Stories That Teach and Heal

Last night during yoga practice, while in sirsasana attempting to rotate the left side of my hip towards the teacher standing in front of me, I lost, completely, my sense of direction without knowing it or feeling it.  Each time I would make the rotation asked of me, I would move in the opposite direction.  I felt a slight defense mechanism kick in, a mild sense of defiance. Surely I was doing it right and the teacher was wrong.  How could I not "get it?"   There is a simple fix to this and I came home and did it in front of a mirror and could clearly see how I was rotating in the opposite direction asked of me.  I can be my own worse critic.  I can take things personal when they are not meant to be.  (Even if someone does attack us personally, it rarely has anything to do with us and everything to do with them.)  The only one "attacking" me, was, of course,  me.  So what is the lesson in all this?  Many.  Don't take things personally.  Don't criticize yourself for not being able to do something that doesn't much matter more than a hill of beans.  Be patient and kind towards yourself, always.  Probe, plumb the depths.  As always, my hypersensitivity comes from a deep longing to be loved and accepted, and often I think that is not happening because of a deep sense of feeling unworthy of love and acceptance.  My issue, totally.  My story.  My history.  It always comes back to the basics.  Learning to listen to our own stories, learning to tell our own stories as well as learning to listen to the stories of others, results in learning, growth, wisdom.  When those feeling arise, stay with them.  (Also, don't drive.  After class, I knocked over the entry gate post--metal and set in concrete--and did a hell of a lot of damage to my car because I was so caught up in processing this and not focused on driving).

In Kitchen Table Wisdom, Rachel Naomi Remen writes:  "Everybody is a story...The more we listen, the clearer that Story becomes.  The wisdom in the story of the most educated and powerful person is often not greater than the wisdom in the story of a child, and the life of a child can teach us as much as the life of a sage...Hidden in all stories is the One story...Our true identity, who we are, why we are here, what sustains us is in this (our) story.  The stories are about the same things, stories of owning, having and losing, stories of sex, of power, of pain, of wounding, of courage, hope, and healing, of loneliness and the end of loneliness.  Stories about God.  In telling them, we are telling each other the human story.  Stories that touch us in this place of common humanness awaken us and weave us together as a family once again. These are stories about who we are, not what we have done." 

I think this is so very important.  When we get hooked into those moments where we buy into the voice that says we are not worthy of love, we suddenly find ourselves moving away from our real, authentic self and buying into the falsehoods we have spent years trying to unlearn.  This is all okay, just have an awareness of what is happening.  One method is to acknowledge that you are aware of what is going on, congratulate yourself for having this awareness, take three deep breaths, then think of things that are healing, move towards thoughts and feelings that run counter, or opposite, to this "wrong" thinking. (Ana Forrest). 

It often comes back to the basics, no matter how lofty our thoughts, no matter what great strides of accomplishment we make, no matter our social or economic standing, it always comes down to the basics of each and every one of us being human, and finding that and connecting.  Staying real, staying true, finding the authenticity, and going to battle against the stories that teach us the wrong things.  It is through these very stories, these life experiences, that we learn and grow, fall down and get up, sometimes it feels like little more than putting one foot in front of the other, over and over again.  But, as Hanuman showed, putting one foot in front of the other may be one enormous leap, whether we realize it or not. 

Strange Fruit

Yesterday while standing in line at the post office to pick up a package I overheard a customer loudly refer to his employees as wetbacks.  The postal worker he was talking to looked at me wide mouthed, to which I responded by shaking my head.  The elderly white haired man looked at me and said, "Would you prefer that I use the word illegal immigrant?"  My only response was "the word you used is very derogatory."  "Tough shit," he said, "that's just the way it is."  I left.  Then I got mad.  I called the Postmaster.  He had heard all about the incident--in fact, all this occurred while he was retrieving my package--and had every intention of taking some kind of action.  "I cannot believe in 2013 we still have that kind of bigotry, I don't want to hear it, my customers don't want to hear it, and I don't want my sons to hear it, and I'm sorry you had to hear it." 


After seeing a photograph of a lynching and haunted by the image for days, Abel Meeropol--husband, father, poet, social activist--wrote the following poem which he also set to music and which was later made famous by Billie Holiday:

     Strange Fruit

     Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
     Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
     Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
     Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

     Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
     The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
     Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
     And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

     Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
     For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
     For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop.
     Here is a strange and bitter crop.

This same man later adopted the two sons of the Rosenbergs who were found guilty of treason and executed for conspiracy of passing information to the Russians.  At that time, the 40's and 50's, many Americans who joined the Communist Party were pioneers in the civil rights movement. 

Why is it so very difficult to do unto others as you would have them do unto you?

Who hangs from yonder passion tree?
Your son, dear Mother
Do you not know me?

"The Latin root of religion--relegere--means to be aware, and absolute awareness will never perceive difference or conflict." 

"...dharma is rather about the search for enduring ethical principles, about the cultivation of right behavior in physical, moral, mental, psychological, and spiritual dimensions.  This behavior must always relate to the growth of the individual with the goal of realizing the Soul.  If it does not, if it is culturally limited or warped, then it falls short of the definition of dharma.  Sadhana, the practitioner's inward journey, admits of no barriers between individual, cultures, races, or creeds."  B.K.S. Iyengar

And so.