Monkey See, Monkey (Hair) Do

Okay, so I lied.  I said I was going to tell you about my ceremony and photo shoot this time, but I just had to share this all-important news with you first. 

I decided to do a DIY deep conditioning treatment on my hair, after running across a recipe for one on Pinterest, my new addiction pastime.  The recipe called for:

• 1/2 an avocado
• 1/2 a banana
• 1/2 c. coconut oil
• 1/2 c. olive oil
• 2 Tbsp. honey

All of these are things I already had at home, so I figured, why not?  I probably should have put all of that stuff in the blender, but I just mushed it up with a potato masher, and then whisked it to get it a bit smoother, but there were still little chunks of avocado that I decided not to worry about.

The mixture smelled great but looked, frankly, like vomit. Green vomit.  Complete with chunks.

Since I was already in the kitchen, I decided to just put it in my hair there.  If I was fortunate enough to have a bathtub (and what I wouldn't do for one!), I would have just taken a bath and done it there, but, alas, all I have is a very tiny shower stall.  Sigh.

So I crouched there on the kitchen floor, scooping up handfuls of muck and working it through my hair, with my head bowed over the bowl I had mixed it in.  Engaged in this activity, I suddenly and thoroughly felt like a monkey.

My son walked in at one point and caught me in the act.

hoo hoo hoo hoo ha ha ha

As you can see, I ended up using all of the mixture, which surprised me, since it had seemed like an awful lot.  But I have pretty thick hair, and that stuff was very thick and gooey.

After application, you're supposed to put on a shower cap and let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes.  A shower cap, seriously?  Who has a shower cap?  So I used a plastic grocery bag instead and congratulated myself for my resourcefulness, and for recycling.

 
The look of near-horror on my face here is due to the fact that within moments of putting on the "shower cap," oil started dripping down my forehead, threatening to get in my eyes.  Actually, "dripping" isn't quite the right word; it was streaming in rivulets that I couldn't wipe away fast enough.  (Note to self:  next time, just wrap it in an old towel.  Not that there will likely be a next time.)

Twenty minutes was about all I could bear of that, so I made a beeline for the shower at that point.  I lathered (and oh, what a lather that was), and then rinsed.  And rinsed.  And rinsed.  And then, yes, I did it - I repeated.  Why?  Well, because my hair felt so greasy and heavy, even after all that rinsing, that I just couldn't stand it.

Unfortunately however, by lathering and rinsing a second time, it pretty much undid any benefit of the treatment.  When my hair dried, it looked dry and even frizzy (and as I brushed it, I discovered little chunks of now-solid coconut oil that somehow had managed to hide from the rinsing process.  Yee haw.)

I've never been much good at the girly stuff, so all of this was a bit of a stretch for me, and one that I don't think I'll repeat anytime soon.  But thanks to Pinterest, I'm sure I'll come across some other deep conditioner recipe that seems a little less elaborate and messy, and give that a shot instead. 

Vision Statement

I have been pondering vision.  This is largely because I got contact lenses a week ago, and because of who I got them from.  There's a vision care office in Taos called RealEyes, which, at my editor's suggestion,  I recently wrote about for my newspaper column.  You can read that here. From the inspiring conversation I had with Dr. Ratzlaff and his wife Fiona, I decided make them my eye care providers.

I wore contact lenses from the age of 14 until I was pregnant with my first child at 23.  Since your eyes change shape when you're pregnant, contacts became too uncomfortable, and I just never went back to them.  But now I'm ready for a change.  I'm tired of glasses, of the weight on my face, of the tiny little field of vision.  (And part of it is vanity, I'll admit, although glasses have sometimes afforded me the "sexy librarian" compliment.)

Dr. Ratzlaff told me things I've never heard from an eye doctor in the 33 years I've been wearing glasses.  One fascinating thing he told me was that with correction my eyes are much better than 20/20, which apparently is pretty unusual.  And then he said that with my current prescription I was actually overcorrected, which is not such a great thing.

So now I have contact lenses, and my prescription is slightly weaker, and it's like living in a different world.  I'm so used to being able to see at great distances that it's strange, for instance, to be driving and not be able to read all the faraway signs.  During my followup appointment, I found out that even with the weaker prescription, I still have 20/15 vision.  I had always thought that 20/20 equaled "perfect," but it turns out there is no such thing as perfect vision.

Because you always end up sacrificing something.

If you can see at great distances, you generally don't see as well close up, and vice versa.  So by having great distance vision with a stronger prescription, I was straining when reading and such, and ultimately weakening and stressing my eyes.

I can tell the difference now.  In the normal range of vision of say, a space the size of an average room, I can see much more clearly and my eyes feel more relaxed.  It's also very nice to not feel like I'm looking at things through a small window.  So in this sense, my world is bigger, more immediate.  (And things that are right in front of me appear almost startlingly larger.  I went shoe shopping the day I got my contacts, and they all looked too huge to possibly fit my feet, but then I'd pick up a pair and they'd be two sizes too small.)  But in terms of the world-at-large - well, it's less large, at least the sharp edges of it.

This is not a complaint.  My point is that it's fascinating to see from yet another perspective, another angle, how relative and subjective the experience of being alive in the world is.  To confirm to myself yet again how on the one hand, the least little shifts in circumstances can have a great effect, and on the other, how it makes no difference at all to how I feel at the deepest level.  Does being able to clearly see my legs while I'm shaving them in the bathtub make my experience of taking a bath better?  Yes and no.

The real question is, does being able to see my body clearly make me inhabit it more fully?  Does clearer vision make me more present?  Does improving my physical vision make my spiritual vision clearer?  I don't necessarily have any articulate answers, but these are the questions I'm holding at the moment.  This is the adventure I'm on.

One of the things that Dr. Ratzlaff eagerly talked about during our interview, and that totally sold me on him, was how the eyes are an extension of the brain.  When he later did my eye exam, he commented on the saying, "The eyes are the window of the soul."  It's true not only on a metaphorical level, but in the sense that when the pupil is dilated and the doctor shines a light into it, he can see the blood vessels in the eye; he's literally seeing into the person.  He pointed out that this is the only time you can look directly at blood vessels without cutting a person open.  I had never thought about it that way.

Because I'm a grant writer, I'm also now thinking about the meaning of a "vision statement."  And because I'm a poet, I'm thinking about how that would apply metaphorically to my life.  Do I have a personal vision statement to make and stick to?

According to Wikipedia, a vision statement "defines the desired or intended future state of an organization or enterprise in terms of its fundamental objective and/or strategic direction. Vision is a long term view, sometimes describing how the organization would like the world in which it operates to be. For example a charity working with the poor might have a vision statement which read "A world without poverty."

My immediate response when I ask myself what my vision statement would be is "To see and love what is."  Which is never about the future.  It's a goal in terms of "distance" of depth, not of time or space.  My "desired or intended future" is to be fully, deeply in the present.  My "fundamental objective" is to not be attached to objectives.  My "strategic direction" is within.  The world in which I'd like to operate could be described as "beautiful, interesting, kind, and intimate."  And when I am fully, deeply present, seeing and loving what is, that is the world I get.  So.

I also need to tell you the green colander story, without which this post would not be complete.  Without further ado:

The Green Colander Story

The colander I had before the green one was, frankly, crap.  It was too big, and it had slots that were too big, so that whenever you drained spaghetti in it, half of the noodles slipped through into the sink.

So I told the universe that I needed a new colander, and found this cute little green one at a thrift store for a dollar.  It was perfect.  And I loved that it was green.

And then one day I went to pull it out of the cabinet to drain some potatoes for mashing, and it was gone.  I looked everywhere for it, even out in the yard, thinking my three-year-old may have absconded with it, but alas, it was nowhere to be found.  For two or three weeks, every time I had to use that other big stupid colander, I'd ask whoever was around, "Are you SURE you didn't do something with that green colander?"  And they'd all say no.  Because why in the world would anyone make off with a colander?

Until one day, while I was searching in the refrigerator for something, I noticed the overripe apples a friend had brought me.  I had rinsed them and put them in the fridge, planning to eventually make applesauce in the crockpot.  And there they still were, right in the middle of the middle shelf of the fridge, two or three weeks later, right where I'd left and totally forgotten about them.  In my beloved green colander.

Sheesh.

I doubt there is a need for me to point out the significance of this story.  But you can believe I've been pondering it ever since.  Although I still haven't made applesauce.  

The Ruthless Gardener

Bell near St. Clare's statue in the San Francisco de Asis courtyard

As I continue to practice dropping out of my mind and into my body, several interesting things have been occurring.  One is that my normal state of intense study and research is becoming less normal.  I simply don't have the same intensity of thinking, which also means less writing.  I've been finding myself at a loss to even comment on all of your blogs.  Even this post is more like an eruption than a coherent thought process.

At the same time, my level of physical activity has accelerated quite a bit.  As I'm spending more time in my body than my head, really listening to it, I hear that it wants to move and work, for the sheer joy of it.  I have taken up running with a zest I didn't know was possible.  For most of my life, physical activity was something I thought about doing, felt like I should be doing, but didn't actually want to do.  Now I look forward to it, and find myself having to temper my enthusiasm so I don't OVERdo it.  I've also been working in the yard, gardening.  I planted pumpkins, and they sprouted!  My arms are sore today from pulling up weeds.  There is an incredible level of satisfaction in all of this.

But nothing stays the same.  I simply don't know from day to day what my perspective will be.  It's as though things are shaking loose within me, swirling about, uprooted.  I worked hard on trying to let go of a thing I wanted.  That didn't work.  So I started praying earnestly for that thing, something I'd never tried before.  I prayed specifically and articulately every day with all my heart.  Until I discovered I didn't really want what I was praying for.  What a paradox - when I tried to not want it I wanted it more, and when I gave myself over to wanting it, I stopped wanting it. 

Now the loud voice of wanting in my head is shrieking with rage because I've abandoned it and it doesn't have an anchor anymore.  It's desperately trying to seek one, and I'm just watching and listening.  Not judging, not giving in to its ludicrous demands, just seeing.  Just hearing.  Go ahead and rant and rave, I can't stop you anyway.  I will just wait here in the quiet you can't touch until you diminish, which is already happening and is in fact the reason you're being so obnoxious, trying to cling to life.

Nothing stays the same.  Everything shifts and sometimes that looks "wrong" or dangerous.  "To enjarre or not to enjarre" got pushed way into the background this week because I got very sick.  I won't go into the details, but I was showing exact symptoms of a pretty serious condition.  However, by the time the doctor looked at me, the symptoms were gone and my tests came back fine.  I'm convinced that I made myself sick by listening to the shrieking voice.  I let it take me over for a couple of days, and became unguarded enough that the tumult of emotion that accompanied that rotten thinking caused something like an oil spill in my body.

When I finally felt better physically, and could listen to the shrieking without being taken over by it, I was eager to go for a run.  It had been days since my enjarre encounter.  I waited until evening so there would be no crowds at the church, since I was still not quite ready to deal with that challenge. 

Nothing stays the same.  Have I mentioned how very much I love the little grove by the church?  Well, they cut down most of the trees.  They only left the ones around the perimeter, but essentially, the grove is no longer.  It's just an empty lot full of tree stumps.  They took down the tire swing my son and his friend strung up with an old garden hose; in fact the tree it was hanging from is gone.  I'm welling up with tears as I write this, as I did when I first saw it. 

Nothing stays the same, but everything outward is reflected inwardly with an eternal tint.  I think of the metaphor of pruning in John 15.  Some prunings are bigger than others.  Sometimes life is pruned so radically it's alarming, and doesn't fit my idea of how things "should" be.  Do I really ultimately know what "health" means?  Do I really know what is for the ultimate good of myself or the world?  

Oil spills, sickness, destruction of trees.  All ranting and raving is a wall of nothing against such things.  These things happen, and I see them all together.  I see in them meaning and connection that suggest a story I cannot fully tell.  I hear in them only the call to awaken, the thunder of tremendous bells. 

Peeling the Orange: Bottom Half

When I began to look more deeply into the orange, Googling brought me immediately to the second chakra, called Svadhisthana, whose color is orange.  (If you don't know what a chakra is, go here.)

symbol for Svadhisthana

This chakra is also associated with the ninth sephirah of the Tree of Life, Yesod.  The attributes and themes of Svadhisthana and Yesod are quite similar.  Both are associated with the Moon, for one thing, which I find interesting, since the moon often looks orange.  Not so incidentally, this weekend saw the biggest and brightest full moon of 2010, with orange-appearing Mars right next to it.  The reason the moon looked bigger and brighter is because it was closer to the Earth than it usually is.  This also means higher and lower tides, and I feel like it's been that way in my life lately.  I've definitely been having a high tide of orange and inspiration, but also a low tide in terms of energy and emotion.

The truly useful information about Svadhisthana/Yesod for me is that they are both related to energy centers in the pelvic region of the body.  Svadhisthana is called "one's own abode," the "seat of life," the origin in the body of chi or the lifeforce, and is associated with emotions, relationships, dualities of all kinds, and with water.

The Waterfall

by Kahlil Gibran

(I found this on a great blog called Heartsteps, 

which Dan Gurney called my attention to recently.)  
 

Yesod is "Foundation," and has been referred to by at least one Kabbalist as "the Translator," because it's seen as a bridge between spiritual energies/ideals and their manifestation in the human being and therefore in the world, the Malkuth (or Shekhinah) realm.  

In order to make an attempt at brevity (hahaha), there's a lot I'm leaving out of this discussion (including the strong association for both Yesod and Svadhisthana with sexuality.) I am grossly generalizing and broadly summarizing; all of this is more intricate than I'm making it appear.  Part of this intricacy is that different sources interpret different ways, especially with the Kabbalah.  That's one of the beautiful things about Judaism, in my view.  It's very open to creative interpretation, and encourages that more than other religions seem to.  Anyway, I've included the above links if you want more thorough information.  

My focus, what is most helpful to me in this exploration, is the series of exercises I've discovered, both physical and spiritual, whose purpose is the healthy flow of energy in and from this area of the body, and thus a healthier emotional state.  According to several sources, the pelvis and hips constitute a region where old emotions can be stored and eventually stuck.  I have had lower back and hip problems since I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, so this speaks to me.  

The descriptions I've read of what happens when the second chakra is too open (overly emotionally reactive, too absorptive of others' emotions) and too closed (shut down, apathetic, cold)  both fit me.  I go back and forth between these states, and what is between them is anger and irritability. Last year, when I was in the Malkuth/Shekhinah "class" in the mystical school of life, I learned how the physical world (especially my own body) works.  This year's class, which is teaching me to use some new tools to add to the set, is a continuation which makes perfect and uncanny sense, since Yesod is just above Malkuth on the Tree of Life.  My sap is rising. 
                                                                                          
The Translator aspect of Yesod speaks to me as well.  I need to be able to take the amazing ideas and energies that I stir around in my head, and translate them into manifest form, some kind of creative action.  Writing is a primary expression for me, but it can't just be that.  This is my year of quiet love.  To learn to love quietly, I need to balance my emotional state and find a flow of love-energy that can be expressed naturally, through many means, not just words. 

This morning in church, one of the scriptures was the famous 1 Corinthians 13, the "love" passage.  I was struck by Paul's analogy of the gong, that one can have brilliance with words and ideas, but without love, it's worth exactly nothing:  it's like a noisy gong. Wayne, the pastor, demonstrated during the children's sermon with a cheap little clangy gong compared to a Tibetan singing bowl.   I have been feeling gong-like lately, especially around my family.  I want to be a singing bowl. 

I need to be able to feel the people around me without drowning in it or shutting myself down when it's all too much.  I need a vibrancy and vitality that flows out of me and doesn't just get stuck in my head.  Spiritual concepts, no matter how elevated, are no good at all if they are not expressed in concrete action.  And the time for that action has come.  What good is peeling an orange if you don't eat it?

The trick now is to get all of this wonderful information from my head into the rest of my body.  My brain has been overstimulated with this stuff, and I have yet to actually apply it and do the friggin' exercises.  My body, my emotions, and my energy level are suffering for it.

The word Svadhisthana means sweetness.  This is a sweetness not only to consume but to share.  I've peeled the orange; now it's time to take it in and let its nutrients move through my body, into my heart, and emanate to others through my very skin.

Bhramari Devi, Hindu bee goddess.

She is a manifestation of Kundalini:

the buzzing of her bees ascends up the spine,

awakening the chakras.

The Body, the Shekhinah, and Father Bill: A 2009 Retrospective

This time last year I was incredibly isolated and just beginning to fully recognize the effects of my black sludge moods on those I love. I had lived in Taos for only a few months, was working at Subway (!) and struggling to survive, was getting my arse kicked by winter, and generally not having a good time of it.

But then I decided to get proactive about my life. I visited with a couple of alternative health practitioners and got some recommendations about how to change my diet and my attitude. I began to embrace my physical being in a way I never had before. I read voraciously anything related to eating, from the health-oriented to the political.  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  Harvest For Hope by Jane Goodall.  The Art of the Inner Meal:  Eating As A Spiritual Path by Don Altman.  Eat Right 4 Your Type by Peter D'Adamo.  Information about pH balance in the body, about veganism, about Ayurveda, about fasting and cleansing, about the global food crisis, the importance of eating locally produced food.

As I researched and experimented with different ways of eating, I finally found the way that's right for me, and it changed my life profoundly. I learned to listen to my body more deeply and to trust its knowing.  I began to see life as a body adventure, and was amazed to realize how much simply changing my diet changed the way I felt emotionally and spiritually.  It was humbling to realize that all my so-called spiritual methods of dealing with my mood/anger problem paled in its effects compared to just eating differently.

At the same time, I became acquainted with the Shekinah, and true to my peculiar path, she started popping up simply everywhere. The Shekinah, representative of the immanence of the divine in the physical world, was an  absolutely fitting guide as I went about learning to live in harmony with my body. My big epiphany was that mind and body are one - not in the sense of two things united, but of ONE thing manifested as different aspects. Just as the Shekhinah is an aspect of the divine and not a separate thing or person.

This exploration led me deeper into mystical Judaism, something I had already been dabbling in for years. In the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the Shekhinah is associated with the tenth sephirah, Malkuth, or Kingdom. "She" is the manifestation of Spirit in the physical world.  Suddenly, in the middle of a bleak January, I found myself deeply inspired and energized.

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life

One of the first things that led me into this exploration was a showing of the art of Father William Hart McNichols, an iconographer. The first or second week I lived in Taos, there was an article about him in the Taos News because his show was about to open. He's a Catholic priest who is known worldwide for the icons he paints. The odd thing about this is that the iconography tradition is Orthodox, not Catholic. The other odd thing is that many of his icons are not of traditionally recognized saints. One is of a Buddhist woman, one is of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, another is of an Islamic mystic. There's even one of Princess Diana.  If you click on the above links, you can also read his commentary about each icon.

My magic mirror.

The two icons on the left side are by Father Bill 

Father Bill, as he is called, is a wonderful, wise, poetic man. And openly gay. In fact, there is an article in Time magazine in which he discusses this. He's celibate, as a priest vows to be, but admits that his orientation is homosexual.

I rarely visit art shows, but I was determined to see his, and I'm glad I did.

The poster announcing Father Bill's show.

I snagged it from a coffee shop (with the owner's permission.)

Standing before the original icons was so much more powerful than looking at reproductions of them, particularly because of the real gold mixed in with the paint used for the halos.  There was a sheet provided with background information on each of them. One of the icons was called, "The Name of God, Shekhinah" and was simply the Hebrew letters that spell that name. But his commentary on it was what I was really taken with and what set me off on the Shekhinah pilgrimage. He talked about seeing the Shekhinah in the mist that often rests on Taos Mountain, and in the glow of a candle. He talked about the Shekhinah being the feminine Spirit of God.  In Jewish theology, she is the Bride of God, the Sabbath Bride, and women light candles on the Sabbath eve to welcome her in.

I was and am utterly smitten with Father Bill.  (Leave it to me to develop a crush on a gay priest.) I felt a connection to him right from that first article I read, but then kind of forgot about him. Then, one morning during Advent, I just happened to turn on the radio, which I rarely do when I'm home, and he was talking to Nancy Stapp, a wonderful local radio personality.  He was discussing the meaning of Advent, and while I no longer remember exactly what he said, I remember being absolutely calmed and inspired by it, and consistently nodding and saying Yes, exactly, to the radio. And I remember he ended with an ancient Persian prayer to the sun.

A few months later during Lent, I had the same uncanny experience of turning on the radio, and lo, there he was talking to Nancy again, this time about the meaning of Lent.  And he talked about the Shekinah.

Then, in June, I moved into the neighborhood of the St. Francis church and discovered that he is the assistant Priest for that parish.

Other than Christmas Midnight Mass, I've only been to mass there once, and he just happened to be preaching that day. And what he preached about was Sophia, the feminine personification of wisdom, often associated with the Shekhinah. He also talked about the tendency of religious people to be judgmental and stingy with their acceptance and forgiveness of others, to segregate and create an us versus them mentality.  He told the congregation to go home and look up the word "catholic." Which, of course, I eagerly did. Here's what I found:

1. broad or wide-ranging in tastes, interests, or the like; having sympathies with all; broad-minded, liberal
2. universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all.
3. pertaining to the whole Christian body or church.

Father Bill is a shining example of this kind of catholicity.  And while we've never met, he was a profound influence on my growth over the past year, a journey which continues to bloom in unexpected and strangely harmonic ways, as you'll see in my next post.

But in the meantime, I'm curious - where were you a year ago?  How has your life changed over the past year?