I'm not sure where I am going today with my thoughts and feelings so I'm not sure what this entry will end up being about, if anything at all. I'm just going to follow my energy as it flows onto this page. This feels appropriate to me since lately I feel as though I've followed my energies as they've flowed out of me and I'm feeling pretty good about that and about things in general.
I've been very emotional lately. Marcia says it's because I am having a yoga growth spurt (my interpretation of her words, not her words exactly). I don't know the genesis but I do know I want to cry a lot lately and have started to a few times (almost want to right now and have NO clue why). And no, I'm not afraid to admit that (although I must admit, this culture of ours does tend to keep me from letting the tears flow freely when they do start to appear). There is something about the length of time we spend on this planet and the amount of that time that we have to do the things we really love that has really been affecting me lately. I watch my beautiful girls doing beautiful things and growing up to be beautiful little people and I'm reminded of what it's like to be a growing, innocent, learning, oblivious little child. Sometimes it makes me yearn to go back to those days, to relive what I now realize was such a precious time. I yearn even more to make my girls understand this. But how do you communicate 33 years of mistakes and learning and experience to a 4 and 6 year old mind?
Speaking of crying, I had a sociology professor in college who was a native east Indian and I clearly remember him one day telling us that almost every night before he went to bed he would cry. He said it released an abundance of toxins and was an amazing release. I've always held that in my mind but I've never brought myself to try it. I think I'm afraid I'll think I'm depressed if I cried that much. I wonder if it works. Seems very yogic to me in it's principle.
Anyway, I've also been doing that spiritual thing I mentioned at the end of my last entry. I think it's only served to contribute to my aforementioned emotionalism. I've been struggling down my Path searching for answers lately to questions that I know from many, MANY side trips in the past, have no friggin' answer. At least not one that satisfies this yogin. I want to know Why. I want to know What. The frustrating thing to me about those questions is that they are so damn easy to ask and have only one possible answer. And although I feel that answer and live that answer, I still pose the question over and over and in different forms. The other frustrating thing to me is that the form the answer tends to take in my reality is not a form that is personally satisfying to me. I long for something that I've yet to discover. Something more than faith.
I remember a trip I took with two close friends one summer during my college years. We drove from Michigan to Bozeman, Montana to climb the tallest peak in Montana which is aptly named Granite Peak and is considered one of the most challenging peaks in the lower 48 even though it's only 12,799 feet at its peak. I had never climbed a mountain of that height before but had done a lot of rock climbing at that point so I was not afraid. I was inspired by stories of one of the friends I was with who had climbed it the previous summer. The energy of his experience was the magnet that led us there. I wanted to feel that energy and he of course, wanted to experience it again. I had faith that I could climb that mountain and I had faith that I would reach that summit and most importantly, I had faith that I would feel that energy once I got there. I did all those things. It was unbelievable. I can't even begin to describe it and will not denigrate it by attempting to. Today it remains one of the most vivid memories I have of my past. This is the kind of "something more" I am talking about. That is why I am on this Journey. I am looking for that reward that comes from searching and then finding. I haven't experienced the finding part yet.
I've also been struggling down my Path because I want to make some changes within me and although I am spending time and energy cultivating these changes, I have made very little progress. I keep thinking that if I feed this need for change, the change will grow and blossom and become real. Well, I am feeding it and it is definitely not growing. These changes I desire lie dormant yet perched bluntly right in front of my damn face. How I yearn this desire to take wing from dormancy, and I with it, over the walls of my ego, the mountains of my past and out of the shadows of those mountains into the sunrise of a new tomorrow and the warmth from the sun of that change. Sorry, I often wax poetic. I think this may explain some of the frustration I've felt in the past several weeks. I'm up against a wall. One which seems to require tools that I presently do not possess. Tools that I must continue to seek out.
I love words. Words create grace. Words are a beautiful escape. I've been searching for beautiful words within myself for as long as I can remember. I've written many words down on paper but I rarely feel as though they match the beauty of others words that have inspired me.
Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, for notes a dove,
Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough thy soul from afar above
Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose fire is the fount of love.
"He worked unwearily from the sunrise of youth, to the sunset of old age, and then in the sweet nightfall of death, lighted by the starry promises, went home, taking his sheaves with him. Mounting from earthly to heavenly service, I doubt not there were a great multitude that thronged heaven's gate to hail him into the skies, - those whose sorrows he had appeased, whose burdens he had lifted, whose guilty souls he had pointed to a pardoning God, whose dying moments he had cheered, whose ascending spirits he had helped up on the wings of sacred music. I should like to have heard that long, loud, triumphant shout of heaven's welcome. I think that the harps throbbed with another thrill, and the hills quaked with a mightier hallelujah. Hail! ransomed soul! Thy race run, - thy toil ended! Hail to the coronation!"
Preacher man talkin' on the TV,
He's a-puttin' down the rock 'n' roll.
He wants me to send a donation,'cos he's worried about my soul.
He said: "Jesus walked on the water," And I know that is true,
But sometimes I think that preacher man,
Would like to do a little walkin', too.
But I ain't askin' nobody for nothin',
If I can't get it on my own.
You don't like the way I'm livin',
You just leave this long-haired country boy alone.