"NO MUD, NO LOTUS,"
the sign reads, as I saunter into work to (finally!) pick up my paycheck.
Tasting the sweetness of this simple statement, a shit-eating grin enlivens my face.
We're all trying to buy our way to enlightenment while forgetting that the only way there is through the thick sludge.
I walk into the back room where a gorgeous bouquet of pink roses and carnations awaits my arrival. "Happy Birthday," my co-workers cheer. "Who are the flowers from?" their inquiring minds want to know. And I laugh at the messiness of it all and how learning to respect myself - by putting me first - has been the toughest lesson yet. In fact, I am still tending to it.
Last night, while tending to the needs of a soul sistar, her eldest son beecame enraged. Charging at his younger brother, I jumped up to place my body in the way of his oncoming attack. Pressing his belly into mine, his arms and fists went wildly careening beehind me where his younger brother found refuge. His love for me coupled with the lack of resistance that he met brought his emotional body to its breaking point. He removed himself from the room, threw his withered soul onto his mom's bed and cried his almost ten-year-old eyes out. Soon, she left me to tend to cleanup time in order to hold, support and listen to her sweet child.
In those moments, I felt a little deeper into this collective mess that we're all in. Last weekend, after that Full Moon Lunar Eclipse and a Friday night spent attending a few of my soul sistars' graduation from ShaktiRising and then helping to hold ecstatic dance space, I awoke Saturday morning with a profound clarity. "It's anger," I said to my lover.
In full compassion and self-understanding, I knew then where my adulthood of resistance and resentment was rooted. As I traced all of this un-expressed e-motion back, I saw its beginnings - helplessness. Last night, that was what I once again saw in motion - the consequences that powerlessness wreaks in our lives. It reminded me of a time when, as a girl child, I was forced to retrieve the thick, leather belt so that my sister - my beloved teacher and most favorite person in the whole, wide world! - could receive a beating with it right there in front of my eyes.
The noxious pit that sinks into one's stomach in these moments doesn't go away - it grows and grows and grows, until we're addicted and distracted, we're homeless and distraught, we're allowing for continued abuse and disrespect. We're so confused we can't even see straight. It takes a lot of undoing. It requires great effort to allow the fake lotus to drop away and to stay firm in the muck - trusting that the only way back out, is through.
