on going deeper

This morning, I awoke at 3:45 and stumbled over to sit on the toilet. There I sat for 7 minutes, dozing and finishing up the rest of my dream. With a start, I forced myself awake, stood up, pulled on my underthings, and went into the back room, for yoga. I lit sage and prayed to the four directions, sang three morning songs, and at around 4:10 am started my two hours of sweat-lodge yoga. It was a new class, one I had not done before today, one focused entirely on going deeper and peeling back the layers of self-mutilation with the intention of healing the psyche's rotten core. After stretches but before starting abdominals I paused the playback and went into the living room (taking care to keep the heat in by shutting the sliding door) in order to write down the fading details of the dream I had been having just before I woke up. (In this dream, I was about to run cross a 6-lane freeway during heavy traffic, even though I had the option of using a nearby bridge to cross over it.) After writing down the details of my dream I stepped back onto the mat to do many sets of abs with a roll and as well as twisting abs with a roll, during which I began to feel muscles and tendons in my pelvis that I haven't felt in an age. The class continued and I followed the spoken instructions, breathing into and peeling back layers of hatred and self-doubt, delving with each pose deeper into the ripples of my mind, rooting around in the dank and fetid cellars of my​ soul. Oh what I found there! Thoughts and feelings, heartbreaks and ecstasy, all types of energies twisted up into complex knots and pulsating balls, all types of memories choking the free flow of chi, of prana, of joy. The distress I felt upon discovering these choke-points was so great that I turned off the recording and finished my session on my own, warming down gradually and granting myself a long final resting. I know that these blockages won't dissolve by themselves; it will take many more years of effort and breathing and yoga to loosen their deathly grasp, to bring healing to the zones they but poorly hide. Sitting there on the mat frustrated with myself for ending class prematurely, I remembered that in my dream, just before waking up, I had run through a gap in traffic and successfully crossed the freeway, eschewing the beckoning footbridge and landing in an entirely new world, in a place with giant walking robots and mists shining in soothing neon light. Patience, I told myself, salvation lies in patience, in practice, and in persistence. What tomorrow holds is mystery, but today is drenched in hope. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥