I had great fun this weekend with a houseguest--a new friend, a yoga teacher (in the Iyengar tradition, in the NYC OM studio tradition, etc.), a former professional dancer, a professional musician. The gifted artist with a wide range of talents. Just the kind of people I've always been drawn to. Strong elements of independence, living on the fringe of things, so to speak, a certain outer fierceness (aka control freak) coupled with an inner sweet fragility. Vulnerable, open to life. In truth, someone whose life, in many ways, has run parallel to mine. Of course, many differences, but the connectedness comes from discovering those things shared. He told me that staying here was relaxing and he felt totally decompressed. He spoke of having vivid dreams. We talked endlessly and were both silly and serious.
My step cousin committed suicide a few years ago. She was young, toying with drugs and alcohol, feeling depressed and all alone. It happens a lot. She and her mother, my aunt, had a falling out on the phone which perhaps triggered the final act of her young life and she spiraled into that place of no return. I dreamt of her last night, and my aunt and my father. My father and I were in line to view the body and we were outside near the sea, and we were both barefoot. There was a playfulness and joy to it all. As I approached the body for my personal viewing, the corpse began to stir and move. Clearly she had been dead for a long while and I wondered why the funeral was being held so many years later. In brief, she was possessed and so began my journey towards exorcising the demon within her. She constantly changed forms, from an adult to a tiny baby in a bath. Always I was trying to exorcise the occupying spirit without success. I begged a holy man for water, he had none. But he gave me a small piece of dampened cloth to apply to her body, which I did. Slowly the life began bleeding from her body, but she had recourse to counteract the bleeding. Clearly, this was not going to be an easy exorcism!
Other people mirror who we are, and those attributes we relate to, whether representative of our accomplishments or unresolved issues or yet to be achieved goals, and we see ourselves, we see aspects of ourselves. We can choose to feel good about where we are in our current life, and gaze out on the landscape of our lives with a sense of contentment; we can also be reminded of those issues that always inform us that our work is really never done. There is always something to propel us forward toward wholeness, or completeness, whether such is ever achieved or not being irrelevant.
Spring is here and it's time for cleansing. Time to gently stir from the darkness of winter and take inventory. Where are we going? What do we want? What do we need? What can we do to bring about these things? Are we being realistic and honest in setting our goals, or are we being fanciful? Fantasy is great and can reveal much about who we are, but a certain kind of common sense that comes from our gut is the best leader.
Unlike most trees, live oaks drop their leaves in the spring, not the fall. As the leaves die and fall to the ground, new leaves are growing simultaneously. Dying and rebirth are always happening, often at the same time, in the same moment. We want to cast off (exorcise) those aspects of ourselves that don't serve us, and this is a never ending process, just as we need always to find nourishment for the renewal.
