A breath for these tough times

Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.

Announcement on Emergency Calming Down Techniques

I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.

Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques, and it helps.

I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤

Cosmically involved and signs on signs

Lunar

During the band break, I asked JT if he had seen the lunar eclipse and he had not, and so we walked two blocks up to the corner after the alleyway, and somehow, inside of the city, there is a perfect pocket of skyscape that opens up right there.

Right place right time. The moon was gorgeous and vibrant, all snuggled up with its crescent shadow, both of them glowy against a velvety-black moody sky backdrop.

I would describe this moment that we shared as charged, but not by any particular flavor.

Charged, but not by any particular flavor

Two humans, taking a moment to breathe in the magnificence of the sky. Shared wonder.

And this magnificence simply being there, despite or maybe even enhanced by the incongruity of the urban surrounding, which almost folded in on itself, fading away.

Nothing more and nothing less: a moment in the magnificence.

Or really, a moment in the cognizance of the magnificence.

What a thing

What a thing, to flow into a moment that is simple and pure, charged up with magic, washing over you with sweetness…

And then to flow out again, back to pavement, the familiar, the pull of music and conversation, endless variations on “how was your week”, connecting and reconnecting.

A cluster, a constellation

I joined a cluster of people I know and don’t know who were all gathered outside, and there was a cool witchy looking lady who I happen to know is eighty years old. Imagine long white hair and so many rings, cat-eye glasses. If I knew her name, I have long since forgotten it.

Once upon a time we danced together at a dive bar, and one of the musicians introduced her to me as his spiritual guide. Portland, Oregon, being very much itself.

We stood in an odd grouping, like we were mapping a constellation. I loved every single one of these people, I loved this act of [partaking in a clustering, together], and how it was the right way to transition from the magic of the sky into a different magic, a raucous show at a divey bar.

Cosmically involved

Had we seen the eclipse, this was the conversation, and the witchy lady declared emphatically, “No, I haven’t, but it’s happening and I am COSMICALLY INVOLVED.”

I love this so much. Love to be cosmically involved.

Love to be cosmically involved

Love some good Certainty. Love a calm declarative knowing. Love to know something with clear clarity and have that knowing be enough.

Hell yeah you’re cosmically involved. What a thing to know about yourself. What a thing to know about the cosmos and your relationship to it. We are involved.

Cosmically involved to me feels like attunement, connection, awareness, and there is something flirty about it too. I clocked this witchy lady, and she clocked me, because in that moment we were cosmically involved.

Involved, in an uninvolved way

Involved in that moment, and sharing that involvement.

Involved like attuned. Or some form of tuning to ourselves and to each other and also to the moment. Yes, okay, something about this. Attuned, in some way.

I am not ever attaching meaning to the attunement, that is the practice, the beautiful moment is the beautiful moment, then the next moment is what it is.

My job is to stay receptive to the moment that is, to stay in the ongoing noticing of what I want and need in order to take care of myself, moment to moment.

A sign

Right where I experienced a magical moment in which I felt extremely cosmically involved, there was also a sign.

A literal one. It said: GOOD LUCK DANIEL ITALY AWAITS.

GOOD LUCK

DANIEL

ITALY AWAITS

Like a poem. Sweet and hopeful. Anything is possible, good luck out there, Italy awaits. You’ve got this, Daniel. You are about to have a grand adventure. I felt lit up by this sign, in an internal way.

A progression

August 30th was a tremendous day for me, in a cosmically involved sort of way. Full of clues and beauty, sparkling with transcendent moments.

It is also the day before the day I wrote this essay, up until the paragraph right before this one, and then the whole thing had to be put on hold…

And now here I am I am returning to it, or really, coming to it new. Arriving.

Arriving

Arriving full of awe and wonder at what was, before the interruption…

I didn’t even realize at the time how I had been writing about or describing a progression of sweet, sustaining moments.

A constellation of light sparks, so many clues and signs, so much awe and wonder. And I needed all of it.

As if every single piece was already there to help me stay cosmically involved.

Steady, Ground

On Sunday, August 30th, I went to yoga class, and the theme was staying steady on unsteady ground.

On steady ground, the teacher said, a four-legged chair or table is the most stable configuration if you want to have a picnic, for example. But on unsteady ground, you want a tripod shape.

And what is this life if not an experience in unsteady ground, an ever-shifting landscape.

In which case..how can we configure ourselves in and out of shapes to seek stability in the unstable places, given that there are going to be more unsteady places than not.

Mostly unsteady ground ahead

Such is the nature of being a person and existing, right?

There is a lot of not-steady, a lot of times that the path feels treacherous at best, or at least that is my experience. Can I reconfigure as needed, activating tripod mode?

It’s not so much that I am seeking steady ground, as that I am seeking to learn how to be a self-stabilizing creature who knows how to scramble well and playfully…

Like a goat, like a mountain lion…

Instructions, built right in

I really like this phrase STEADY GROUND.

And as I say this, I am thinking about K, the somatic body worker who helps me with trauma stuff. And how if they were reading this, they would ask me, with a playful smile: “How do you know that you like this phrase? And where in your body do you know this?”

Okay! I like how it sounds like a secret instruction, offered as an imperative: “Steady, ground.”

As in: Steady yourself and ground yourself. There is unsteady ground ahead, there usually is, so do what is needed for that.”

Where I feel it in my body is like this effervescent energy coursing upward through my legs and down, a circuit of energy, power to and from the earth.

Vortex

Sunday evening I went to a secret dance party in a warehouse where about thirty extremely skilled dancers met to dance a framed improvisational partner dance that has no steps, just breathing within an embrace until moved by breath, finding shared language in micro.

Someone extended a hand and we melted into embrace, and I don’t know how to describe what happened next but we disappeared into a vortex.

A place of inky depths, but it didn’t feel dangerous. I simply (and simple is the word for it, it just happened) found myself in another dimension where everything was deep, dark, sweet, intense and timeless.

It is time to come back into time

I remember being astonished when the event ended, trying to re-find the kind of ground that is on planet earth.

I wanted to vortex more with this person, or to vortex more with anyone willing to drop-drop-drop into the void with me.

And also it was time to be a person on earth again who can get in a car and drive safely, so that I can navigate the steadiness and the unsteadiness of the ground, right here, where we are in not-vortex.

Monday, August 31

On Monday, the last day of August, I was thinking about tripod superpowers and being able to source stability within the greater unsteadiness.

And I was daydreaming about disappearing into the vortex again, the place of the highest most transcendent dance magic that is entirely grounded, and yet not-here, not-this, an entirely new “here I am”.

I went to Yoga Church which is not a church but an intense yoga class that is its own form of vortex, an hour of sweating bullets flowing steadily to 90s club music (does anyone else remember dancing all night long to Freed From Desire), and practiced being stable while slippery.

Stable while slippery, or any form of staying X while experiencing Y

Then I wrote for an hour following the themes that are interesting to me currently:

Steady Ground. The Unsteady Places (most places). The Art of Not Being Attached To Steadiness but still channeling stabilizing abilities and does this have a name.

Being (and remaining) Cosmically Involved. What do I know about the transitions between the more Heightened States of Cosmically Involved, for example moving between the Vortex and the mundane.

What delicious themes to investigate

One good theme invites another, and I got into what is, to me, the interesting question:

Is it possible to sustain some of the qualities from these heightened states when I am not in one? Can I be as thrilled about GOOD LUCK DANIEL ITALY AWAITS on a day when I am irritable and stuck in traffic as I am when I have just been blessed by cosmic wonder.

How can I use the stabilizing powers of being a tripod who is also a beam of light when things get unsteady? And so on.

How is your energy today, babe? This is what Rachel always asks me. Can I let the answer to this surprise me…

Well-resourced

So I was exploring these questions but also in some way I was coasting on pure magic, because these powerful experiences in yoga and dance and in-and-with the cosmos had me feeling bubbly, vibrant, in a thrill of extra-aliveness.

I was noticing how fun and surprising it was, after this hell year of betrayals, months on end feeling exhausted, sad and hurting, to suddenly check in with my energy and find that it feels sparkly. I am well-resourced, I thought. How is my energy? My energy is amazing!

And then my brother called to let me know that our dad had just died, extremely unexpectedly.

(GOOD LUCK DANIEL ITALY AWAITS)

Well (well well)

The past month has been somewhat blurry because I have been busy (busy? occupied?) moving through the world in slow motion like a beam of underwater light.

And at the same time, I know and am endlessly grateful for, how well-resourced I was in that moment.

Well-resourced, like having a well. Like being a well. A well being of well-being.

Able to be well because I was able to be a well.

Well set up

Everything that happened from the lunar eclipse to the moment of receiving the news set me up to be well-resourced:

In stability, in ground, in magic, in cosmic alignment, in awe and wonder, in a heart full of hope, in finally getting to experience sparkly energy after a traumatic year of trauma, all of it.

What is ahead except constantly shifting ground and moments of instability? Maybe a lot of that, and, also, light beams, effervescence, good-hearted people I can play with and share moments of cosmically involved.

We can set up a tripod table in a good spot, we can meet the surface that is, and draw from the depths, we can have a picnic in a beam of light, or in a clearing in the forest, or drink passionfruit elixir in a shower of stardust.

Good luck Daniel, Italy awaits

What is next? More picnics, more moments, the ground might be unsteady but also Italy awaits.

We can have a lot of grand adventures on this unsteady earth, or on this steady earth full of unsteadying experiences.

I will tell you some other time about what this last month was like for me. For now I want to leave you with some hopeful hoping and a sense of some good cosmic beaming for the collective.

Here we are, humans having moments, sometimes freed from desire, sometimes embodying all the desires at once.

And sometimes it is so impossibly beautiful to be alive, and sometimes it is so very hard to be a person, and I hope I can hold both of these with a lot of tenderness, because that is also the practice. Good luck to us, whatever awaits.

And a tiny postscript

Tonight is Eres (Eve) of Sukkot, which is the the anniversary of my mother’s death in the Hebrew calendar. I am lighting a candle for her, and lighting a candle for my dad, and lighting candles, generally, for the good of the whole.

You are welcome to light a candle too, and it can happen in your mind or heart, imaginary candles are good too.

I love that we get to co-sparkle, and imaginary candles are as good a way as any.

May it be so, or something even better

Here’s to choosing life and aliveness, and being here, even when it is so fucking hard (and often it is), and to learning about ourselves, and finding some sparks if we can, or staying receptive to future sparks if we can.

I love you, I love that you read my thoughts here, thank you for that. It means a lot to me.

Let’s source some wild joy, some loving clarity, or whatever is needed most, let’s play.