.
 
I am The Fire Elemental. This is my sword.
 
..
 
Our teacher introduced a concept that he called pendulation. Part of allowing energy to flow through us is recognizing it, but not fixating upon it. One could focus upon a part of the body that is not feeling as stressful, something beautiful on hand or a memory. Allowing focus to shift forth and back between the crisis core and something better. I thought of it like breathing through the pain.
 
It is not escapism but realism. There is more that is wonderful to know than can be comprehended.  We experience and remember what we can as we drag our cracking shells across the sea of sifting sands, held under fist of sun.
 
There is no sorrow in the sea or despair upon the air, other than we perceive it there. The world lives savage in the moment and fiercely free.  
 
The mind has a greater tendency to store unpleasant moments than those that please. Change focus and the sands may begin to weight the opposite arm of the scales.
 
Amongst the blasted and twisted ruin there is something all the more glorious to behold, in such bleak contrasts.
 
Pause.
 
This moment is alive and kicking.
 
There is music in the chords of colors touched by reaching fingers of light.  
 
I am here. Most of many doors are open, though you do not know me.
 
There is something to explore right in front of you.
 
The stones are keys. They speak tones to your touches.
 
We are aching to resonate within each other. This moment of life.
 
Earth. Wind. Sea. Sky
Or
A day and an hour
By
Daniel Christensen
Writing as
The Fire Elemental
 
Final quote of the discussion that followed the sit,
 
“On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars. Something good will come out of all things yet. And it will be golden and eternal just like that. There's no need to say another word.” Jack Kerouac

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