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Body and Soul"Romanics" - Pachora
"Vira-Folha" - John Hollenbeck Quartet
"My Baby" - Little Walter
"Poor Moon" - Canned Heat
Fun to witness a blog post wrapped in old behavior wrapped in a blog post last night. I think the answer last night to the question of "can you wait?" was "HELL NO." L and I are experiencing the 2nd tier of commitment in our relationship, moving beyond the "can we stand one another for 40-60 more years" phase (btw, the answer was yes!). There's a lot of issues around our physical bodies right now, and our emotional outbursts are erupting in ninja-like ways. Having used exercise as a mode of meditation for the last 10-15 years, I'm pretty certain the two are directly related for me.
"Get to Leave" - Howe Gelb
"Who's Been Talking" - Clutch
It's tricky business in the Pacific NW though, to maintain a connection to the physical through the dark and soggy night of winter. Unless you're one of these outdoor warrior types that seem attracted to the mountains and oceans no matter the weather, it's July-October, and then a cavelike hibernation the rest of the time. In our early days, L and I actually walked around in the witching hours through the light-industrial neighborhood that was her illegal tenancy. My thick marine peacoat is in need of repair for just such an excursion.
"Didn't I" - Darondo
"Empty Page" - Sonic Youth
Attempts to circumvent via the gym or dragging out the home exercise mat always seem to fail. Half of the satisfaction used to come from running into the sunset. There's no horizon line here, and work has been sucking time everytime there's been a sunny day. I could also do another whole post on the piss-poor quality of weather forecasting here. Seriously, you'd think it would be easy in an area where it's cloudy 85% of the winter and sunny 95% of the summer. Inertia builds after a couple of weeks of no exercise, so I'm hoping for a convergence of the elements this week.
"Fight Test" - The Flaming Lips "Can You Wait?""Take it to the Limit" - The Eagles I thought I'd post today on the concept of conscious behavior. I think it'll point to another post I'm about ready for - presence and internal vs. external environment. I'm at a bar (Ballard Alehouse) this evening, an unfamiliar one down in Bal/mont. I looked in the Hale's brewpub, and it was too antiseptic for even my tastes. It feels like a relief to get away a good ways away from the house. So much is in flux and in a state of poor chi, it's taking periodic segments of psychic distance to feel like doing much of anything. Hence the Maritime Imperial IPA next to my left hand. You can tell this is Seattle because there's free wifi in the bar. I was planning on walking down to Ladro after a few beers, but why bother unless it's for a cigarette break? For the record, anyone who doesn't see me at least on a weekly basis, I've not picked the habit back up except to the degree of one every few of days. Lots of antagonism and fear about smoking these days. I kind of like it for that reason, it provokes such an easy reaction from just about anyone I know. It's also instant access to breath awareness. My only rule is that I only smoke cloves. More than one a day and my throat feels ragged. I also tend to pull into my mouth and let it sit before inhaling all the way - less charring, at least in my rationalization. I'd written out this post to my diary a few weeks ago, but a few additional thoughts came up after completing Jacob Needleman's "Lost Christianity," so I'll probably have some additional thoughts after the story itself. "Around the World" - RHCP I wanted to write a little about an exchange SH and I had a little over fours years ago. SH is the local center leader and who'd I consider my main point of contact to the Mevlevi tradition, despite access to the Turkish Postneshin. Probably the common language we share. It was almost Shebi Arus & L and I had almost completed our first year of learning the Turn. If memory serves, I was doing my stint in the cube cave at eShop. October-December is always high season in the American Mevlevi community. Much like the rest of the Western religions, the high holidays all hit around Winter Solstice. It starts early with the Mevlevis though, and I'd fathom the reason lies in our hippie interfaith roots and the many events from various traditions that draw us out into Thanksgiving, Christmas and the highly public nature of our own Pir's Urs (funeral celebration), i.e. Shebi Arus. In retrospect, it's always a logistical marathon with no sacred space that the local circle owns outright. This means pouring energy into creating that space each and every time we do our work in public. Having grown up in a church, I know now that we Christians took that for granted. I was experiencing this for the 1st time and more than a little shocked by all of it. I would have been 28 at the time (just before my first Saturn return), my fifth anniversary of arriving in Seattle. My first real community, in the adult world anyway. Prior communities never knew me long enough to have a hold on me. What can I say? I fell in deeply with the Mevlevis. Typical past response to community stress or cognitive dissonance was to retreat, either long enough for the storm to pass (Christmas holiday or vacation with the family), or permanently (as with several college circles). Those retreats were always a great period to process, to write, to sit in the unfamilar coffeehouses with strangers all around and time enough to ponder my identity. The permanent self-exiles however always felt like a failure to relate and an extension of our somewhat nomadic upbringing. We were at the "Praise and Thanksgiving" celebration that is sponsored every year by the Interfaith community in Seattle, when I decided to share with SH this urge to retreat and process in writing before I forgot the experience of the last few weeks. To skip out on class for a week or two to remember who I was in all of this activity and reaffirm my commitment to what I had chosen. "Got Me Wrong" - Alice in Chains To this he replied, "Can you wait?" A shocking response, as the Mevlevis and SH in particular had been so non-judgemental of behavior over the past year (lots of hippie wanderers permeate the Sufi community). Still, he hadn't judged my desire, just sliced away my pull toward an immediate response to the tension and asked for confirmation that it was a NEED. This is a powerful practice that I' m still learning from to this day - who'd have thought that, given my already glacial response to stimuli, I would need to be reminded of desire's relationship to time? Over time, I've connected this story to SH's consistent focus on "holding the question." "Holding the question" is to refrain from asking a question until the true question arises. Either the belatedly asked question draws out a truly powerful conversation that anyone large or small can participate in, or its asking provokes a very clear answer as soon as it's verbalized. I've also seen this applied after a powerful spiritual experience. SH has often congregated the group outside the sacred space just after a zikr or prayer circle to ask us to hold the energy we're experiencing as one would hold an egg on a spoon. Don't assume the best response is to share it with others around us. I don't want to say too much about this, as I don't want to project my own learnings onto SH's intention here. "Billy Jean" - Michael Jackson Can anyone tell I've had too much to drink? Should have held that question - it's a 10$ minimum on the credit card here and I'm only halfway through my 2nd pint. :) MeshkSomething that has struck me in the mystical or "intermediate" (as Jacob Needleman terms it) spiritual tradition is the singular communication and transmission that occurs in the community with or without the explicit permission of the priest/shaikh/guru. All of the participating individuals to some degree have approached this path with the same goal of subsuming consciousness into service and spirit. Ego still exists in coming together, but it's an easily observable phenomenon. Ego thus dealt with, the channel between internal and external can opened and the Work can be accomplished.
We hosted the music leader in the order two Fridays ago for a session of learning Turkish ilahis. Ilahis are similar to Western hymns, but constructed from already existing poetry (at least in my meagre experience). Yunus Emre is a favorite of these poets, roughly a contemporary of Rumi. The way that Ilahis are taught are through a process called Meshk. I know very little about what the word means, but I've taken it to mean sharing through practice. It's been consistent that what starts like choir practice becomes a sharing of communal breath and baraka, and a practical awakening of the inner being. We began with some stretching exercises for the spine and shoulders, as Ahura is also a yoga teacher. I found these to be shockingly helpful to my ongoing back issues. Apparently much of my problems stem from tight muscles that pull on my joints. A bit of a relief, as spine misalignment or vertabrae damage is only repairable via some very invasive procedures. It was suggested that we use these exercises before each turn class to better align our spine with the turn. (Having the arms in the air for extended periods is probably the hardest part of the form.)
After stretches, the neyzen bashi started by pronouncing the very foreign-sounding Turkish and having us repeat. Several folks would attempt translation based on some rudimentary understanding of Turkish or already existing translations in the community. The bashi also called out particular words in the verses that had extra "juice," extra layers of spiritual significance - signposts? catalysts? for further exploration. A literal example of this would be the grape in Rumi's work, which could be used as a metaphor for the sweetness of the fruit, the cycle of the vine, or the intoxication of the alcoholic byproduct. Much like the Semitic languages work on several levels through the base word roots, these power words have the ability to break through poetic banality.
Similar to zikr, a physical and metaphorical tuning happens over the course of the hour. I haven't done much research on the metaphysical explication on breath or "-spiration," but it's very literal, and probably one of the most accessible parts of the mystical tradition. The simple act of having to breathe at the same time as 10 to 12 other beings in close proximity widens an awareness of Self and environment. The original intention is active, but I experienced most of the tuning on a passive level, as though as channel had been opened, and there was nothing to be done but to keep it open. This is a pointer to the level of depth that can happen when we truly give attention to god's creation in its many forms, as students, teachers, observers. Nature, humanity, and friends are great Witnesses (similar to Maitrī in the Theravadan Buddhist practice).
That tuning lasted well into the next day when L and I found ourselves at the new SAM Olympic Sculpture Park, synchronously with Jemaluddin, Ahura and Sofia. I also found that my back was relaxed for the next 3-4 days before lapsing into odd twitches and weakness, and that overall I had more patience with my desires and process. Holiday High Season/Shoulder SeasonAlmost 4 months since my last entry. I've had plenty of things to say. Plenty also to do. I have about 5 or 6 entries that I'm hoping to hit in the next few days:
The shorter I keep these, the more likely I am to keep posting, so I'll sign off here. Hope everyone had a good holiday! /Jason Soundtrack: Agave Concentration playlist (including Haiku D'etat, Daniel Lanois, Earth, Arto Lindsay, Teuber/Rucker, Rhythm & Sound) |
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