TO BALANCE WE MUST MOVE

To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.

John Cage

Headstand turns the world upside down (the inner world and outer world.) When you do it every day, it reminds us nothing stays the same. Ever. 

 Balance is achieved between movement and resistance. To balance we must move. If we are rigid, we fall over (and that hurts!) Holding still brings tension. Moving helps us perceive the world.

Moving can denote a strong feeling especially of sorrow or sympathy (he was moved to tears) and describes a stirring emotion. 

Move along, move aside, move on, move on up. Move is a verb that means to proceed or progress, to advance or shift or change position. 

Move is also a verb that implies inspiration or stimulation; it connotes affect, to impress, provoke, and rouse. And it means to change, to budge, to shift one’s ground or change one’s mind or have second thoughts, to make a turn.

Balance is an even distribution of weight enabling us to remain upright and steady; it is the stability of our minds or feelings and it implies equal or correct proportions.

Balance in art is harmony of design and proportion. 
If something hangs in the balance, it is uncertain and at a critical stage. When we are balanced poise and grace dominate. 
Head balance delivers steadiness. To be in head balance we have to be in a steady position so that we do not fall. 

We need to transcend our limits and self-transformation has its limits, yet I do not like to think I have reached mine. I do not want to set limits on what I explore, not inside and not outside. When we set limits we miss exploring what really matters.

The compass I use searches for the center. The clarity of the extremes is that the center is within. From inside emerges the balance and it is always back and forth, back and forth: going out and returning in. 

It is always back and forth, back and forth: going out and returning in. Head balance.

WOBBLE WOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE

I believe in curiosity, in diving into others, into the dissimilar and deep into myself. I am a seeker. 

I have the compulsion to try and connect with something just out of reach - like trying to catch a tiger, a search for something that constantly eludes me, searching for something I refuse to let go of.

I want to taste the deeper currents of existence, an occasional privilege. Gobble gobble.

The body is the framework for all our bodies; the outer body is the frame for the organic body.

The physical body is a window into our interiors where there are involutions and evolutions like Nature, like temperature and rainfall and fire, clouds and sun.

We are like the Big Island of Hawaii where nine of the world’s eleven climate zones exist on one island. Our body is like a mass of climate zones.

We have fiery brains, warm and cold hearts, warm and cold hands and sometimes cold feet.

We express these manifold interior bodies in our skeletons and through our skin.

We extend through our hand gestures and the set of our mouths as much as the words we voice, text, and think.

Our handshakes and hugs are the intersections of our emotional body, mental body, intellectual body and body in space.

The world wobbles: it spins on an axis that is moving and long ago scientists noted that this axis also wobbles.

Scientists believe that tectonic plates of the earth's crust drift around the globe like, for instance, the Pacific plate that is the Hawaiian Islands.

The islands are like a gigantic raft and have been in the process of creation and dissolution for about twenty million years. Kaua'i has moved 350 miles since it was born and now is less than half of its original size.

Some day like other islands, Hawaii will have moved on. We do not know where it will sit eventually.

If Hawaii, why not us? What do we know about where anything will be eventually?

We wobble. We move around and the world moves around us. The word ‘forever’ is the miracle of gliding on and being reborn.

DIGGING UP THE BUNNY

DIGGING UP THE BUNNY

We forget things collected mechanically by the brain and always remember events in which we are somehow emotionally wrapped. We remember striking moments of our lives, exciting moments where beauty and love are condensed.

But we also sink back especially, where we have been psychologically hurt and wounded and where fear was present.

We hold these wounds like precious jewels. It is weight that does not drop easily from our shoulders.

My friend told me a story about her daughter and her pet bunny. The little girl doted on the bunny. One day the bunny got sick and died.

The child had fits of crying and hand wringing. My friend helped her daughter bury the bunny with an elaborate funeral. A few weeks after they buried the bunny, my friend’s daughter came to her and asked if they could dig up the bunny.

The girl wanted to see it, to indulge her wound. She wanted to gaze repeatedly at her loss, turn it over and touch it, feel it, again and again. Human.

The Amygdala is the dark aspect of the brain formation that is storage of emotion and memory. It is the encoding and retention of emotional information or learning, particularly the information relating to survival. It is the brain’s muscle of memory.

Memories are different than memory. The part of the brain in which our memories reside is encrusted with all sorts of images, mostly of the past, covering our head like a veil.

When something new is dropped on to that thick layer of thoughts and remembrances, it gets more difficult to recall. Like a sponge. It absorbs the things we live most intensely, sucking them up.

There is a Zen story that tells of a Japanese master who received a university professor.

The professor came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in, the Zen Master, served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and he kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself.   

“It is overfull. No more will go in!”

  “Like this cup,” the Master said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?” (Gary Zukav, The Zen Lee Masters.)

Some people let shadows of dark events stay in their minds dragging the past into the present while others chose to get rid of them and continue on with life.