…is latin for “the struggle must go on”. Or something like that. I really don’t know latin, but I can make your head spin with my mad Sanskrit skills.
I’ve been away. Not like, away on an radtarded bike riding adventure. Nothing exciting like my epic bike journey through Utah and Colorado and central Oregon last year. I’m barely managing a rudimentary yoga practice and I haven’t been able to train for climbing since last summer. Many trips to the doc and various scans and tests and such show damage to my common extensor tendon and anconeous but no one can seem to figure out why the bones get stuck when I’m trying to extend or flex my arm.
This has been worse than Janky. Janky I could push through and negotiate an uneasy truce long enough to ride a bike. You never know how important elbows are until they stop working properly. And who the hell hurts their elbow? Commonly shoulders suffer, wrists or forearms get shattered, but elbows? No one *seriously* hurts their elbow. Except medical mysteries like me.
Meanwhile, since I can’t do much with my body other than walk (yawn) my meditation practice has taken off like Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter feed and I’ve begun reaching new heights with the yoga siddhis, aka super powers. Not only can I sit for hours at a time without flinching, but I am able to do it without even thinking about beer anymore!
My most recent super power? I can see the future! I see a world where gluten-free beer doesn’t taste like hot dog water, where bikes are the ‘normal’ way of getting around in the city and where obesity and heart disease is a thing of the past (probably because people are riding their bikes all over town). In this beautiful world, all my friends have all the work they want and are no longer standing on unemployment lines waiting for a job. They are also fully able to do whatever it is that makes their hearts sing… and they sing loudly and often, if not always in tune. The world is at peace, governments and religions (both instruments of control) with their stubborn clinging to outmoded, ideological dogma have relented and agreed on the one thing that is absolutely certain for everyone: They don’t know. Monsanto has been vanquished, family farming is back, and there is enough for everyone. The world economies are balanced, trade and barter are balanced, the haves and have-nots are balanced, and Fox News is a thing of the past. For that matter, so is television. And Chia dolls. And Pat Robertson is gone, finally.
Obviously if my visions are correct, they show a very, very distant future. The nearsighted view is clearly dim.
Even with all this meditational prowess bursting from my seams, the “what ifs” take over: What if they can’t figure out what’s wrong with my arm? What if it’s permanently damaged and I can never climb again? Or ride my bikes more than once a week? Or am reduced to doing only the most basic yoga? How can I be a respected teacher of yoga if I can’t practice at an advanced level any longer? Will my students adapt along with me? Is it fair to ask them to? Could I fake it? I know teachers who fake it. What if I end up going completely crazy instead of only partially crazy because I can’t exercise? What if I’m already crazy? So crazy I can’t even recognize my own insanity any longer. What if I really just suck at everything? What if my rapidly diminishing moments on this earth are spent in unrequited love or worse? What if… What if… What if… I have to ride a recumbent?
. . . . . . .
I’m kidding of course, but not really. But sort of. I have been meditating a lot more and with that increase of focus and attention comes curious and intense new insights. And the writing–the other writing, not this writing– has been developing nicely too. In other words, my passion lives, though less demonstrably of late. Most people wouldn’t see meditation as anything to be passionate about. And in fact, isn’t meditation there to keep people from being passionate? Isn’t it the passion-killer, this meditation? How can meditation be a passion, like bike riding?
Stopping is an interesting a place to be as any other point on the continuum, with the right perspective.
Sometimes I have that perspective, sometimes not. Like everything else perspective is temporary, changing, riding a moment-by-moment wave of transient indifference from one now to the next.
Do I sound too earnest? Not playful enough? That’s the beauty of the nondual perspective. Serious and playful can coexist at the same time. What does this have to do with bike riding? I’ll let Ken Wilbur tell you:
In the end, I believe, we will find the inherent joy in existence itself, a joy that stems from the great perfection of this and every moment, a wondrous whole in itself, a part of the whole of the next, a sliding series of wholes and parts that cascade to infinity and back, never lacking and never wanting, because always in the brilliance that is now. The integral vision, having served its purpose, is finally out shined by the radiance of a spirit that is much too obvious to see and much too close to reach, and the integral search finally succeeds by letting go of the search itself, there to dissolve in a radical Freedom and consummate Fullness that was always already the case, so that one abandons a theory of everything in order simply to be Everything, one with the all in this endless awareness that holds the Kosmos kindly in its hand. And then the true Mystery yields itself, the face of Spirit secretly smiles, the Sun rises in your very own heart and the Earth becomes your very own body, galaxies rush through your veins while stars light up the neurons of your night, and never again will you search for a mere theory of that which is actually your own original face.
Nobody’s sending me little love notes like they do with Stevil, telling me to get relevant again. Probably it means no one is actually reading anymore. But you know… right when you give up on me I’m likely to be right back with something feisty and bikey again. It doesn’t matter. I’m not here for blogosphere recognition, but as a little personal experiment. The internet is my laboratory.
My question to you is: What is your passion and what are you waiting for? Get after it!
A luta continua… the struggle goes on. The inner adventure continues. But I sure could use a day on the slopes in Church of Powder.
I pay people off.