At the fabulous Week of Biggification in Asheville, we asked a lot of questions.
And we asked them after doing hilariously brain-meltingly impossible rounds of Shiva Nata, so that we were in a state of complete and utter mind scramble.
Catching ourselves in that moment of chaos-meets-order while the new connections are still being made.
I call this stone skipping.
You drop the question and it ripples out into places you haven’t been.
And you find out what you know about what you didn’t know.
You can also do this without being a shivanaut. Your answers might be slightly less trippy but the unscrambled brain still knows a lot about a lot.
Some of what I got, directly from my journal …
1. What’s missing?
Uh, aside from a lesson plan? And the ability to connect to what I need? And relief from my throbbing head?
Trust.
But it’s more than that.
Curiosity.
If I can be curious about how I am when I’m sick …
Instead of being in the whyyyyyy of why am I sick.
If I can be curious about how I care for myself instead of why I feel so bad …
This brings me back to my power.
And when I am in my power, it does not matter that I am sick.
I mean, it doesn’t help me in the moment necessarily. But it gives me freedom.
It gives me a buffer.
So instead of trying to radiate power, which sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t…
I need to activate this quality of CURIOSITY.
2. What am I here to do?
Create passages.
Document passages.
Walk through passages.
Establish culture.
This is very different than that yoga-teacher-ey phrase “holding the space” — though I actually know what that means now.
I am here to let them teach and learn, to be in my boundaries, to be the shining clear light, to play and laugh.
I am here to withdraw. Seclusion without isolation. I am here to study culture. I am here to recognize why.
What does that mean?
I am here to “recognize why”? Huh? What is that supposed to mean?
It’s pattern-mapping and pattern-tracking.
It’s truth-sourcing.
It’s locating what is the cause.
Okay. I still don’t know what I think about that.
Think Herodotus. Be interested in the cause behind the cause.
3. What is true?
That some things do take time, but not every process needs a lot of time. That I am ready.
That I have the resources I need. That there IS something useful about this illness, and I can figure out what it is.
And I can challenge them to figure out what to do to make this voyage a voyage.
What makes a voyage a voyage?
SEPARATION | TRANSITIONS | SECLUSION | CURIOSITY | PLAY
Yes. Show them that.
4. What do I know about transitions?
They can gradually happen with more ease. I am done with the rough passages.
It is safe for me to cross these crossings. Anything else?
This is a fairly big one right now so be easy on yourself.
Stay in the curiosity. That’s where your power is.
Oh? Am I talking to myself in a variety of tenses now? Yes, yes, you are.
5. What do I know?
About possibility.
——–> Possibility can still be stable.
The way that a chair is composed of particles. Yes.
There are always more options than I think there are.
I can’t choose wrong. It’s impossible.
Because once I see beyond the either this or either that, there is a wealth of possibility. And each one is its own world. And each of those worlds is good.
As long as my choice is a conscious one and not choice-through-limitation… I can go where I like.
So where would I like to go?
To the treasure.
Then.
So then we asked “where is the treasure?”
And we asked it every single day, which was kind of awesome.
Of course there were many more questions and many more answers, some of which I can share with you if you’re interested.
But the main thing is: play!
Do any of these questions appeal to you? Or scare you? Or something?
If you’d like to answer one or two of them (or as many as you like) and see what comes up, that would be fun.
You can share or not share. It’s all fine by me.
You can call “Silent Retreat!” and go hide. You can think about other questions or other answers.
You can do whatever you like. And here’s the comment zen for today.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff.
We play. We’re curious. We meet people where they are. We don’t give unsolicited advice. We have been known to wear silly hats.
That is all.
Kisses to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads!
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The treasure is the play. Exactly.
Wonderful. So much wonderful. So glad you’re back and recovering!
Oh? Am I talking to myself in a variety of tenses now? Yes, yes, you are.
I do this all the time in my private journal. 😀
I would love to see more questions from you, and your answers. These things are wonderful to read – entertaining and illuminating all at once. And I think I will try my hand at a few of these myself, because this is one of the safest spaces I can think of for such answers.
…
1. What’s missing?
Trust. It got kidney-punched in about three different ways in August, and it shriveled up and fell into a coma.
Peace. This is related to sovereignty and personal space – if I can recognize my sovereignty, if I can breathe and hold/fill my space, I can create peace. But it’s been really hard to manage both at the same time since August, and I’ve been lacking peace as a result.
The feeling of safety. (I have actual concrete safety; I just don’t feel it. It’s not emotionally real to me.) I need peace to feel safe, and I can hopefully start healing my trust within that feeling of safety.
Empathy. I shut down my emotional connections to 99% of everyone in my life as a result of lack-of-trust and fear and pain. My energy and time has been spent on keeping myself as okay as possible, which is the right thing for me, but I really am looking forward to when I’m capable of opening back up to connection.
2. What am I here to do?
Specifically, right now, in this point and time? Heal. Take the time, make the space, take care of myself, gently explore the wounds, and start mending my broken bits. Regrow trust. Acknowledge the pain and let it go.
In general, in my life? Learn. Evolve. Thrive. In that order, and then rinse and repeat, forever.
3. What is true?
I’m hurt. I can heal. Like a strike in martial arts, I am strong when it is time for strength and fluid at all other times.
Vulnerability is not weakness. This Is Important. Vulnerability is not weakness.
…
I think that’s good for now. Planting seeds in the heart and waiting to see if they’ll take.
I think I would be well-served to do these questions as well. Lost my mojo and I still haven’t figured out why or how, or more importantly how to get it back.
That said, what you said about observing and culture made me think of anthropologists, or someone like Jane Goodall. Scientific, no judgment, no interference, just being with the problem and the effects. Love it. 🙂
I want to wear a silly hat! Pick me! Pick me!
Trust is missing here. I am looking for it. Maybe it is like the ladybugs at the end of Under the Tuscan Sun, and trust will come when I finally quit looking for it. More likely it is like love in One Crazy Summer. I just have to get past all the big fluffy bunnies.
Loved the questions on “what do I know – about possibility”. Got me thinking. Thanks!
“I can’t choose wrong”
This de-lurked me after over a year…..I think I knew this but now I *know* it……thank you!!
Bxx
I’m playing with the question: Where is the treasure? I don’t think I’ve quite found my way to the deep inner click yet, but here’s what I have so far:
Where is the treasure?
It’s right here. In kindness. In humor. In the space where they meet.
Oh! Treasure is in my body. In touch. When I touch, I go deeper, into terra incognita.
That’s where the buried treasure lies.
That’s a shortcut.
When I allow my spirit to be fully in my body, the treasure is everywhere.
Hmmm. Perhaps there is a click here, after all.
oh oh OH!! I SO needed to read this today, thank you 🙂 I shed a layer of skin on Monday and spent yesterday smarting at the rawness of it all and desperately wanting to crawl back into the old skin. But now I look at it and realize that it’s brown and scaly and withered and doesn’t fit any more and I don’t really want it any way.
But now here I am about to set out on the rest of my journey in raw skin, knowing there’s a path that only I can follow but not sure where it is or what it looks like.
Thank you for your comment about it being impossible to make a mistake – that’s the fear for me, the fear of blundering around taking endless wrong first steps. I realise that rather than setting off straight away it would be better to stand still and let my new skin grow stronger, to sniff the air and hear the wind until I hear the right path calling to me.
Thank you – I shall wait to be called
Possibility, where art thou? (Forgive me, I’m functioning on way too little sleep.) I tend to automatically choose out of limitation and assume that I can’t possibly have what I want, and I’m sure I get so wrapped it up thinking about what I can’t have that I utterly ignore other possibilities. Does that make the sense? Anyway, yes, possibility…something for me to think about and dream about and dance about.
Ooo, questions, yes, I need to ask myself more of them.
But first, I wanted to say that what rang clear as a bell for me was this: “hilariously brain-meltingly impossible” … “a state of complete and utter mind scramble” … but even more brilliantly, THIS: “Catching ourselves in that moment of chaos-meets-order while the new connections are still being made.”
AHA! I think, in my Shiva Nata practice, I’ve been focusing too much on making the connections, instead of revelling in the sensation of not having those connections yet. Oooh! I’m not doing enough scrambling– and I’m ending up with OVER EASY instead! OH NO! I need my yolk to be more messed up! More delicious chaos!
I’m flailing, but often stopping to correct myself. I’m worried about learning it wrong, about practicing it wrong, and forgetting that wrong is beautifully right, here! I didn’t decide to learn Shiva Nata to learn Shiva Nata, but to learn to let my mind find new ways to be, and new insights into ME! I need to follow my meandering mind, not force it to study the thing that set it wandering!
So, instead of “thinking about Shiva Nata” after I do it, I’m going to try one of these open questions instead, and see what happens. Right now! 🙂