Well, I don’t know any people who “ascended” yesterday (i.e., disappeared from this 3rd dimension), but maybe I just don’t run in those circles! I know there are (were?) lots of people who thought they might, or who wanted to, longed to, leave this world, and their troubles, behind.
I do know that just the day before 11.11.11 we found out that the Keystone XL project may have died. This is a great victory for environmental awareness and activism during this time when Occupy is springing up everywhere like a wild, invasive plant, flummoxing global corporatized culture with its commitment to non-violence, its magnificent, unflagging energy and audacity, its proliferating, differentiating, mycelliac spread into myriad unexpected and dimly lit corners of civic and personal life. Like Tinker Bell with her magic wand, Occupy has the capacity to first chaoticize, then illuminate, and finally, revitalize all that it touches.
Geez, why leave now?
To me “ascension” has to do with accessing other dimensions while remaining here, in this body. (See this and this and this, in that order.) To me, multidimensional/interdimensional access is rather like an elevator, running up and down the spine. My job is to continuously link Above to Below, sky to earth, capturing chi and radiating it through the heart. I do this through a number of different breathing practices, consciously directing the universal chi energy, not just when in meditation, whether sitting, or standing, or lying down, or waiting in line, or walking, but all day long. I’ve been doing breathing practices to ignite conscious awareness of the infinite fullness of the present moment for decades. At this point, it feels like my physical/emotional/mental body is “wide open” at both crown and the soles of the feet.
The “work,” for me, is learning how to direct the chi laterally, through the heart/solar plexus, into the world around me, engaging in our 3-D “dramas” in a detached and compassionate manner while remaining centered internally. I can still “lose it,” give too much (appeasement) or too little (cringing). That may be why, during my personal ceremony following my 11.11.11 meditation at 11:00 AM yesterday, when drawing an animal card, I got”Armadillo,” whose skin is thicker than mine.
At any rate, because of this continuous everyday all day long vertical practice that I have been engaged in, really, since I was 26 years old and woke up to the idea of “self-remembering” a la Gurdjiff — when a book by his disciple Ouspensky fell off a shelf in front of me in the aisle of a bookstore down which, I, a graduate student in philosophy and frazzled mother of two, was pushing the stroller — I didn’t find yesterday, 11.11.11 to be any big deal. ‘Twas day like any other, except that I didn’t open up the computer. That, in itself, course, given our crazed, just in time, minute-by-minute breaking news pell mell life, was a big deal, centering me within the flow of time in a relaxed way. Plenty of time to rake leaves, cut back bushes, talk about what’s next for the GANG (neighborhood) garden, laugh at my puppy Shadow’s antics on our daily walk, even enough time to be interviewed by public television in the garden about what we are doing there, and why. Plenty of time to dream, to gaze at the sky and wonder whether a particular lenticular cloud held a cloaked ship. Plenty of time to ask, again, for guidance as to how to conduct our “Ceremony of Impermanence” scheduled for November 20th in the garden.
90 minutes from now I take my dear friend Rhonda to lunch at a Japanese restaurant down the street. We will finalize our plans for that momentous day. I will send out another email reminder to the community this afternoon. Life will roll on, and on, as I continue to ascend and descend up and down the ladder of awareness, focusing first on this dimension, then to “get perspective,” moving up a rung or two, or three. Over and over again, up and down, and flexible, this spine of mine whose flexibility and sensitivity I have been nurturing through yoga and chi kung and tai chi for decades. Grateful.
0 thoughts on “On the day after 11.11.11. Grateful.”
Nice entry (as always!).. one thing I read recently that I found really inspiring was a quote I believe it was from Yogananda “centered everywhere..circumference nowhere.” Something about that just sort of hit me especially when thinking about the energy upward and downward, and expanding the heart chakra more outward as you were talking about. There was a technique mentioned as well.. (perhaps elementary to you! But thought I’d throw it out there..) as your sitting in meditation, to feel as if in a bubble..perhaps about 2 feet under you, above, and around you..hold that area in your heart and then keep expanding..the area where you’re sitting, home, town, state..coast to coast..whole world..universe etc., in your heart as your outer bubble expands too. The latter part is nothing that we haven’t read before or whatever, but I thought it was cool to be reminded about the bubble to be envisioned underneath us a couple feet and then expanding. Sometimes we just project outward in other words..shooting that energy out, and think oh yeah a circle..but forget to truly make it a circle that includes below us too! Just a thought. Also, on a side note..I was sleeping at 11/11/11 11am..haha..but I did meditate around 10pm on through til past 11pm..and I gotta’ say, there was a little something special there! Nothing mind blowing or anything..but pretty neat. Thanks again for all of your posts and the work you do.. so appreciated..look forward to my message of your new posts in the inbox every day!