Strange Fruit

I do not know where to begin except to say that life often bares strange fruit.   At the end of the silent retreat I found myself wanting to delve deeper into the inner sphere of existence, as I came to have glimpses of something beyond the known self. From this place it became impossible to write or think. Gone were the hungry thoughts desperate for a place in the world of meaning.   Into this inner universe, the words "Mum died" fell like a great boulder, exploding into unintelligible sound.  I asked my sister to repeat her words, "Mum died" she replied. Oh I said as if commenting on the weather.

The words, cold and hard as steel, cut into the soft flesh of me and I watched with detachment as blood gushed out of the wound.   With nothing to hold onto, I must wrestle with this monstrous apparition named death.  A mothers hands never to be felt again.  A mothers voice never to be heard again. A mothers love never to be tasted again.  All that she embodied, no more present, relegated to the catacombs of memory.   I find myself swimming where there is no water.  Arms flailing against the surface air, as I gasp for breath.  Nothing has prepared me for this!  And so the story, abruptly ends here, in Tiruvannamalai with the sudden and unexpected death of my mother.

Silent Meditation Retreat

 Saturday, December 11th

I am in Tiruvannamalai, and today I enter into a ten day silent meditation retreat.  I will not be able to go online for the duration of this retreat and so it will be some time before my next entry. I am already lagging behind by two weeks, so there will be a lot of catching up to do. 

I wonder even as I write these words I wonder what impact this experience will have upon me. I hope to gain a deeper understanding of myself and perhaps realize some lasting transformation. But  this is yet to be seen.

To all of you who read these pages, I want to express my gratitude, as it is your presence that keeps me engaged in this process of journaling my experience. 

Latihan

 Saturday, November 27th/ Sunday, November 28th

The days weld together as I enter into a routine of practicing five meditations a day.  I have broken out of my shell and made several friends at the resort.  Bernhard from Austria, Mats  and Louise both from  Sweden, and Agni from Italy.  I am now addicted to Dynamic meditation, and find myself getting up automatically at 5:00am to push myself to greater and greater heights each day.   The body with its own inherent intelligence;like a flower, always moves toward the highest expression of itself. I am healing in some deep and profound way and the body won't permit my mind to sabotage the process.

Writing this entry, I realize how internal my story has become.  Yet, it cannot take any other form, as I excavate the parts of myself that lay buried beneath surface skin.  I wish that there were more humor in the joyless tales that unfurl across these pages.  Joy however, has been an absent friend throughout much of my life.  I cultivate that joy now,  as I allow myself to be directed by the energy of the moment, and not the dictates of a mind that knows not itself.  In this I have become the watcher.  Observing myself, and withdrawing from habituated responses that say no to life.   And each day I surprise myself, as I embrace what is authentic and uninhibited within me.  This flowering comes like the blossoming of a rose; nurtured as it is in the light of my growing self acceptance.

Everything remains the same, and yet there is present a subtle quality of peace, rippling outward from the center of my being.  Its fragrance wafts through the air, and I capture its scent on the periphery of my awareness, even as I am tormented by doubt.  In the weaving of the web in which I am caught, India has me in her grasp.  I can no more escape her grip, than I can the exhalation of my next breath. I said once that India is the mistress of spice and she proves herself in this, the alchemical distillation of my flesh and bone.

Today I was introduced to the Mahamudra meditation. It took place at 9:30pm in my favorite hall, Chaung Tzu.  In the darkened room, I was invited to stand motionless and await the first impulse of movement, to express itself through my body.  An expression of energy known as latihan. I stood motionless with my eyes closed and waited.  Within minutes, it had begun.  I experienced my arm rising of its own volition, as if gently guided by some unseen force. Then, as this arm fell in slow motion to my side, the other was raised.  I watched as my body entered the center of the circle and began its own articulation of the dance. There was elegance and beauty in slow synchronized  movements that were an imitation of tai chi.  For forty minutes, I stood on the circumference, whilst my body painted brush strokes upon the veil of nights enfolding mystery.  This was latihan.  In it I discovered yet another facet of myself.

The Edge

Friday, November 26th

Today in dynamic meditation I managed to move past the sensation of pain and keep my arms above my head for the full ten minutes.  I dived into the ocean and broke through the surface waters to discover a new freedom in my movements. I am poetry in motion and I know no boundaries. I am screaming and shaking and dancing my way to living life with the intensity of passion.  In entering into this program of meditation, I have entered a kind of madness that extricates me from the prison of my mind. It is the the shaking of the Bushmen in Africa, the dream time of the Aborigines, the stillness of the Zen Buddhists, and the laser beam of awareness, of the guru.  I am gripping the floor with my fingers (Hari calls toes fingers) and walking on my head.

I arrived early for Vipassana meditation and so had time to watch the facilitator as she walked across the floor carrying the meter long cane with which she would strike us. During the meditation she tapped me on the head and as the stick bounced off my wannabe Angela Davis Afro, I recalled a conversation I had with a man in Rishikesh about my hair.  The man, who was resident at the ashram, had approached me on the road and immediately turned the conversation to the issue of my hair. he asked me if my hair was dyed red and now fading at the roots.  When I confirmed this he launched into a long diatribe on why he thought it most un-natural for a black woman to have red hair. I challenged him. I had met his type before.  People of his ilk wanted to anthropomorphize me. Place me behind a glass case with all of my "Primitiveness" on display.  He couldn't see that I was the Hottentot Venus, blazing the trail of liberation!  All I could think as I walked away from him, was I must color those roots!

Later in the afternoon, sitting in Chaung Tzu for silent meditation I was more successful in stilling the mind.  No thoughts intruded on the silence and I left the meditation with a deep sense of peace.  From this stillness an internal voice arose and I dictated the following:

Allow life to be a synthesis of stillness and motion
Such that stillness is the container that contains action
And awareness the laser beam of clarity
That directs you as you enter into the dance

It is late afternoon when I emerge from the forth meditation for the day and my body is screaming with exhaustion.  I head back to the apartment to rest before dinner. I have made  number of acquaintances over the past few days, but I am not ready to give up my solitude.  I have spent so much time in India in the company of others that I am now appreciating time spent on my own.  

Dynamic Meditation

 Wednesday November 24th

I arose at 5:00am and dressed for the first meditation of the day.  Dynamic meditation commences sharply at 6:00am and the doors are locked to all late comers.  I exit the apartment under in the weak strains of light that usher in daybreak.  At the main junction I see the scattered remains of last night.  A confetti of red and white casings;evidence of the nights revelry.  I walk down the quiet street, my only companions are the street sweepers. It is blissfully quiet, and I slow down my pace, so as to savor the

I am dressed in my red gown, and so I head straight for the main auditorium to join about forty other people.  The dynamic meditation is a synthesis of five distinct elements that allow for tremendous discharge of held energy.  And thought I am somewhat skeptical as to its merits, I enter whole hartedly into the process. At first breathing out forcefully and erratically, then screaming and shouting as If I had gone mad, followed by jumping with my arms held above my head to the sound of a mantra, to standing motionless and finally dancing.  The whole sequence takes an hour.   At the end of it I felt as if some restraining chord had snapped and I was aware of energy pouring into the left side of my body. I felt a sewing together of the two sides of me, as though I had been off balance and had not known it.

The following meditation is Vipassana, in which the meditator is required to sit motionless for 45 minutes focused upon the breath, followed by a walking meditation in which the attention is solely placed upon the feet.  during the period of silence a facilitator walks around with a cane and may tap a meditator on the head to bring them back to alertness. It begins and my mind is restless and I spend much of the time listening for when the stick might fall upon my head. When it occurs, it is so imperceptible, as to exist in the realm of the imagined. Yet is is enough to bring me back to the breath.
We begin the walking meditation and I examine how my feet fall onto the floor.  I notice that I have a propensity for walking on the outer edges of my feet.  It is another revelation.

Later still I enter the talking to the body mind meditation. Here I am required to talk to my body and ask of it what it needs. I receive a clear message to relax and stop gripping onto life.  I am gripping onto my body, as if it were a tightly clenched fist; this pattern of holding is preventing energy from flowing freely.  I am suddenly back in the store where I spent time one afternoon watching a Saleem Khan film with two young shop assistants. The first question I am asked is am I married and do I have children. 

The shock registered on the young man's face when I answered no children, brought me abruptly to the memory of having had two miscarriages.  Again, I enter into that eternal well of sadness.  Unable to reconcile with not being a mother, I had carried the grief for many years. Pent up emotions that had all but overwhelmed me, were dumped into the purse of my womb. This, so that I could survive.   It is the tight pair of shoes that you wear to a party, and when you get home you throw them off and experience immediate relief. Years later, when diagnosed with fibroid tumors, it was not surprising that there were two tumors the size of a four month pregnancy each.  My grief had taken on physical expression.  I do not know why I have brought you into this "The Temple of My Familiar" to steal the title of Alice Walker's book;except that in the speaking of it, I let go of this clenched fist.  

Mother's Song

Tuesday, November 23rd

I learned from my sister that My parents are in New York for two weeks.  I have a borrowed phone for the duration of my stay in Pune, and so I decided to call home before setting off for my voice session.   after several rings my father answered. I greeted him and following a brief chat I asked him how mum was doing. His voice was hollow as he informed me that mum was now suffering from severe memory loss.  Just a few weeks ago she had asked him for our home address, and  a week later she couldn't remember the phone number.  She has lived in the house for more then 30 years, and so this was alarming to my dad and sent him an undeniable signal that something was wrong.

I had known since the summer, when they spent six weeks with me.  Mum had spent much of that time in a near catatonic state, staring blindly at clothing catalogues; unwilling or unable to engage in conversation.  My fathers words fell like load stones.  They confirmed what I had feared for some time.  That my mother was slipping into a deep depression and possible Alzheimer's.  My father sounded dazed, and totally at a loss for what to do.  I wanted to reach through the phone and hug him, but all I could do was to suggest that she get a proper assessment by a physician.  I had to press back the tears that wanted to force their way through the damn of my contracted emotions.  This was not the time for tears.

Dad told me that mum had gone to bed and so I promised to call back to speak with her in the next couple of days.  I  felt powerless to help my parents as they must now struggle with the encroaching reality of mental illness.  My parents have been the last to realize the mental state of my mother, as each has been in their own state of denial.  But, the ravages of the disease now evident in the scores of notes that my mother must scribe daily to thread the events of her day together, have brought them to an abrupt realization.  It is the beginning of what is likely to be a long journey. Where it will lead is yet to be determined.

I  hang up the phone.  I can do nothing from so far away. Nothing, but to love my mother where she is standing, on this shifting ground.  I head out to my voice session in a cloud of sadness, uncertain if I will be able to sing.  The facilitator informs me that the session is a format that requires that I use both my voice and my body to give expression to what I am feeling.  The moment she asks how I feel, the damn bursts; tears spill down my face and of their own volition, and words that tell my mothers story tumble from my mouth.   Sing your sadness, I am told.   And from some where deep inside, I hear a voice emerge. It is deep and sultry; its song,  a song of loss and despair.  My body moves in slow, languid movements to match my mood. The facilitator accompanies me with the piano and I weep now in word and in movement.  The experience is bitter sweet.  For I discover that I have a natural talent, and the teacher affirms this.

The session comes to a close and I am reminded by my teacher, that I possess all of the power of creation. Therefore, I should simply love my father and mother, offering them support without entering into their pain, as this would only create a co-dependency.   I leave feeling  grateful that I  was able to discharge all of my bottled up emotions.  Still feeling slightly feverish, I returned home and wrote these words.

Mother's Song 

Something fractured
A broken promise hangs heavy
In the pregnant space
Recovery lies somewhere
Beyond reach
Stumbling feet
Attempt to carry you
Across the widening tear
Within flesh and bone and sinew
Carefully written notes
Fall onto the floor of forgetfulness
Where the burning embers of memory
Turn them to ash
Sifting thought the charred remains
Your clumsy fingers paint the
Recovered fragments in gray and black
Upon a naked canvass
Paper dolls glued onto
The available surface of memory
Fragile bandages that now
Serve as the repository of hope

Redux

Something fractured
A broken promise hangs heavy
In the pregnant space
Recovery lies somewhere
Beyond reach
Bare feet tread carefully 
Across the splintered floor
Of frustration and denial
Yours, and mine
I have no compass
With which to navigate
These uncharted waters
That threaten to carry you
Into the abyss of forgetfulness
My love, the net that seeks to
Hold you close to shore
Strains against the current
Fragile threads stitched
Into the frayed cloth of memory
Keep you close for now
Something fractured....

The Welcome

 Friday, November 19

I arose to the symphony of car horns and bird song and the call to prayer from a near by mosque. It is the sound that greets me each day 5:00am. I am it seems, to be haunted by echos of ashram life.  Last night was filled with the sounds of fire crackers being set off until around midnight, and so sleep did not come easily to me.  The reverberation from the small explosions ricocheted off the walls of the closed court yard and crashed onto the soft pillow of my ear drum.   Even during the day the noise of peoples coming and going, disrupts the relative quiet of the apartment. Were I fluent in Hindi, I would be able to repeat verbatim, the conversations of people five floors down below, so amplified is sound in this corridor of four buildings.

I had breakfast and set off with Sasha for the Osho Resort to have a formal induction.  This included an overview of the various meditations and a tour of the premises.  I was impressed with the Olympic sized pool the sauna and whirlpool.  However, most impressive was the circular room of white marble, where Osho's ashes are int urned. It is called Chuang Tzu and the energy there can only be described as potent and profoundly peaceful.   It is the room where silent meditations are held daily and I mentally commit to sitting in this room every day.

At the end of the orientation, I ate lunch with some of my fellow neophytes and then returned to the apartment for a well deserved rest, in light of my sleep deprived night.  When I woke up two hours later, I had a high temperature and a pounding headache.  That pretty much characterized my physical condition over the next few days. The fever raged for four days and my body felt battered, as if I had been in the ring with Mike Tyson.  I was miserable. I drifted between waking and sleep, eating almost no food; rather, drinking copious amounts of water.  The fever finally broke on the fourth day and by Tuesday morning I felt well enough to venture out.  I had an appointment for a private session called the healing voice and I didn't want to miss it.