My life inside the whirlwind
Dear Soul,
photo by Neenu Vimalkumar
Dear Soul,
For the longest time,
I lived in a whirlwind.
It was never any one thing
Whistling too loudly in my ear.
It was always everything, all at once.
I remember how, that one fall day, I even became furious with the wind itself, yelling and punching at it uselessly, trying to defeat the original Tai Chi master.
That mistake I made . . .
“WHY did I DO THAT?!
Because of THAT,
I have compromised my position with HER.
And of COURSE,
- as ALWAYS -
SHE takes advantage of ME!
WHY did I EVER get mixed up with HER
in the FIRST place?!
Now, BECAUSE of all THAT,
I’m stuck doing THIS!”
(Meanwhile, missing out on that other thing which sings to my heart.
Oh yes, my heart - now that I feel it pounding in my chest
I’m reminded of a dozen other reasons why it hurts.)
It’s hard to believe, dear soul, that I was ever able to see through all those blinders, after so many years of painful blunders, and come out the other side.
Back then, no mistake was allowed to stand it’s ground as a lesson learned.
No, it had to be followed up with inner I-told-you-so’s, the volume turned up to 11.
The blooper film had to be reviewed
again and again and again.
Of course, I did have my practices.
Thank you, dear soul, for that.
My body was the sanctuary I turned to again and again, using movement to spread out the shock of suffering more evenly through my bones and joints. Even before I knew what prayer was, I was kneeled in devotion on my meditation cushion.
Ah, but was I being wise - or just avoiding the to do list?!
How many times was “wisdom practice” merely the label I stamped on a container within which the voices of blame still reigned supreme?
Since I was a little boy, dear soul,
words have always had a way
of ringing in my head.
An overheard remark of little consequence might become the rhythm section of my mind for hours to come. This was a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, I heard words making music. The everyday mutterings of fellow humans weren’t so different than birdsong. In moments of clarity, there it was:
The musicality of being.
Yet other times, a heavy metal band rehearsed in my head, relentlessly pounding like a jackhammer into my psyche, interrupting any hope of coherence, let alone peace and quiet.
This has been my path, dear soul.
Bless you for teaching me how
to hear noise as music.
Back then, it was mostly a survival tool.
Today, its the most beautiful gift
I’ve ever been given.
I hear it here,
beside my open window,
fingers softly clicking the keyboard,
six lanes of traffic criss-crossing four stories below,
a pedestrian chime for the blind counting time
at the nearby intersection like a metronome,
mating calls of birds perched in nearby branches.
A soft breeze enters silently,
kissing the skin of my face.
How to hear the melodies of a life that wants to love you despite the deafening too-muchness of the world you were born into: Somatic Inquiry is the method that cuts through the madness.
Cultivating Relational Harmony through Somatic Inquiry