Sometimes it dawns on me that we are a nation that is grasping on to death, instead of holding presence in life. We remember the dead but we forget our living, forget self remembrance, forget that we are striding on a precious holy path.
***
- First step would be to name it. Name the anger. Name the fear. To acknowledge it. To own it.
- Next stage would be to experience it fully. Feel it in the body. Feel it rising, tiding, flowing, growing.
- Third stage would be to understand that it is only a passing energy. It is not me. Dis-identification. Dis-owning.
- Last stage would be to drop the name. Drop the categorisation. Drop the discrimination. And with it, let it flow away, subside. Release. Let it go.
***
I’ve been practicing for a year and a half now. I’ve been treading the path of searching for a cure from the dis-ease for half a decade. But only now for the first time I was able to understand that the pressure I’ve been feeling in my chest while meditating is fear. That this is how my fear feels like. And that underneath it sits anger. That a clenching jaw and ringing in my ears are how an anger in me feels like (instead of the belief that I sometimes have ringing in my ears cause i’m a bit deaf). That sweaty palms are how the fear feels like (instead of the belief that it’s my genetics to be prone to sweaty hands).
Three decades i’ve been treading this earth, below this sky, and I’ve been so desensitised from my body and sensations that only now I learn how fear feels like. How anger feels like.
Up until now when doing my practice, I would feel energies coming and going. But I could not differentiate which is which and what is what. And I expected to let all the tensions go without even knowing what this tension was before it got stuck and became a tension. So how could I let it go without knowing what it is that i’m letting go of?
***
A forthway teacher I was studying with (weird human language would call her “my teacher”, except that she is not mine to own…) received a massive shock, in the form of a stroke, a while ago. To put it in her words- she was given another opportunity in this world in this body. She told me that up until now when her students would ask her what is the second conscious shock, she would tell she does not know [the first conscious shock is self remembering]. Now, after her stroke-shock, she told me, she knows.
“The second conscious shock is die before you die”.
***
Im not there yet, at the dying before the death, cause in order to die I first must live fully… And in order to live a life that is worth living I must self remember and I have to name my fears, name my angers, and then experience them, drop their names and drop them.
In order to live a life worth living, I learn to stand and walk in new ways. I try to remember the practice of self remembering while doing the stretching exercises in the Bone and Body Clinic that aligns my spine. To remember the tingling sensation inside my feet on the ground when doing the intense demanding stretching exercises. To hold, hold the energy, during the breaks in between. Not to leak it through parasite movements of stretching my shirt and scratching my nose. To remember, during the “in-breath-out-breath in-breath-out-breath”, my soul. To remember, during the “in-out-out” that feelings as energy flows in and out. To remember, during the “and it’s 10-9-8…” to try and count for myself and work the intellectual center along-with the moving one. To remember, during the “HOLD!”, to breath. To let the tears come if they wish, cause also the emotional center has a role. And not to make a drama out of it all. Smile?
Joy.
To work with Joy!
To stretch with joy? To experience joy while intentionally suffering?
Cause in order to live a life worth living, it’s time to be able to be out in the sun and see the world in the bright light that I’ve been avoiding due to 10 years of migraines that needles my eyes with pain of the light. To see myself in the light.
Cause in order to live a life worth living, it’s time to align my spine, it’s time to acknowledge the fear and the anger, it’s time to learn anew how to stand, how to walk, how each feeling feels like, how to name it, how to drop the naming, and then finally how to drop the stuck emotions.
To die before I die, is to start really Living while I’m still alive. To remember, while I’m sleepwalking, to wake up. In breath. Out breath. Light and sun. Air and waves. Hold. Release. Let go.