Finding Balance Within

 

photo credit: Lisa Kessler, Boston 

On a summer morning as I was doing a few minutes of yoga on my patio, I noticed that my body was curiously moving into a kind of involuntary dance. Oddly, I felt a bit like a marionette, some subtle outside force seemed to be gently directing my strings.  My right arm lifted up perpendicular to my right side, I observed myself pointing my index finger as if it were the nose of a gun. I played along and closed my left eye as I aimed over an imaginary barrel. Another similar movement followed, I observed my left arm pull back on a make-believe bow and arrow, my torso and left shoulder turned to my left with a particular erect sense of posture as my eyes focused toward an invisible target. 

Then came the action of a quick thrusting forward, my right arm stretched as in a fencing or jousting position, my knees bent slightly outward. I felt fiercely intent within and yet light on my feet.  These momentary gestures became a bit of a game, one after another. As my body shifted again, I reoriented as if I held a knife in my right hand, in a stance of aggression and unlike anything I am familiar with in my current female oriented incarnation.

Strangely, my thinking mind was not a part of this process. Who was pulling the strings?  Perhaps some subconscious guidance connecting me to understanding my own balance, I do not know. But, as I relaxed into this odd mid-summer dream I noted another shift of movement arising from the left side of my body. I was in a duet with my own body. Softly, a gentle rocking motion began to sway my hips. I leaned a bit to the left, cradling an imaginary form within my arms, as if nursing a baby. Though I hoped none of my neighbors witnessed these spontaneous expressions rising up, this patio pantomime was genuinely instructing me of many things. Shiva and Shakti are the universal aspects of the masculine and feminine as they are expressed in Tantric cosmology. There is not Shiva without Shakti nor Shakti in the absence of Shiva. Together they embody the One.

I thought I understood this on an intellectual level but during and after this sequence of movements, I had a full body inner comprehension. We hold the mystery of life -energy within our cells; we know that when we transmit a smile, show kindness to another, actualize frustration, or express anger. We embody both the giver and the receiver when we engage our energy patterns. It doesn’t matter whether we are male, female, trans or non-binary, we all have varying degrees of these yin and yang qualities within us. These attributes are simply words to describe archytypes more than gender.

As the world turns, there is great unrest in the Middle East and it is easy to fall into fear, and to lose our balance, serenity and sense of safety when purusing the headlines. In the Holy Lands, profoundly significant to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, at this time there is zero sense of calm and order. Imbalance seems to be leaning entirely toward the unhealthy dominance of one side, let's call it the yang principle. In Traditonal Chinese Medicine, too much yang typically manifests as increased heat/activity causing high fever, anxiety, and anger. Calming practices are what is needed to restore balance. 

Cove Acupuncture in East Hollywood, Los Angeles has this to offer in terms of descrbing these principles: 

A healthy body is a body in equilibrium, with equal parts yin and yang. We get out of balance when we have too much or not enough yin and yang. There are four basic patterns of imbalance in the body (there are actually many more, but at their most basic...):

Yin Deficiency: too little yin in the body. This is characterized by thinness, dryness, a slight fever, malar flush (rosy cheeks, chin, and forehead), and night sweats (among other symptoms). Extreme yin deficiency can be seen in wasting diseases, including cancer and AIDS. Yang levels are normal, so fever is low grade.

Yang Deficiency: too little yang in the body. This is characterized by heaviness/overweight, excess dampness (phlegm, edema), feeling cold, and having a pale face. Patients with yang deficiency may also have slow digestion and loose stools. Because yin levels are normal, the patient only feels slightly cold. Yang is the motive force behind all types of metabolism, so metabolism is slowed in yang deficient patients.

Yin Excess: Similar to yang deficiency, but heavier, wetter, and slower. The patient will feel more cold; edema will be worse. Yang levels are normal, so the motive force is still there, but it is handicapped because it has to move greater amounts of heavy yin.

Yang Excess: Too much heat in the body. At its extreme, this is seen in high fevers, including hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola. Less extreme yang excess can be characterized by restlessness, anxiety, and fidgeting (as well as skin rashes, burning stools, heavy sweating, and a fully red face). Yin levels are normal, but prolonged yang excess will burn away yin.

How can we restore balance within? From the outset, the one thing we have control over is our response. We do not--contrary to popular belief-- need to be reactive. We can find peaceful practices such as walking in the woods; going to a large body of water; hiking in the mountains; establishing a regular meditation, there are various forms; eating healthy nutritious food; and definitely avoiding the things that tend to scorch our serenity. May peace be with you.

Sacred Moments

They say timing is everything and this morning seemed to underline that declaration. I don’t like to keep a clock in my bedroom anymore, I prefer the inner call to waking as opposed to a harsh sound. On rare occasions it is necessary to set an alarm but not often, usually I wake when I wake and that’s early enough.  When I retired last night I thought about getting up to view the full lunar eclipse, the Blood Moon, in the early hours before dawn. I don’t know how this alignment can be so accurately predicted but I knew it would be in the viewing path of New Mexico and scheduled to peak between 4 and 5 am. Cloud cover was in the forecast and so I went to sleep not expecting much of a show or even that I would be up. 

But all my better angels were guiding me awake repeatedly: at 9 pm when the HVAC went off like a jet engine unexpectedly, I got up and looked at the clock on the stove then fell easily back to sleep. Out from under the cozy blankets at 2:30 am, again I couldn’t resist looking at the digital numbers on the stove and then once more I laid my body down. At 4:30, something pulled at me to get up and look at the clock...I quickly dressed for the cool night air and went out to see what I could see.

Black skies over head and a brick-red button floating in the western sky above the buildings next to me. Clear skies and visibility, the eclipse was at its peak. Smiling all the while, delighted to have this rare and amazing view seemingly all to myself.

An impression of grey, soft shapes that I guessed to be Sandhill cranes moved gently northbound amongst the stellar and lunar exhibition. They appeared to disappear. Then the first birds began to sing their melodies before the clock struck five. I watched as the dusty red planet with just a hint of light on its side, gave way to the crystal white beneath the shadow line until the clarity of her fullness was revealed. The velvet curtain pulled back, all the while she seemed to expand and shine brighter as she dropped lower towards the horizon. I am grateful for this experience of wonder with Father Time and the Earth, Moon, Sun, matchless, miraculous moments. 

Shamanic teacher and writer, Sandra Ingermann recently wrote in regards to the worlds we are straddling in these tumultous days:

Are you choosing the world your mind is moving you to or the world your soul is moving you to? The way of life you choose is what you will live. And it is all a matter of choice. 

Let us stay with the soulful! 

On Dreams and Creativity

When Carl Jung first separated from his mentor and colleague, Sigmund Freud, he was overwhelmed with images that came to him during that transitional time. In December 1913, Jung allowed himself to reenter one of these images, he fell down a cliffside within his mind.  He landed in the ‘muck’ (this important first time when he embodied a dream image) with his feet first and sank in up to his ankles. Jungian, Robert Bosnak, has noted this entry into Jung’s dream-world imagery physically connected what he fell into with his feet as more than symbolic. No bones were broken in this fall, nor did he die, but landed upright. His dream imagery became fully embodied. Jung considered dreaming the reality of the soul. He said, in an interview from 1959, that as a young man his first choice of study was archeology. But he chose to excavate consciousness instead, specifically the realms of the soul, rather than artifacts of history.  

If we re-enter our dreams with deep body awareness, we may land into greater awareness of our soul’s desires. Shamans have been traveling into the dreamtime for thousands of years, bringing back guidance to search for water, where to find plant medicine to heal the sick and to recover fragmented soul parts. Dr. Bosnak feels the Body/Mind conundrum exists because we have denied the reality in between the two. This is the energy of the trinity. By way of our dreams, imaginations, works of art and shamanic practices, we can be in beneficial dialogue, in union with guidance. Our dreams are a place where we might connect to the collective unconscious, but also, I believe where we imagine the next move of our existence individually and interrelatedly. Using our imaginations as a tool for healing through the immense changes underway on our planet is an important part of our embodied evolution.

In our Zoom calls during the Covid time, a group shared their dreams and embodied those creative images. Bosnak mentioned the idea of negative capability in reference to staying with the unknown as someone navigates a dream, journey or memory. The poet, John Keats originated the expression in terms of our ability to be in the not- knowing mind: "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason …” It is one of the important aspects of working this medicine, we learn to be okay in the unknown, trusting in a Higher Power to show us the next right step. 

A deep as night blue fills my awareness.  I am with my mother. We are dressed in indigo. We are walking together down an unpaved road, shoulder- to- shoulder. Love joins us. We are in a village or town and in my mind’s eye, I spy a piece of white partially wrinkled paper.  

We walk past a man who is in a very heavy wooden container.  It is some kind of a vessel for transport though there are no horses and I don’t understand how it can move. (But this is a dream, so anything is possible.) Carved with large sculptural patterns on the sides, in a manner that could be Indonesian, the man in the vessel makes it known that we will not be taking a ride with him in this strange vehicle.  I feel slightly reactive to this rejection but walk on with my mother in search of a poem that is already written.

It was the first time I had a clear, fully formed dream memory of my mother since she died. I had the opportunity a few days later to share my dream with Robert Bosnak during the Jungian Friday night online gathering. We had been meeting for almost a full year during the Covid quarantine and after.  On this particular day he was in Hobart, Tasmania, an island off the southeast coast of mainline Australia.  He was overlooking the harbor from a rooftop while on his laptop. 

   My friend Lisa was on the Zoom call along with about thirty-five other people. I was admittedly nervous as I retold my dream, though it was a kindly group, still, sharing something private unnerved me. Robert patiently guided me to feel into the dream imagery again, first taking a moment to be still, then telling the dream as I recalled it:  I am touching the fabric, the dark indigo that we were wearing—long robes or dresses from another century.  Sensing the warm- hearted emotions shared with my mother, I feel into the deep love in my heart expanse and the great happiness to be walking by her side once more.  The white paper which I believe indicates ‘the poem already written’ is apparent in my mind’s eye. 

    In actuality, I was feeling a longing for creative expression after the difficult and most challenging few years since she passed. But the boat, or the vessel that was in service for transport was not for us to board. We would not be going with the man. Robert asked me if this was a problem. “Yes, but only a momentary disappointment.”  He says a boat in the Hobart harbor had just left the dock as I said this,  “The boat is not for you.”  Instead, we went the way of walking, shoulder- to -shoulder, along the dirt road in the atmosphere of indigo.  I am safe being with my mother on our quest. Robert said, “Perhaps you are on the road less traveled.”  

    He asked me, How does that feel?” I said, “It feels like oxygen.” He nodded, yes, “It is creative oxygen.” I breathed into my heart expanse and it felt like love.

The desert has many teachings

In the desert,

Turn toward emptiness,

Fleeing the self.

Stand alone,

Ask no one's help,

And your being will quiet,

Free from the bondage of things.

Those who cling to the world,

endeavor to free them;

Those who are free, praise.

Care for the sick,

But live alone,

Happy to drink from the waters of sorrow,

To kindle Love's fire

With the twigs of a simple life.

Thus you will live in the desert.

by Mechtild of Magdeburg (1207-1282 ? or 1297?)

tranlated perhaps by Oliver Davies

Notes from Women in Praise of the Sacred edited by Jane Hirshfield

The "daughter of a wealthy German, Mechtild was twelve when she saw "all things in God, and God in all things." "

...In 1235 she entered a local house of the Beguines, independent communities of laywomen devoted to leading a life of good works, poverty, chastity, and spiritual practice."

Spirals: Re-considering the Past

Spinning the wheel, spinning the prayer cycles, spinning the threads for the web of life. 

I started to use tiny pieces of things, broken bits of china, a coin, a little turquoise stone, along with woven pieces of a Tibetan prayer flag in four paintings on washed linen, in 2006. The pieces were like relics or remnants from some place, with earthy elements embedded into the paint surface. I worked on them on the floor of my studio, painting imagery and then adding the found objects to the surface. I am like a crow, who likes to collect shiny things and bring them back to the nest. I am always drawn to building texture into my work and the suggestion of history those acts evoke. I am part painter, part sculptor. I am a layerist.

These four pieces: A Bird in the Heart I-IV, became part of a mini-retrospective that year. From there I developed a new body of work, a series of seven pieces, using elements of broken china adhered to the surface of oil paintings on panels. I showed this series in a one-woman show called Rota Fortunae in 2010. They were in part an homage to the artist/fimmaker Julian Schnabel whose work influenced me in the 80s to go to graduate school.

Friends gave me broken china dishes, and some bowls and cups that they had saved, beautiful pieces--treasures they couldn't quite part with. I also found many broken pieces of china, they would show up as I walked with my dog along trails throughout Albuquerque, I always wondered of their history, how did they get to be there. A favorite vintage dish from a beloved friend that I accidentally broke became the basis of a painting called Milk and Honey, True Love. The dish pattern is called Etruscan Vase, we had traveled to Tuscany together to visit his sister and soak up Renaissance art. (Fidelity Investments purchased this painting in 2009 for their corporate collection and it was more recently gifted to the Albuquerque Public Arts Collection where it resides in the city's convention center.) 

By the end of 2008 the world economy seemed irreparably broken, we were in a sea change of experience. People have said, maybe this work was a comment on the state of the world at that time. Perhaps, yes. But, in a positive way considering ideas of regeneration, reconnection, reuniting, reusing and/or reinventing.

A white porcelain cup with a gold handle, from my Grandmother or maybe my Great Grandmother, broke in my hands while I was washing it. The break was clean, a perfect line almost exactly in half, a happy accident, it became one of the primary elements for a painting I titled, Rota Fortunae. Another lovely yellow cup, English bone china, was given to me by a friend, a writer. It was from her mother-in-law, sent to her in a cardboard box with the whole set, nearly every dish arrived broken. I think there must be a poem in every piece. I know there are stories of domestic life, nourishment and harvest-time held within the glazed surfaces.

Paintings are often ahead of me, they reveal themselves more in time. I am grateful when they continue to speak to me like a horn of plenty. The Wheel of Fortune is a tarot card, the meaning in part implies ʻa positive turn or changeʼ. It seems we are in deep change once again, post-Covid, and not entirely certain where to head, I plan to spiral back to the form of the Medicine Wheel and spin through its directional wisdom one more time.