Body Talking - Internal Energy Flow
India and Virginia, 1995-2005


Until the age of 34
I was always cold
Bundling up in countless layers
I often sat through hours of meetings
In a down vest and gloves
With a scarf wrapped around my neck

Then one day I decided
My lack of internal flow
My internal blocks
Had to be fixed
Although consciously
I didn’t believe in flow and blocks
Oh how our body is here
To beautifully teach us all

I begin with what I know
Perhaps I am too thin
So I gain weight
Perhaps I am not active enough
So I join a gym and lose the weight
Perhaps it’s a medical condition
So I run countless tests and everything is fine
Perhaps…
I go through every conventional approach
Still cold

Most of us on a spiritual path
Track some of our fire within
As resulting
From disease or discomfort

For me
My continual inner coldness
Drove me to finally
Open
To the possibilities of anything
Being possible

Then something within began to shift
What if there is another way
To examine
This coldness within?

One evening in India
We arrive at the sacred space of Baba-ji
At 8,000 feet of snowy living
His stone complex offers little warmth
I stand in the icy air
With every patagonia technical piece
Overlapped
Fleeces, downs, wools, gortex
And I stand shivering through the icy pain
Fighting it with all I have

The thin sacred man
Greets us in the icy Himalayan air
He stands barefoot on the stone
He wears a thin gown of cottony orange
He wears a funky hat
And he stands before us
Warm and welcoming
He invites us into his tiny smoky kitchen
Where he cooks up a feast for us
Not eating himself
“Oooo, I don’t eat much.  I feed off the sun” He says
Really?
Maybe I too can feed off the sun
And then not always be so cold

He shares with us some of his practices
Rising at 3am each morning
Cleaning up his space
Then going outside
To sit on the earth or snow
To stare directly into the sun for hours

“Oooo, I don’t tell my eye doctor that I still do it
He got angry at me last time.”
I imagine this Indian mystic and his doctor
Arguing about cutting down on sun feedings

Everything about this Indian mystic
Does not fit into my reality concept
So I do what most of us do
When challenged into our core
I leave

I walk away in the middle of a puja
It’s too challenging to my reality
So a return to wilderness
Calms me
As that fits me well

I walk across the snowy dark landscape alone
Millions of stars look down on me
I breathe in Himalayian air
I breathe
Then climb into my tent
Cuddle into my sleeping bag with all my layers
And fight freezing to death
All night
 
In the morning
A few dogs sleep on the bare snowy earth
Around the tents
I think of my dogs
Who cuddle under down comforters
In the winter for warmth

Are they any different?
How can these dogs withstand the cold?
How can this sacred man not feel the cold?
What can I change in my life
So I won’t have to suffer
In cold
For the rest of time?

Perhaps not leave spaces that challenge me?
Perhaps allow new realities to replace consensus reality?

A lover tells me a story of an Eskimo man
“If you fight the cold, you will feel cold.
If you surrender to it, the cold will pass through you
And you will remain in your own warmth.”

Mmm.  That word again.
Surrender
I’m to surrender to the cold?
Really?

Little do I know
That my path will allow me
To surrender
To everything
In order
To be who I am.

******************************WE ARE ALL STARS***************************

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