Moon Musing #11 - Why Stir the Pot?
A critical reflection for us at the junction of this full moon portal is to assess within ourselves how we are choosing comfort and growth at this time
One of the dominant paradoxes of the modern age is the conundrum of reaching for a life of comfort and ease while requiring discomfort in order to grow. That means there has to be a voluntary discomfort for those of us who embody lives of privilege. In this sense perhaps privilege can be simply defined as possessing choices.
While teaching in a non-traditional high school we promoted a simplified form of this paradox guiding students to consider the differences between a growth mind-set and a comfort mind-set. Beauty and comfort is a shared birthright, but something about the lethargy and apathy that modern life induces, comfort can become a sticky situation described as inertia (tamas).
It is so easy to then champion growth-mind set as the aspirational model of busyness so that one cannot be labeled as lazy or complacent. Keep growing, grow or die, growth is the only way are slogans that come to mind (rajas). My experience is that the right amount of effort lives in the intersection of these two opportunities - comfort and growth. This concept further explains itself in the South Asian triguna model of the cosmic creative forces: tamas (inertia), rajas (over-activity) and sattva (balance, on the way to communion with the divine).
A symbol associated with this full moon cycle is the lotus flower. It requires a muddy, watery environment to flourish and encapsulates a regenerative model in its growth and death cycle. Mud is an interesting symbol, sometimes seen in a positive fertile light and sometimes seen as muck and defilement. In a patriarchal view, the mud in which the lotus flower roots itself is the stuff covering the divine nature of a human and the growth cycle of the lotus plant pushing up from the mud through the waters of consciousness and reaching towards the light-nourishment of the sun is indicative of the process by which the human soul cleanses itself of its defilements as it aspires to return to the heaven of the Divine.
This is a common upward reaching, ascension model that espouses an inherently negative nature of earth and anything connected to its substance and fertility. Earth matter is lower and heavenly matter is higher, thus one must balk at the earthly experience as lesser-than what could be experienced in merging with the divine (seen in a masculine form). We have seen this model weaponized as spiritual bypass and used to enforce authoritarian leadership models resulting in the continuation of systems of harm masquerading as systems of liberation.
Can we liberate mud from this interpretation?
The mud of this body resides in the inner earth and water elements that permeate the whole body and also in the locus of the pelvic bowl. Our creativity, fertility and nourishment require the mixing of earth and water into mud. Our ancestors built with it, cooked in it, ate on it and covered themselves in it for health, healing and beautification. Our body frequencies harmonize when we handle earth, our microbiome stabilizes as we interact with it. I have witnessed its mineral rich composition heal bone breaks in less than 24 hours.
The Grand Mosque in Djenne, Mali built in the traditional style with mud
A visit last week to a ceramics cooperative in Fez, Morocco. Tagine (cookware) is made from grey clay by hand then fired, glazed, fired and sometimes painted.
The lotus is not trying to escape the mud, rather the beauty of its penultimate expression as the flower is directly dependent on its gestation in the nutrient-rich firmament of the mud. For once it blooms, it goes to seed and those seeds drop into the mud in order to fertilize for another cycle of maturation. Where does the lotus experience comfort and where does the lotus experience growth?
You know, there are ways to talk to the plant siblings. We call it Plant Spirit Medicine and it is one of the ways our ancestors cataloged the knowledge of the Plant Beings. The journey begins with research and observation to learn as much as you can about the plant companion. Then we draw them in detail in all of their stages. We must pass a full solar- cycle in order to complete that task. Then we simply sit with the plant in meditation for many hours. We ask permission to commune with the plant. If given the opening, we may merge with the Plant Being to authentically experience existence from their perspective. This is how our ancestors knew well before the scientific age that plants are sentient beings.
A critical reflection for us at the junction of this full moon portal is to assess within ourselves how we are choosing comfort and growth at this time. I am in the midst of processing an extraordinary week spent at a martial-arts ashram that teaches Qi Gong, Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Chinese Boxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Sufi and Buddhist philosophy. The setting was amongst simple comfort, the regularity of an ashram lifestyle and abundant beauty with flowers blooming all around and copious fruiting trees. Chickens, bunnies, cats and peacocks roamed freely amongst the olive tree groves.
The idyllic paradise just outside Marrakech, Morocco was an excellent scene to push oneself well out of their comfort zone. The physical training was challenging, four and a half hours a day, and the morning began with meditation at 6:30am. What I discovered in the design of the experience was ample time for rest between activities, nourishing food, deep sustinance for the soul, lots of vocalization practice and a balance of stillness (yin) and movement (yang) practice.
During the orientation, an emphasis was put on rest. Use each of the designated rest times for just that - complete rest. What a simple and profound invitation. The message was not to work as hard as you can or give all your effort. Sure, there were sometimes in the yang training portions where we did that but they too were followed by 1-2 minute rest periods. As the week progressed I felt more and more myself and a deep feeling of inner contentment grew.
One of the reasons I love martial arts so much is because I am a naturally angry/passionate person and I’ve discovered that the best way to manage this character circumstance is to employ a view of alchemy. Engaging a transformational process where these energies have a way to express themselves through short vigorous exercise and vocalization practice, I can then come into the harmonization piece within the stillness practices and find synergy both within my body and with the whole of the natural world including earth and the cosmos.
It has taken multiple decades and countless cycles of inertia and over-activity to be able to touch the experience of the contentment of sattva. The equipoise remains for some time and then I am back into the cosmic creative dance of interplay. As the Mother Tantras teach: we are not trying to transcend the triguna model, we find our liberation within it. There is no other place to be than right here on Earth, navigating the muck, learning, growing and being inspired by the creative cycles of the cosmos.
Announcements:
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Wonderful -- and love this "There is no other place to be than right here on Earth, navigating the muck, learning, growing and being inspired by the creative cycles of the cosmos. "
Yesterday I went to the first heated yoga class I had been to in a very long time. It was only 45 minutes, a hybrid of some vinyasa and HIIT. The movement didn't bother me, but the heat was kicking my ass. It may be that I wasn't as hydrated as I needed to be, but also my constitution was speaking to me very loudly, "We put up with you doing this shit for a very long time and when you realized it wasn't for all of us, you stopped. Now you are putting us through this again. No, thank you." One more example of how people ignore what is best for them. That's what came up as you talked about yin/yang.
I can totally relate to anger/passion and I can't wait to get started with martial arts.