Yesterday a brush of snow on the hydrangeas. The Buddha wearing a snow cap on his curls. I got the bonsais in. I am not ready for what is clearly arriving. I still want to swim.
Today a white out drive, and the hydrangeas inundated. 8-12″ expected.
White Halloween?
Pam White “Missouri Mud Run”
Yesterday when I was riding the Arabian that lives in a field down the road all by itself got loose. He came tearing down the road to visit the horses at our farm. Brandi told me that everyone out in the fields was galloping from excitement, and I should probably stay in the indoor arena. Capprichio, the horse I was riding, didn’t need to see the horses to feel all that energy. He arched his neck and strutted. The loose Arab ran up and down the road, tail flagging. Everyone else galloped in their fields with their tails up. “This is fun.” they seemed to be saying. “Let’s play!!” Finally the lonely, running horse was caught, and things settled down.
We are herd animals too. But I am not sure we have as much fun as the horses. Sometimes I think that we just want to get back to our computers instead of partying down when one of us gets loose and running.
Flash mobs want to be herd-like, but they are planned, choreographed. Other kinds of herds are more scary, mob-like. Things that get large numbers of us running are also scary. 9/11, tsunamis, earthquakes. This is the problem with being predators. It takes natural disasters to get us going. One loose human doesn’t do it, unless of course, they are armed.
Herds are curious things. With horses, signals get passed almost invisibly with movement. A twitch of an ear, a look, a sudden start, or a mosey travel like ripples through the herd. They all mean something. “Look out!” “Better grass here.” “Get away from my mare!”
We are much less savvy movement-wise. From the horse’s perspective, we are bumblers, clomping along meaninglessly, much noise signifying not much.
That is why I recommend horse dancing. It is about waking up to the ripples we make and the ripples we feel. Learning to be better herd-speakers, learning to feel the currents among us.
How do you feel your herd?
The churning of the Sea of Milk or the Milky Way is an interesting Hindu creation myth. It involves a serpent and a mountain.
In the story, the gods held the tail of the snake, while the demons held its head, and they pulled on it alternately causing the mountain to rotate, which in turn churned the ocean. The mountain began to sink and so the god Vishnu in the form of a turtle came to the rescue and supported the mountain on his back.
I got to thinking about this story as I was reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. He says that the demon is resistance – the thing that gets in the way of our fulfilling our goals.
As I read, I kept thinking, “Resistance to the resistance is still resistance.” This troubled me. Later in the book, Pressfield speaks of angels, muses, allies. They are, he tells us, forces counter-poised against the resistance.
“More resistance,” I thought.
So my question is: Is all this churning (effort, battle, resisting resistance, etc.) necessary to create a sparkling Milky Way? To create at all? Is war really how to make art?
Then I thought about riding, and how all the resistance in the world is useless. How it is by aligning, opening – finding the onward, flowing, shaping, guiding quality in the riding – I become part of that glorious movement. The “join-up” as Monty Roberts says.
Abraham teaches that resistance is just tethers us to what we don’t want. That when I say “no” to something, I bring it to me – special delivery. Because no is just the other end of the stick from “yes,” the tails side of the coin.
What are you resisting? And what is the opposite of resistance?
I took this picture at the Putney School Harvest Festival two weeks ago. I want to sleep like this.
I fell asleep last night laughing out loud listening to Anne Lamott’s Plan B: Further thoughts on Faith. Laughing into sleep is a great way to wake up. When she talked about receiving a providential gift ham on her birthday at a grocery store, I lost it. She wondered if it was “the ham of god.”
I am finding more ways to soften before sleep, and to soften into waking. I find that it makes for a more fluid, creative day. Abraham calls it “getting into the vortex.” I have been listening to Abraham for about two years now, driving everywhere. It is the best way that I have found to release resistance.
Resistance is on my mind as I am reading The War of Art. More about that tomorrow.
Abraham says find something to make you happy. Last year, Emily Jones, the head of the Putney School encouraged students to look at something beautiful and let it make you happy. I have a long list, that includes horses’s noses, cat’s fur, my daughters’ and Pam’s faces.
What makes you happy today?
