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.