graciespeaks

Best Moment of Peace 2009: all shall be well

All day I've tried to think of a "moment of peace" to write about for today's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge question:

December 8 Moment of peace. An hour or a day or a week of solitude. What was the quality of your breath? The state of your mind? How did you get there?

Tonight I looked at my calendar, hoping to find the moment.  Not a good sign.

For most of 2009 I've been pushing toward or rushing away from one thing after another.  Even periods of relaxation have been purposeful, focused, goal-oriented. 

After my brain and my calendar turned up no bloggable moments, I turned to my journal, and found Julian of Norwich's words from her Revelations:

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well . . ."

Ahhh.  I read these words and take a deep breath and enjoy the most peaceful moment of my day, right now. 

I have at different times taped them above my computer, reminded myself of them in my journal, copied them for Michael, texted them to a dear friend. But I forget and need to be reminded.

I read them again and settle into another moment of peace.

quote from an angel

Seane Corn emphasized first- and second-chakra poses today, and even though I did my last pigeon pose over three hours ago,  the yoga continues into the evening.   So I will only blog this one quote, which I wrote in my notebook after she told the story of a man she described as the first angel in her life of whom she was aware.  She was seventeen when he told her how to see God in everyone:

"Ignore the story, and see the soul.  Remember to love and you will never regret it."

a little yoga

I'm in Deerfield Beach this weekend for a workshop with Seane Corn.  Tonight was the first session and if it's any indication of what's to come, I have quite a couple of days in store.

In no particular order, sometimes paraphrased from Seane and sometimes quoted as best I can remember, here's what I took back to my room tonight:

1.    When I resist using props (and this would apply to yoga and to accepting help in any other part of my life) it's because I see needing help as failure, which I equate with death.  So using a prop feels like having "a slice of cyanide." 

2.    Everyone I have encountered in my life, whether they have helped me or harmed me, has been my teacher, has illuminated something for me that my soul needed to learn in its journey to learn (or remember, actually) how to love.

3.    I don't need to worry about passing for someone with more yoga experience than I have; it's about the breath.

4.    When I muscle my way through a pose or cheat with my flexibility, I risk hurting myself and don't fully experience the pose.  See 3 above: breath.

5.    My body remembers everything that has ever happened and that I have ever done.  When I repeat patterns, regardless of whether they are good for me, it's often because my body is remembering and repeating.

6.    I do yoga because it helps me present my best self to the world.  Without it, I turn to various anaesthesias, resisting and shutting down.

7.    In order to heal, I have to deal.

8.    It's a good thing Bindu recommended bringing Batherapy and arnica.

9.    I am blessed to have yoga.

10.  I am infinite spirit in a temporal body.  I am magical and mystical.

time to go inside and close the blinds

Thomas Merton asks,

"What is the use of complaining about not being a contemplative, if I do not take the opportunities I get for contemplation?  I suppose I take them, but in the wrong way.  I spend the time looking for something to read about contemplation--something to satisfy my raffish spiritual appetite (ital mine)--instead of shutting up and emptying my mind and leaving the inner door open for the Holy Spirit to enter from the inside, all the doors being barred and all my blinds down."

--Sign of Jonas

crone wisdom on halloween

Last week I decorated the house a little bit and bought candy to pass out to the hordes of costumed children who will arrive as soon as the sun sets.

But ever since I read Bindu Wiles's post on the crone and her cauldron (among other things) and Sue Monk Kidd's writing about her transition to cronedom in Traveling with Pomegranates, I've been thinking about Halloween in terms of the crone's wisdom that I want to cultivate and embrace.

The wise woman, the crone, the hag, Lilith, Hokhmah, Sophia, Wisdom, seems to come in and out of acceptance in all religious traditions.  In Andrew Harvey and Anne Baring's The Divine Feminine, I found the following from Wisdom:

"I was sent forth from the power and I have come to those who reflect upon me,

and I have been found among those who seek after me.

Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,

and you hearers, hear me . . .

For I am the First and the Last,

I am the honored one and the scorned one,

I am the Whore and the Holy One.

I am the Wife and the Virgin.

I am the Mother and the Daughter.

I am the members of my mother.

I am the barren one and many are her sons.

I am the Silence that is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.

I am the Voice whose Sound is manifold and the Word whose Sound is manifold and the Word whose appearance is multiple

I am the utterance of my Name. . .

I am knowledge and ignorance. . .

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

Give heed to me. . .

Hear me, you hearers, and learn of my words, you who know me.

I am the Hearing that is attainable to everything;

I am the Speech that cannot be grasped.

I am the name of the Sound and the Sound of the Name...

I am the One who alone exists, and I have no one who will judge me."

--from The Thunder, Perfect Mind, The Nag Hammadi Library, Translated by G.W. Macrae

into the "afternoon of life"

In Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, Stephen Cope writes, "While the awakenings of early adulthood, which are mostly about identity, are culturally supported with rituals and celebrations--weddings, graduations, ordinations, baptisms--the more subtle spiritual awakenings of the middle years are culturally invisible." 

He continues with this quote from Carl Jung:

"[T]horoughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto.  But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie."

Jung and Cope write about a process I have experienced but not identified for a few years now.  While I might not have wanted to take a more formal approach than the zig-zagging path I have walked, my travels are affirmed.