abhyasa (part 1) ("to throw toward".... consistent, diligent practice...)
There are days when you just can't. I can't. When the still, petaled voice urges you to nudge up to the basin of the well and gaze inside. Urges you to stare past the still, calm surface of the water and find what depths and hidden treasures lay inside. To stir shit up, plumb the depths and emerge victorious, a string of diver's pearls clung victoriously in your tenacious fist.
And then there's Monday. The tongue-tying, heart-stomping, effort-squashing bitch of the week. Where all one's heartfelt efforts are rewarded by prematurely sore muscles, a slight headache, and nothing but useless SPAM in your inbox. There is never enough coffee. You are almost always on your damn period. The cavities of the house greet you with unwashed sheets and foreign, desultory smells. And whatever glorious vistas you imagined yourself scaling over the freewheeling, punch-drunk weekend turn to dog-eared postcards in your flailing, inept palms. Glories only glimpsed, never realized.
Today you know you must not do the following: Start a diet. Scrutinize your bank statement. Begin training for that marathon. Master crow pose. Give up wheat. Call your Mother and lovingly inquire as to her health. You must not paint your bathroom red in an attempt to keep from cleaning out the bottom drawer you've been avoiding these past 6 months, its contents starting to collect a white sheen of dust and mold. This is not the day that, after a toddler-induced, 3-month long dry spell, you decide you and your husband are going to become adept practitioners of Tantra, beginning each day, (after oil-pulling, many cups of herbal tea and vippassana, of course) with a pre-dawn bout of passionate love-making, your chakras and auras entwined, while the cooperate munchkin obediently snoozes. Today is not the day to stand on your hands in the middle of the room for five whole minutes and it is not the day to spearhead a large political uprising or start a revolution.
Neither major nor minor.
Or maybe it is....
Cuz maybe you will forgo pancakes for breakfast. And that will be that. You will jog around your neighborhood for 12 whole minutes, noticing the change of the light as the fog makes echoes through the ancient, greenery of trees. You will hold your breath and diligently dial your Mama, then thank the gods for the sweet invention of voicemail as you deliver her your best, most shiniest Good Daughter message, whilst patting yourself on the back. Today is the day you will fold half of that tower of laundry, and maybe slip your hubbie some tongue into the usual workaday smooch on your way out the door, where the gym and precisely 13 seconds of handstand await.
Today's revolutions will be like any other. Small, consistent, unremarkable in either breadth or distance. In the grand scheme of things, they will rise to the height and audacity of a hill of beans.
But maybe some of them are magic. Maybe some of them will sprout. Through the lackluster sweat of your day-in-day-out effort, one day shall arise those glorious, fabled mansions in the sky. A hulk of vivid, mythic vine unfurling itself skyward from the humble spot in the ground you've been toiling all the while. And you will gaze upward at its mystic majesty, wonderingwhat celestial realms await you at its end. And then you will reach out your hand and position your feet once more, and once again begin to Climb.
