"Why fear you?"

I've been working on a couple fear-intensive poses in my yoga practice recently: jumping into handstands by myself, dropping back into a backbend from standing. It's a funny feeling to intellectually know the ground is only six or seven inches away, and if you would just reach out and put your hands down, you could touch. But fear is a visceral thing. Your body starts freaking out, setting off red lights and screaming, "You're going to fall on your head! YOUR HEAD IS IMPORTANT STOP NOW."
I'm not going to fall on my head, of course. And even if I did fall on my head - it's not that bad. I've done it before and my skull isn't any worse for the wear. I am physically capable of dropping over backwards and putting my hands on the ground.
But I almost never do.
I wait til a teacher will come, stand, and pretend to anchor me so my head can justify diving over backwards.
I never realized before how much our heads could get in the way of things we're perfectly capable of doing. Think before you act isn't always the best policy. Periodically, my teacher will call across the room, "You! Do [crazy thing that I've never tried before] there!"
There are two reactions to this: one, which is what usually happens, is that I stop, try and process what he's saying intellectually, and wind up going, "..Huh?" and completely miss the point. Two: I don't try and understand what he's saying, and I trust he can see what my body is capable of and just do it. Almost always, with this second approach, I end up doing something I never expected myself to be capable of. Like Nike says - just do it.
My yoga teacher is a pretty wise guy. He asks good questions. And the one I keep getting lately, especially when I pop back up from a more-than-adequate hang back without touching the floor, is:

  "Why fear you?" 

 (He talks like Yoda when dispensing wisdom.) 

It applies to more than yoga.

Just twelve seconds.

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,

let's not speak any language,

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales

and the peasant gathering salt

would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothing

and would walk alongside their brothers

in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused

with final inactivity:

life alone is what matters,

I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous

about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would

interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death,

perhaps the earth is teaching us

when everything seems to be dead

and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve

and you keep quiet and I'll go.

- Pablo Neruda

Gary Snyder - What You Should Know To Be A Poet

all you can about animals as persons.
the names of trees and flowers and weeds.
names of stars, and the movements of the planets
                        and the moon.

your own six senses, with a watchful and elegant mind.

at least one kind of traditional magic:
divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot;

dreams.
the illusory demons and illusory shining gods;

kiss the ass of the devil and eat shit;
fuck his horny barbed cock,
fuck the hag,
and all the celestial angels
                              and maidens perfum'd and golden–

& then love the human: wives     husbands     and friends.

children's games, comic books, bubble-gum,
the weirdness of television and advertising.

work, long dry hours of dull work swallowed and accepted
and livd with and finally lovd. exhaustion,
                              hunger, rest.

the wild freedom of the dance, extasy
silent solitary illumination, entasy

real danger.     gambles.     and the edge of death.

Rootless...

S.J. Tucker's new song Rootless. Take a listen.

And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl proved the strongest man at last...

Today is a holiday for us pagans - the festival of first fruits, the beginning of the harvest. This year it falls on a full moon. I've only recently begun building my own small rituals, and I'm not very good at them, to be honest. It's hard, sometimes - I always feel the need to be sure of my way. I don't know what I really think in terms of theology. I know that many things have the ring of truth to them, and I find real wisdom in the wheel of the year and the turn of the seasons. I don't always know what to think about higher beings, life and death, and how the world works. But my harvest, for this year - the fruits of all the seeds planted over the past months, especially this spring and summer - is learning to sit with things. I don't have to agree or disagree. The idea doesn't have to be right or wrong. I simply have to be able to sit with it and breathe until my sensations of fear or dislike disappear and I can simply see the thing for what it is, not my feelings and theories about it.
I don't have my theology all hammered out. I don't have the universe reconciled. I don't have my goals accomplished, my life laid out, my gods known, my paths straight ahead.
 But tonight I lit candles, made cornbread, and shared an apple with the listening silence and my garden. And that, my friends, is the richness of this religion - simplicity, strength, and the time-honored echoes of the worn way. You can feel your way along such a path. All you need is a belief in this world and the rhythms of this universe. All else follows from that.

Look - look at where you are.

The scent of mint and honey rises up from all the earth;

its sweetness drifts on the many pathways of light,

whispering: my beloved...

Who could put eternity between us and this ground?

I am dark, but lovely, says an old, old song;

and all the flowers are in bloom.

How can you believe this world is only a trial of the soul?

Awakening does not mean going away.

We are made of sacred earth -

and here, amidst the saffron and the lilies -

this is our paradise.

See what this is. 

(c) AME 2012

The Yoga

"When we give something space we are practicing the physiology of kindness, offering the structure of compassion. [We are] giving respect to whatever the object is, and honoring the place this object has come out of. As we pay attention to something that is arising in this way, we create...a metaphorical burning, an awakening to what is really happening within the mind. There is often a sense of discomfort, a desire to squirm away from the situation because it is so authentic; it is as if the border of life is being eaten away by fire. ...It is important to remember that the process of yoga is the observation of what is, not the reduction of what is to our theory about it, or to our images of what we would like it to be."

- Richard Freeman

The Art of Magick

"Magic: a collection of rule-of-thumb techniques designed to get whichever [metaphysical] talents you possess to do more or less what you want them to do more often than not - you hope."

 - Isaac Bonewits