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"Somebody's laughing right now..."

"Somebody's being born right now; somebody's dying right now; somebody's laughing right now; somebody's crying right now." This is a thread from one of the countless conversations my daughter and her friends shared together on the sand, under the sun at the beach Friday. I was there, too, at the beach, on the sand, with a circle of my own friends. We were the parents, so we kept to the perimeter where we shared other conversation, taking turns being vigilant and staying out of the way.

When a friend called yesterday to tell me that her husband--also a good friend--had only hours before ended his life, I thought of my daughter and the children of my friends innocently sending these proclamations about life into the wind and out across the ocean the day before. Here now was the truth of them, rolling back in with the tide, and crashing down upon our lives.

It makes no sense to ask "why," even though I spent the better part of yesterday on the phone with mutual friends participating in dialogue that could not resist the pull of this question. But, as Goethe counsels, I will attempt Because.

In his book The Soul's Code, psychologist James Hillman advances his acorn theory about personality and character. Hillman's theory comes out of the work of Carl Jung, and long before Jung, Plato and the mythologists of Greece. The abbreviated version of Hillman's theory is this: At birth, we enter the world called. Each soul has a unique image or daimon, which has been given to it to live out on earth. Like the call Denise Levertov writes of in her poem Annunciation, Hillman proposes that during childhood, we experience a moment where the curtains part and we understand what it is we are meant to do. Hillman suggests that, contrary to the idea of growing up as we move from childhood to adulthood, our growth, instead, is akin to that of all organic motion, it is one of growing down. By growing down into our lives, we send down roots, like plants, so that we may likewise rise toward the light. According to Hillman, in order to grow down into our lives, in order to get on our feet, we need a long life. While our spirits are meant to soar, they are also intended to deepen. The soul requires the darkness and the light, the rejoicing and the despairing so that we may understand the depths and the heights of our majestic natures.

In yoga, Vrksasana (Tree Pose) is an essential pose used for teaching balance to beginning students. To stand steady in this pose is to feel firmly planted. Vrksasana prepares the beginner--and hones the skills of the intermediate and advanced--for the demands of the myriad asanas that challenge our sense of balance.  What the yogi ultimately is intended to feel while standing in Vrksasana is our fundamental connection to the earth. Consider the following beginner's instructions for this pose excerpted from an online article in Yoga Journal: "Start by opening the doors of perception in your feet by rolling a tennis ball under one foot and then the other." I like this image of our feet as doorway, as clear channel, as reminder of not only our strength but of our humility. Here, then, I think, is the other sole's code. The meek shall indeed inherit the earth.

It turns out that it is much more difficult than we think to plant a foot firmly, to stay put, or as Hillman instructs to send down roots long enough to hold us here. It is tempting to take off after Icarus, abandoning our human shell for the incessant reach skyward. "Die before you die," wrote the Prophet Muhammad, and in my yoga practice, I do. I go from movement to stillness, from asana to savasana (Corpse Pose), from holding on to surrendering in each session. In savasana, I have been taught to honor Death; I practice dying before I die. I like to think that in the stillness of savasana, I am growing the rings on my personal tree, and, likewise, the wisdom that comes from the slow, steady expansion outward.

Comments

  1. Loved the imagery.

    It makes me think that in sinking our "roots" we encounter rocks and other obstacles. The hard part is sending out new roots away from or around these and finding the deep loam below. Sometimes it is hard to not just keep trying to go through these obstacles.

    ReplyDelete

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