This weekend I danced with a partner - a real, live flesh and blood partner. In a club no less. It was a bit of a head trip. I haven't danced in a club since my party like a rockstar days. I didn't know what to wear, where to go, how to navigate... hello outside edge of my comfort zone.
I have been on a warrior's path since I can remember. Adventure beyond belief has graced my footsteps. I have traveled the human experience both externally and internally in a way few others are drawn. I have chosen to meet life on my terms, in my way, by myself.
The warrior's path is often lonely. Loneliness has been a price I am willing to pay for freedom and my quest for Truth. My physical body now asks me to explore a new way of being. Community, partnership, relatedness. All of these things confuse me.
Truth be told, I didn't think I would enjoy getting down with another body so close to me. In the last decade the few partner dancing situations I have encountered have felt heavy, like a wet blanket dropped on my dancing soul. My date blew my mind, as he loves to do. He's got rhythm, he's got style. I don't know how to follow.
As I relaxed a little I found myself getting into a groove. Over the night I never really got fully into my groove. I don't know my groove with another. I had a great time trying. I have to remember I'm learning a new skill - it takes time.
Dance is a great metaphor for life, especially for me since dance is my spiritual practice, where I come Home to mySelf. I suspect a lot of partner dancing will teach me to navigate this new era of belonging.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Surrender and Fear of Commitment
Several years ago, without knowing it, I committed to my life being a Spiritual Journey. Taking this step is one of many fortuitous accidents that continue to shape me. As a seeker I am part of several communities - ones I never fully commit to. My dance with community and humanity is asking to be explored. It is one that confounds me. As a person with serious commitment issues I anticipate this will be a curious journey over the next few years.
I am deeply and wholeheartedly committed to my development as a human being. There is nothing else I can trust with no doubt to commit to. Deep in the recesses of my heart I yearn to belong in the fabric of humanity. It is something that calls me, for my development and my contribution. Through my inner travels I have felt myself fully integrated in the natural world, woven into the thread of all existence. I KNOW in every cell of my Being I am a part of the fabric of life.
Fractured in my experience that doesn't translate to people. I trust rattlesnakes more than people - you always know what to expect with a rattlesnake! There are a lot of practical reasons for this with my history... and some lesson I don't yet know how to learn (stay tuned).
In many Spiritual Traditions surrender to a teacher is part of the process. Being who I am I doubt I will ever surrender to a human teacher (other than possibly a lover) in that way. Teachers are first and foremost human, and therefore fallible. For me to surrender I need a bigger holding environment. In my journey, at this point in time, Life herself is the teacher, the lesson and the gift of practice.
A poem I wrote in May on an experience of surrender - I recognized that a decade of dating addicts was a sign of my lack of trust for Life to provide what I really want in a partner: a Spiritual Warrior who can be Present. My surrender in the end lead to progress on my quest.
How the Light Got In (homage to Leonard Cohen)
I feel like a junkie
With my bad boy lust,
Insatiable hunger
for an adrenaline rush.
Arousal or fear?
I can’t tell the difference
It’s an addicts’ high
Compulsively I seek it.
Life on the razor’s edge, bleeding
The only way I feel a thing
The ritual seduction
with trembling desire:
Cocaine
Whips, chains
The pleasure of pain.
EVERY high ends with a crash
In unfillable emptiness
Left in his wake.
I see him in strangers
Who look nothing like him.
His hungry, strung out eyes
Haunting me
For seven years.
His love playful, generous
Accepting the wild child
more often judged.
He forgot one small thing-
His family.
Etched in my body memory
His head on my chest
“so sorry” for life
That wasn’t meant to be.
Seduced, discarded, dismissed.
Coldplay serenaded the break-up
Renegotiated several times over four years,
Not a sober day among them.
Thin white lines drew me from narcotized sleep
To the sharp, intrusive day
With an emptiness so vast not 100 bodies could fill.
Frequent, intense, fear, pain
A brain wired for addiction by violence
Adrenaline, dopamine
The cycle repeats
With felons and addicts filling the beats
A new face, a new story
A new visit to the empty well.
Seduced, discarded, dismissed.
Heroin his solace,
His imprisonment my salvation,
Recovery my quest.
Cocaine dropped in an instant
With one jarring image.
Addiction to criminal addicts
a longer journey that brings me
defeated and humbled to
Resonance
in a room full of equally broken souls.
God – grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Pathologically self-reliant.
Trust?
Fuck.
I would rather walk
Through burning forests
Slaying dragons
With one long sword.
Pathologically self-reliant.
Hot, wet tears stain my skin
with the discovery
I will be in recovery
For the rest of my life.
Please God, is there another way?
Her lips curve in a knowing smile.
She repeats. Trust.
On my knees, where I never go, pleading.
You know I will DO anything.
If I can just DO something,
I’ve got ninja skills.
Then Trust.
Give me something else I scream
Fists ready for a fight.
I have. Now Trust.
Helpless, a tear laced confession,
“I don’t know how”
In that breath peace washes over me.
Surrender. There’s trust.
I am deeply and wholeheartedly committed to my development as a human being. There is nothing else I can trust with no doubt to commit to. Deep in the recesses of my heart I yearn to belong in the fabric of humanity. It is something that calls me, for my development and my contribution. Through my inner travels I have felt myself fully integrated in the natural world, woven into the thread of all existence. I KNOW in every cell of my Being I am a part of the fabric of life.
Fractured in my experience that doesn't translate to people. I trust rattlesnakes more than people - you always know what to expect with a rattlesnake! There are a lot of practical reasons for this with my history... and some lesson I don't yet know how to learn (stay tuned).
In many Spiritual Traditions surrender to a teacher is part of the process. Being who I am I doubt I will ever surrender to a human teacher (other than possibly a lover) in that way. Teachers are first and foremost human, and therefore fallible. For me to surrender I need a bigger holding environment. In my journey, at this point in time, Life herself is the teacher, the lesson and the gift of practice.
A poem I wrote in May on an experience of surrender - I recognized that a decade of dating addicts was a sign of my lack of trust for Life to provide what I really want in a partner: a Spiritual Warrior who can be Present. My surrender in the end lead to progress on my quest.
How the Light Got In (homage to Leonard Cohen)
I feel like a junkie
With my bad boy lust,
Insatiable hunger
for an adrenaline rush.
Arousal or fear?
I can’t tell the difference
It’s an addicts’ high
Compulsively I seek it.
Life on the razor’s edge, bleeding
The only way I feel a thing
The ritual seduction
with trembling desire:
Cocaine
Whips, chains
The pleasure of pain.
EVERY high ends with a crash
In unfillable emptiness
Left in his wake.
I see him in strangers
Who look nothing like him.
His hungry, strung out eyes
Haunting me
For seven years.
His love playful, generous
Accepting the wild child
more often judged.
He forgot one small thing-
His family.
Etched in my body memory
His head on my chest
“so sorry” for life
That wasn’t meant to be.
Seduced, discarded, dismissed.
Coldplay serenaded the break-up
Renegotiated several times over four years,
Not a sober day among them.
Thin white lines drew me from narcotized sleep
To the sharp, intrusive day
With an emptiness so vast not 100 bodies could fill.
Frequent, intense, fear, pain
A brain wired for addiction by violence
Adrenaline, dopamine
The cycle repeats
With felons and addicts filling the beats
A new face, a new story
A new visit to the empty well.
Seduced, discarded, dismissed.
Heroin his solace,
His imprisonment my salvation,
Recovery my quest.
Cocaine dropped in an instant
With one jarring image.
Addiction to criminal addicts
a longer journey that brings me
defeated and humbled to
Resonance
in a room full of equally broken souls.
God – grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Pathologically self-reliant.
Trust?
Fuck.
I would rather walk
Through burning forests
Slaying dragons
With one long sword.
Pathologically self-reliant.
Hot, wet tears stain my skin
with the discovery
I will be in recovery
For the rest of my life.
Please God, is there another way?
Her lips curve in a knowing smile.
She repeats. Trust.
On my knees, where I never go, pleading.
You know I will DO anything.
If I can just DO something,
I’ve got ninja skills.
Then Trust.
Give me something else I scream
Fists ready for a fight.
I have. Now Trust.
Helpless, a tear laced confession,
“I don’t know how”
In that breath peace washes over me.
Surrender. There’s trust.
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