Thakla
The grief of grief fills your body like buoyant molecules moving in slow motion through oil, touching every cell, informing every movement and every, single moment.
Grief is the forbidden feeling that now hides as heart palpitations and dizziness, the body preserving that unexplainable horror into an ongoing reality. Now she will never forget.
On particular days, at specific times, grief rises to the surface, coaxed by anniversaries and company.  She barely makes an appearance and then dives down into the body to dance in the innocent space of body, mind, and soul. But, the biology of grief and the distraction of pain is very accurate and precise. For this you have learned exactly what to do.

Today might be different. Today we might hold a bigger vision of this event by holding one hand up cupping grief and the other hand up cupping the ways in which his memory is preserved; two  sides of one coin, both sides of a slip of paper.

I remember spending a summer in Greece many years ago, in a small fishing village in the Peloponnese islands. I remember that so many older women were dressed in black, their dresses covering their arms and legs. I asked my travel friend, why? Why the black and why so many? He said all their husbands had died and their tradition was to theretofore dress in black, preserving the memory and making the public statement – I am a widow.  How many years ago did they die, I asked. Ah, at least thirty years for many of them!

Thirty years of wardrobe destiny - wearing black, preserving the memory of man.
You don’t wear black when a child dies. Do we even have a name for that?  According to Uri Granta, there is an Arabic word ‘thakla’ that refers to a bereaved mother. Perfect. And in the Tiwa Indian language the vowel sound ‘a’ means to wash and purify the mental and emotional body. Thakla has two a’s; an opportunity for double purification.  Perhaps we will chant this word together, you and I.

I will see you at 11:00 a.m. today. Today we will hold the dance of embodied grief and jump off a cliff together.  Remember that when we jump, the good news is that there is no ground to fall on. We are free to relax back and down into that dimensionless, emptiness that is vaster than even your grief, my friend. Vaster than even the collective grief of all the Mothers who have lost a child.

In the vastness of emptiness everything is held, but it is tempting to forget and ally with one possibility of so many.  Let us try again. Relaxing into emptiness is like being held by God, in the arms of the most loving Mother imaginable. She will take your grief and relieve your suffering as emptiness is bigger than all the suffering Mothers we know about and more.

This formless emptiness is allowing, true, and has no judgement about what your mind creates. None the less, if we hold this coin with skillful means, something else can happen!
The slightest sense of joy might emerge at the smallest of things or just because joy still exists beyond the observable push and pull of remembering. I am not asking you to jump up and down with a false joy, or even avoid grief, however I am pointing toward a deeper and wider possibility. You have already traveled so deep and wide with sorrow- it is honorable. And yet, perhaps today is the day that we will discover a fork in that river.  From the river of tears and endless fears to the river of empty joy providing a larger scenery with a vaster view; body relaxing, cells opening, heart renewed. And if none of this happens, I am still here empty of your agenda, ready for your ride, honored to experience thakla, and grateful to be by your side, over and over again.

 From My Back Yard
 
Not too long ago, there was a period of time during which I simply and utterly could not relate to the ever present cultural urgency of doing and having that had permeated my life.  The pace of the sky and the air and of all the beautiful nature around me where I live matched the speed of my inner dimension of breathing and peace and awareness.  Sitting on the back porch doing nothing was really okay! I did not feel the need to prove or defend anything; just naturally existing in a feeling of harmony.

There were bills to pay and they were, as work happened and it does, all within an original matrix of time and space that demands nothing.  Life loves to live and living became a suspended moment of breath, feeling, sensing and opening all 32.7 trillion cells in my body to an intimate now. Being literally at peace with doing nothing oddly fulfilled a deep desire that I had transforming a million moments of waiting to an eternal space of being.

After some months of resting I began to notice a rising of several impulses. First, that within that space of being I sensed something missing and second, I simultaneously sensed something wanting or longing. It was not urgent, but it was a deep and profound yearning to act from this space. With care, of course, came first. Not my care, but the care of life loving itself into existence. Then came this recognition of dedicating the merit of the practices I take refuge in daily to others; all others, every single one. I know I did not invent this, yet the rising of it naturally as life and love itself seemed obvious.

Do I have to save children in India? Dolphins in Hawaii? Women in Western Europe? I thought so for a very long time. But, in the matrix of being, the connection between all living beings seems an intimate and obvious realization. I could close my eyes and feel the ripples of prayers from cloistered practitioners affecting the big mind of me and you. Doesn’t the love that I feel reach the whales and the birds too?  Where is my sphere of influence anyway? Is it here in my community or within a larger whole? Both?

Since there is no striving to influence, but the yearning to become from a place of being, then the action rises in every moment, no matter what. This becoming feels like passion and curiosity infinitely entwined guaranteeing, as it were, a warm glow in my heart. One project dissolves and another evolves and the knowing that what needs to express will, no matter.

“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,
Love is knowing I am everything,
and between the two my life moves.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj
 
The moment to moment expression of life is at this intersection of love and wisdom, everything and nothing. I am empty and I am full; I am feminine and masculine; I am, we are, an individualized expression of love and That within which this movement occurs. Here, there is no doubt, no seeking, and no fear. Yet, this ‘everything’ has a spectrum from the beauty to the beast and the beingness that I Am is available for both.  Herein lies the movement to create harmony and health and beauty and connection! Here, here, in here, is born the movement  to reach out indiscriminately and unattached, from my back yard.

Through and from the Mother we come
And through and from the vast Mother we ultimately go
At unknown times, in unknown ways
There is no escaping the entry and exit plan on this plane
Both are here
Just like her, we favor certain places in unexplicable ways
Lapsing into disillusion and then caring as much as we can
Not knowing what to do, trying to keep up
Numbing from what? 
We know not what
A generation gap?
A million new reasons to be hyper vigilant?
There are too many unknown and hidden agendas
Volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes and earth quakes
For god’s sake
Pay attention before it’s too late
For she too has an exit plan
The date of which we know not when
Like you and me, all of us, children
Of earth and mother, sun and father
One very surprising opportunity after another
 
Perhaps in one lifetime we will unclaim our status
Understanding, finally, the big and small of it all
Forgetting the stories that lead to unrest
Committing again to what’s best
In peace we release
In peace we die
In peace we are born
In peace we wage the toughness of war and surrender
Doing my best to love Her
And it is not enough…
Yet, rest as that which knows connection
Surrender as that which pulls dark to light
Know that which I am is also of you
And therefore witness the beauty of all life

A message from Care and Connection:
Dearest divine human, I invite you to sit still and feel the ripples of my essence through your cells and bones and all the space within the full, whole form of your body. To feel me as an enlivened state and not an action.  For I know deeply, that if you did not, or could not, activate my frequency in to an action, you would instead be blessed by a direct experience of my warm, cascading touch.  The knowing of a care and connection, so deep, so profound, that you might rest in the realization of Oneness.

Care. I Care. I am caring. I so quickly move from a noun to a verb, reaching to possess life, living and each other, capturing it in to a moment of assumed purpose. I care for you, I reach to you in care, as care, to secure a definitive response to know that I matter. Right? This oft clumsy reach of caring to possess or abandon another serves only in the human game of trauma and lack, fostering spiritual bypassing and gratitude for only the really shiny moments.  For, as the verb of activated care and connection, haven’t we felt, over and over, the heart wrenching effect of withdrawing that care from each other? As if we could?! Now, the moving up and out with care, misunderstood by the history of the personality, becomes upset if not given and not received.

But I, care and connection, as a silent, mystical state permeate the heart of man and humanity serving as an extension of belonging and of becoming. I am ever present, here, there and everywhere. Care, without an action, ripples to and from the over soul, informing every human mind and body without a single word. Care connects us all.

I, care and connection, as the state that I am requires nothing as I defy death, wifi, your rejection and hugs!  When physical presence is absent, be it a transition of life or forced abstinence of contact, I still exist to inform, and reform your cellular being into a realized state.  You, dear human, so familiar with action, movement and results. If only you took a moment to feel me, you would know that I, primarily and firstly, am a state within natural BEINGness.  I require nothing to exist as I was here before you arrived and so will remain long, long after you are gone.  You exist within me, and I within you as an  energetic synthesis beyond measure.

Hey, how would it feel to uncross your arms love? Perhaps even your legs? Straighten your spine and open your eyes? Would you look at me for a moment and hang on? Loosen that jaw and drop those shoulders, rest a moment, maybe not quite so withdrawn?
We are here, you and I, not in there, lost and desolate. We are in this room on a beautiful day while your attention is grappling with regrets and aggression. Two time zones, one bodymind, trauma fills each moment like oil and water.
Oh, what is that thought? Neti, neti, neti. Another? Pivot, rephrase, appraise, and amaze yourself over and over until you actually do.
Hey, can you feel your feet, sense your seat, your hands and your heart? Can you feel your breath for a few moments and hang on? Letting go of the nothingness, flat lining consciousness, where is your passion? Let’s feel it now as a simple, “I can.”
You have stated how a hundred percent certain you are while alone, and how that dissolves when in company with music lovers’ perfume.
How many years now? How many jobs? How many friendships, recoveries and heart throbs gone? Until today. Today, and again, another today.
Boredom and addiction buried under layers of trauma, both sides of the family filled with academic drama.  I can, I can’t. I will, I won’t. I hate me, you hate me won’t get you out. Caught in an endless loop of binary thinking that quiets for a moment each evening when you start drinking.
Let us now position that tall, young body in a standing pillar shaped form; mold your attention toward a positive platform from which to feel the aliveness of you.
Please - take my hand. Did I say how very glad I am that you are here?  Whatever you choose, there is a part of me that trusts you; the ‘you’ that is whole, peaceful and still, the one beyond all those habits to escape. The YOU that is beyond the stringent confines of your young trauma and cruel date rape. The YOU that allows for the absurd and the beautiful, that YOU that brought you here to this moment, together, renewable.
There is a ‘you’ that has never been harmed, shamed or touched, yet I am here for the parts that are frozen in fear. Let it flow till you remember, feel till you surrender, fall till you relax and then come home to your body, no longer the accident site. Home to your body, a place to rest and take delight in the knowing that you are not that thing that happened. It is a persistent memory, recapturing your attention, ready by choice to release in to bliss.