“Living in rapture is health.  Following your bliss is not self indulgent,

but vital: your whole system knows that this is the way to be alive

in the world and the way to give the world the very best

that you have to offer.  There is a track just waiting there for each of us,

and once on it, doors will open that were not open before

and would not open for anyone else.”

- Joseph Campbell

The bloom of such long summer days, here now at the end of June, bring to us the fullness of the summer sun.  They reflect to us the opportunity to live out and into the world: our yards, streets, parks and woods. We are provided with ample opportunity to bring forth our own fullness of being, and live into it with others.  Summer activities bring us to social encounters with picnics, barbeques, vacations, or perhaps more adventurous endeavors, such a wilderness retreats and Hero’s Journey Intensives!

What does it mean to follow our bliss?  How do we confuse this with selfishness, and guilt-laden self indulgence?  How challenging it is, truly, to follow one’s own bliss?   To engage ourselves in a primary way with those people, places and things that truly awaken our own interior?   How often do we fall into a justified way of living out an obligated posture towards life, one that rewards us with an idealized image of ourselves, with no more vitality brought into the mix?   How do we discern the difference?

Perhaps, just for today, we can pay close attention to our own lived experience, and be informed by what happens inside of us as we encounter certain people, activities, and environments that bring forth a “Yes” inside of us?  How do we embody a lightness of being, a pleasant sensation in the body, a clarity of mind, a buoyancy of energy, and allow ourselves to stay with it, to follow it, and let it move us forward into life, into meaning-making, into mystery?   Let us practice this focused attention to our own embodied presence, listening to how own embodied intelligence says to us clearly “yes” or “no”, and watch how our mind will allow that experience, or dis-allow it.

Could it really be so, that when we live in this way, the universe mirrors it back to us as well – through the opportunities to share life with people, places, and activities that would most bring us alive?  And what if that is happening in our lives, right now?  How do we say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to these opportunities?   Let us allow the light of awareness to shine on the potential for doors to open, inside of us, and outside of us, that would not open before, and would not open for any other.  That is one way to be the hero of one’s own life, and bring that life into the world.

Try to love everything that gets in your way;

The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps

murmuring together in Mandarin and doing leg exercises in your lane

while you execute thirty-six furious laps,

one for every item on your to-do list.

The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water

like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and

whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.

Teachers all. Learn to be small

and swim past obstacles like a minnow,

without grudges or memory. Dart

toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,

is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl

lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:

Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,

in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.

Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life, and

keep going. Swim by an uncle

in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew

how to hold his breath underwater,

even though kids aren’t supposed

to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,

years from now, this boy

who is kicking and flailing in the exact place

you want to touch and turn

may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,

raising his champagne glass in a toast

when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.

He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,

but he’ll come up like a cork,

alive. So your moment

of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,

because if something is in your way, it is

going your way, the way

of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

- Alison Luterman, published in The Sun – Jan 2010

I recently came across this poem by Alison Luterman, who found herself facing her obstacles, and having her inner ordeal, during her routine of swimming of laps in a local pool.   Her creative inner imaginings at play with her perception of obstacles found in the pool, for some reason, stayed with me.

I have just completed a week of providing and co-facilitating a week of intensive emotional and psychological embodiment training, in strong communal, cocoon-like container, in a quiet seaside town on Costa Brava, Spain. I am sleepily dropped off by my kind, familiar driver in the early morning light at a fresh, newly opened Air Terminal.  Strolled into the sea of humanity floating along.

Then in the next minute, I am stranded, due to the volcanic ash drifting over Spain and Portugal from Iceland, in the Barcelona airport.

The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water

like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and

whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.

Now I have my version of the heavy-bellied obstacle splashing big waves in my travel lane.  The plane that I was to board, I found as I get to the check in counter, was maybe still sitting in the US, maybe in the air.  Rocked from my course.

Teachers, all.

Maybe.  Talking to fellow travelers, I discover that others had the same problem the day before – and didn’t get to board the plane.  Here they were, attempting a departure again.  Oh.  Had the urge to check my email before leaving for the airport.  Didn’t.  Check my email by phone while in line.  Have four messages from the airline, each one lengthening the delay.

Learn to be small

and swim past obstacles like a minnow,

without grudges or memory.

Okay.  Practicing mindfulness, I see my plans have changed.   The ticket agent gives me a ticket for a connecting flight for the last flight out of Philadelphia.  Says maybe I could get this flight, maybe not.  No information.  Have a seat in the main terminal; check back in the late afternoon.  I am swimming along now, certainly feeling like a minnow in a large sea of air travelers.

Without grudges.

Well, okay.  Expect nothing, be ready for anything?  Fair enough.  Head for security.  Let’s take a look at the boarding pass, for gate info, before entering security for clearance.  Have somehow lost my boarding pass in the sea of humanity.  Back pocket was not a good idea.

Thinking, Obstacle, is another obstacle.

Back to the check in counter.  Feel how I am swimming at a faster pace in my lane now!  Miraculously to me, I explain my lostness, learning to be small, and they simply hand me another ticket.  This minnow thing seems to be working.

Going through security, my boarding pass does not pass the scanner. Keeps beeping and flashing red.  The security personnel, is saying something to me in Spanish and pointing to my ticket.  I stare at him blankly.  No comprende. He waves me on.  Swimming past obstacles like a minnow…

Try to love the teenage girl

lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:

Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,

in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.

Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life, and

keep going.

Spend hours on end in the Barcelona airport. Skype with a few dear friends and companions via the Internet, the beauty of the web, and finding technology providing me with spirit, and connection.  This is my life, it is happening now. This life is mine. Yes, it is.  I also get to feel into the people and the connections that I can be with, right now in my travel obstacle, people that I can look like for the rest of my life, I believe.  I know.  And keep going.

Find that Barcelona has an outdoor pavilion for it’s air travelers.  It is beautiful, and quiet.  This is not like the US airports, for sure.  I enjoy the quiet.  Next to me, a few young women, heavily tattooed, rest on the same section of the pavilion as me, lounging and quietly laughing with each other.  I wonder to myself, what will they think of all those tattoos, when they are older?   I remember my grandmother’s sister, when I was a young boy. She had a tattoo!   What a character she was!   Swimming through memories now….

Swim by an uncle

in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew

how to hold his breath underwater…

Arrive at my departure gate at the designated time.  There is no one there.  No representatives. A handful of travelers.  No announced delays.  I see that what appears to be our plane, is sitting on the tarmac, but is not pulling up to the gate.  Now I am holding my breath, again.

See an airport security person.  Ask them what is happening.  He is very friendly, and he is riding a Segway.  Wow, does that look fun!   He rides off to explore.  How strange, how minnowy.  I keep afloat with Skype, and good friends, and emails.  I stay swimming in my own lane this way.  The airport personnel are very friendly, very different from my experience in the Sates.   They all get interested in the matter.  No one really finds out anything of use, but their friendliness seems to override the lack of information.  We just keep swimming.

Someday,

years from now, this boy

who is kicking and flailing in the exact place

you want to touch and turn

may be a young man at a wedding on a boat

Perspective.  Kicking and flailing, all of us, at some point, in the uncertain waters of life.  Stop trying to get answers, start getting curious about the people in front of me.  Try looking more into their eyes.

Still no airline personnel.  Still no answers.  Go the friendly Segway guy again, he gets on a phone.  Says the plane is going to be departing today, most definitely at some point, and most likely, as far as he can tell.  Somehow, this is reassuring, and I am not kicking and flailing in the fluid like way he has of saying he really isn’t sure of anything.  I ask him instead about what it is like to ride the Segue.  He talks about how he really likes it.  I refrain from asking if I can have a ride.

when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.

He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,

but he’ll come up like a cork,

alive.

Many security personnel have arrived.  Lots of radio talk, and noise.  The passengers all seem content enough; no one is kicking and flailing for information.  There are announcements, from time to time, that we will be boarding soon.  We don’t.  We all seem to keep coming up like corks, with each delay.  Finally, we begin boarding.  No explanation about the delays, no splashing about by the passengers.  We prepare to board the plane.  Another delay, no explanations necessary now.  We all just wait, bobbing like corks, outside the door of the aircraft.  We sit a long time before departing.  Accepting what is.

On the flight home, we are re-routed over Iceland, right as the sun is setting there.  The pilot comes over the speakers that we can see the volcano pluming out the left hand side of the airplane.  I have a left side seat, and we all take turns watching it, and many of the passengers are snapping photos with their cameras and phones.  I am content to watch it live and flow.  My obstacle looks beautiful, and small, from up here.  We all partake in seat exchanges for the next half hour, as we pass over the country, and the light slowly fades from red-orange to the blue-grey of the night sky.

So your moment

of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,

because if something is in your way, it is

going your way, the way

of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

Tired and worn by the time spent waiting and sitting and not exactly sleeping,

We arrive in Philadelphia, 1:00am.  New boarding passes for the next day, hotel and meal vouchers passed along quickly to each of us with connecting flights.  As I decided to travel lightly this trip, with only carry on luggage, I move quickly through customs, and to the airline representatives, who expedite my departure to the hotel.  I overhear them saying that they are not able to get the plane’s baggage doors open.  This one will not be my obstacle tonight.  Instead, I usher myself onto the airline crew’s shuttle to the hotel, and begin re-arranging my appointments for the next day.

Somehow, this makes everything feel like things are going my way.  I feel a part of the larger story of air travelers, and the even more acutely, a connection to the larger story of those with no option of travel, for they also are stranded in countries, in harsh poverty, in oppression, in circumstances where there are no such things as swimming pools, people blocking the lanes, air travel, volcanic ash disrupting flight patterns, providing opportunities for travelers to change their itineraries, spiritual pilgrims to change their perspective, and place in a larger story.

I am writing as I sit in seat 13C, and sitting on the tarmac, on the Philadelphia airport.  Waiting. Phila-delay-phia.  So again to become small like a minnow, bowing in service to stories larger than my own schedule, and plans.

Try to love everything that gets in your way…

because if something is in your way, it is

going your way, the way

of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

I keep swimming back and forth between these passages.  They bookend this poem.  The latter passage of the poem is catalytic, it has impact, it turns the corner from dark to light.  Because if something is in my way, it is going my way, as well.  What if that could be, now?  What if that is?

This turn of perspective changes something for me. In me.  I am going the way of all beings: towards darkness, then towards the light, and then again, and again.  With each turn towards the dark – in solid form perhaps an obstacle, in essence the doorway to a larger sense of mystery, evoking possibility, wonder, awe.  And with each turn towards the light – more life, vitality; more of a felt sense of self, and then going beyond that, to the joy of light itself.  I am out of my own way. And life itself, goes towards me.  Is going my way.

Time to wrap this up this swim.  We are number two for departure.

I have woken from the sleep of ages

and I am not sure

if I am really seeing, or dreaming,

or simply astonished

walking towards sunrise

to have stumbled into the garden

where the stone was rolled

from the tomb of longing.

Emerging from darkness, from alienation, from confusion, from self-abandonment, we feel the tentative nature of renewed hope, a blinking kind of eye-opening towards a new possibility, of a heart opening towards inspiration, of a heart that reflexively leaps inside, in recognition of a turning homeward again – perhaps in a way never before felt.

When the hard dense stone of ego begins to roll away, what we once experienced as a tomb – now becomes a womb.  Now, somehow, the light of love can be felt, be newly experienced, and taken into our inner darkness.   Something essential and not quite name-able starts taking place inside.   We can bear again the essential embodiment of our own truest and deepest longing.  Our hero’s journey continues forth, as alive and new, and as uncertain as ever.

~Michael Mervosh

(Part 2 of a 4 part reflection of David Whyte’s poem- Spring Awakening)

Sunrise through the misted orchard.

Morning sun turns silver on the pointed twigs.

Until the sun rises again, within us.  Slowly, our mood will lighten, as we keep our awareness on what has been lifeless in us, dark.  We see glimmers of ourselves, small signs of life, things we simply have not noticed before – a curiosity in a failure we have experienced, a small “aha” about something which up to now has felt confounding, a slight burst of excitement that comes from suddenly seeing from a new perspective.  And we keep on witnessing our interior garden, and waiting, and tending, and attending…and at some point, beyond our ability to determine, we find ourselves on track again. In actuality, the track finds us…when we feel that initial feeling of being on track again, on our true path, it is especially sweet when we have emerged from those places that could not have conceived this possibility previously.   The return of wonderment and awe can begin to brighten the colors on our inner landscape.

(Part 3 of a 4 part reflection of David Whyte’s poem- Spring Awakening)

Trees in the corners

with branching arms

and the tangled briars

and broken nets.

When we begin to glance towards the neglected aspects of our interior garden, it can reflect to us an ominous mood, and threatening feelings such as helplessness and despair often surface from our depths.   It simply requires us to stay with these darker, heavier, damp feelings, and tolerate them with patience, steady breathing, and the tentative buds of desire.   There are no immediate or clear solutions in soil like this.  Here, the inner work can feel so slow, laborious, and uninspiring.  But we simply have to stay with it, uncertain… actively waiting for the fog to clear…the light of awareness even so gradually penetrating us through our attention and breath.  And we wait, and even longer, waiting and tending to what needs new life.   Until…

~Michael Mervosh

(Part 2 of a 4 part reflection of David Whyte’s poem- Spring Awakening)

A garden inside me, unknown,

secret, neglected for years,

the layers of its soil deep and thick.

Sometimes, as the fresh warmth of spring awakens us, we feel called to bring our attention to a renewal of our journey.  For some of us, we are also confronted with facing that place in our interior world where the light of awareness does not shine; perhaps where matters have gone unattended for a long time.  Somewhere in each of us, there is inevitably fertile psychic soil that has gone unused, ignored or even abandoned.

Spring’s insistent arrival can pull our attention down towards these lifeless places lingering in us, in order to overturn the soil of our psyches, and although this can unsettle us, it can also bring new life either to or from those places which have become fallow.  We often have to work to resist a reflexive impulse to continue ignoring that which we have left unattended, as it may feel daunting or frightening to begin to look at what we have not paid attention to for so long.  This is where we need courage  and support from others, so we can stay the course, and face the disrepair in us.

~Michael Mervosh

(Part 1 of a 4 part reflection of David Whyte’s poem- Spring Awakening)

I awoke to this day, suddenly realizing “I am now awake”. Feeling my dream world recede, my senses attuning to this world. I felt myself lying in the deep, dark silence of a still winter’s night.

My mind was as empty and quiet as the pre-dawn hour. I turned to glance at the time, letting the clock inform as to how I should feel – time to be awake and start the day, or time to remain drowsy, and fall back into slumber. 4:40am. Hmmm. What is that time telling my internal clock?

In days past, it meant “back to sleep, fool”, you can’t feel rested at this hour! But just for today, a new perspective, a new way of looking. Time to follow my internal depth cues, not the clock face. So – then I am awake. I lie motionless, mindless…timeless… making a space for no immediate meaning making, no thing to think, just my own experience of lying still. Quiet. Now.

The Spanish poet, Juan Jimenez, comes to me. “I have a feeling that, down there in the depths, my boat has struck against a great thing. And nothing happens. Nothing…Silence… Waves…. Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, and we are standing, quietly, in the new life?”

Making no projection from the past onto this new moment, no mind to conjure immediately pressing concerns or worries… I lie here, with nothing happening. I am, quietly, in the new life, of a new day. Very simple. I am new. I get up, get dressed, and head out into the pre-dawn night, an early arrival to my morning routine at the gym, awakened – in more ways than one.