Ugly Shriveled Bulbs

 

Here in the northern hemisphere we are pivoting into the Autumn and moving towards winter. Summer-time energy – all that bright, high explosion of heat and activity that had been blossomed madly open just a month ago, is drawing back to the root, enfolding and encoding itself in preparation for deep storage, listening, waiting, not knowing.

Yoga, Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine all agree with Ma-Nature – that if we can gradually move from speed to slowness, in alignment with the turn of the seasons, we will be stronger and more resilient through the winter and have more vitality to support the blossoming that comes with spring.  Now is a good time to clean house, simplify diet, make room in the schedule of one’s week and month and maybe even plan a retreat.

“Be completely empty, perfectly serene. The 10,000 things arise and in their arising is their return…to the root.  Peace.  Tao te Ching

The very down to earth wisdom of nature and the seasons tells me about the whole universe really. Non-dual Tantra (the philosophical view that underpins Yoga at Garden Street) holds that the world tells us about the divine. Everything I will ever need to know about god/dess / heaven and earth, is in my body, my very mortal flesh and bone experience, in my life as it is, in nature, in the turn of the seasons and the way that plants grow.

According to this view, the Infinite enfolds and encodes and compresses itself into the finite, stepping down across the vibratory spectrum from unbounded light to gravity laden root to become embodiment - you and me and the 10,000 things.  In this enfoldment of infinite to finite, we become like bulbs in the earth – often deep in forgetting that we are made of Light (just as bulbs are made of sunlight and photosynthesis), forgetting that anything like a daffodil might be held inside the compression of our flesh and bone experience.

Yoga practices and wisdom call out a kind of song of remembrance, giving us a way to experience – if only in glimmers, that “There is a light that shines in the heavens, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in my heart.” Upanishads

Asana practice offers me a way to both love the bulb of my embodiment and open to the vision of a daffodil. I breathe, wait, and listen. Enfold. Unfold. Repeat. And just now, as autumn moves towards winter, I hold poses longer to consolidate life force (prana) to the root and cultivate a quiet, deep wintertime strength. And I move through my vinyasa more slowly, knowing that slow is strong. And in savasana I dream of daffodils.

From Anne Lamott

·      The earth is rocky and full of roots; it's clay, and it seems doomed and polluted, but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs, throw in a handful of poppy seeds, and cover it all over, and you know you'll never see it again - it's death and clay and shrivel, and your hands are nicked from the rocks, your nails black with soil.

·      Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.

·      The light shines in the dark ... Do we plant bulbs in the cold rocky crummy earth? Always! Do we light candles? Again--always.

From E.E. Cummings:

“in time of daffodils(who know

the goal of living is to grow)

forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim

the aim of waking is to dream,

remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze

our now and here with paradise)

forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond

whatever mind may comprehend,

remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be

(when time from time shall set us free)

forgetting me, remember me”