It's My Birthday!!!

Tomorrow, May 21st.

 I'll be 46.

Tonight Andrew and I are reading as part of a storytelling event for Austin Bat Cave, produced by The Story Department. The theme is "Jobs" and I'll be talking about the one and only time I worked on a movie set in all the seven years I lived in Los Angeles.

I'm planning on livin' it up tonight and well, all through the weekend, my pretties. Friday night will be a yoga practice party at Sacred Streams, followed by a little dancing at the Fuzz Club.

I'm excited.

And already so tired. Insomnia and a damaged rotator cuff kept me up almost all night.

But not too tired to tell a story, I don't think.

Mother's Day Coming Down

Wow, it seems like every minute of the month of May is booked up for me. My birthday on the 21st, with a party on that day and the day after too maybe, MARY coming to town on Memorial Day (Mmmm's abound) and Enhancing Fertility for Couples this weekend as well as a wedding and Mother's Day at Bookwoman. Whew!

I'm sitting here at the kitchen table, getting ready to go pick up Bodhi from preschool, going over the pieces I've written that I may like to read out loud this weekend. I am crying as I re-read some of these; all of them are from my "Five Minute Mama" experiment, begun two years or so ago, wherein I assign a word a week and we mamas write, without stopping or editing, on that word for five minutes. The pieces are not as good as I had hoped, but this one just touched me so much...I mean, I know intellectually that his babyhood is nearly gone, and that as difficult as it has been, it still grieves me to see it go. It can't be easy for him, either. He still nurses, which is probably not that good for either of us at this point, but I'm not ready to completely let it go. And he's only just beginning to show glimmers of interest in potty training.  So he knows. He knows it's coming. He's two and a half now, and I'm so grateful that he's that and not three.

One insight I've had recently, among many, is that I need to let go of my dreams and desires around being a badass, in-demand yoga teacher. I just cannot commit the time it would take for me to be that right now. When I put time into it, like when I practice or teach or meditate or train, I love it. Don't get me wrong. Practicing yoga, and teaching yoga, is absolutely vital to my existence. I LOVE it. And it's fun, just about the most fun thing I can think of, to be honest. But I really and truly prefer spending my time, my guilt-free, joyous, appreciative, chosen time, with my son. And with my husband. This is very painful for me to admit, but it is true. And I know that I wouldn't have all of that for my family if I didn't put in the time on the mat or in quiet, getting to know myself, first. 

So here's the piece that is making me cry today, written I'm sure before Bodhi was even a year old. Awww...

[hold]

Living on a prayer, holding fast to the center, circling in flight while holding. Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us. Except sometimes they do. I hold my son as though he were a part of me that had always been missing. My life before him shimmers so distantly from the importance, the weight, the depth, the breadth of this moment. The here and now. All in a second's breath. He molds to my form with his, he hold my silver charms in his teeth, holds my hair in his hands, holds my fingers in his sleep, holds onto soft bath towel and avocado and veggie puffs and teething biscuits and drum sticks and prayer bowl and CD cover and ball and spoon and toy hammer and the dog's tail and his very own remote control, all the same, all with equal parts wonder and joy, ownership and knowledge that they may all eventually, some sooner than later, fall from his grasp. It is a lesson, how fleeting, how we hold on. And yet he knows he can hold on to me in order to stand, to reach for what's above him, to comfort and console him, to reassure him when the noises are loud and mysterious, or a stranger wants his attention. I can only hope to hold him in the deepest stillness, teach him the value of resting there while the world spins out of control around us, teach myself the great lesson in letting go, loosening the hold, closing the eyes, and trusting the wind for once, to navigate the rough terrain of the heart and time.

Mother's Day at Bookwoman

So I am organizing a reading/event/performance at Bookwoman for Mother's Day.



Happy Fierce Mother's Day at Bookwoman!

The white gloves are off! We are celebrating Mother's Day this year with ferocious readings, performances, a demo on how to make artist trading cards for your kids, and other luxurious treats for mothers and the people who love them.

Featuring:

Liz Belile
Spike Gillespie
Marrit Ingman
Diane Fleming
Dalia Azim
Lucy Anderson
Chris Strickling
Robin Bradford
Agnes Savich
Diana Garcia
Lize Burr
...and more

Sunday, May 9, 2010
4-6 pm
admission is free

Lakshmi, An Awakening

Our yoga teacher, John Friend, talks a lot about the Goddess in Anusara yoga.

To put it mildly.

It feels so damn good to be studying yoga from this perspective, from the poetic, luscious, ferocious remembrance of the Curve. The power of the Creative. Honoring the Divine Feminine. I don't think we go far enough with it, in fact, but it's getting there.

I am always amazed, whenever I go to another Anusara-flavored teacher's class, and they are teaching on the very theme I am contemplating. That happens a lot; you'll show up to take a class and the teacher might as well be Killing You Softly with Their Song.  Like that, happens to me all the time. We're on the same wavelength. I hardly ever make it to Christina Sell's classes but I read her blog all the time and she is always working with something I am working with, in my own way. And then when I see him, John's words almost always speak straight to my heart. And his words on the Goddess these days... I mean I knew that he had a lot to offer when it comes to Lakshmi, but I never paid attention to it. Until today. I just got the Anusara Inspired Teacher newsletter, in which he talks ALL about it. So it should come as no surprise, even when I'm far away and as out of touch as I am, that we are all connected pretty hard.

SO I had a mindblowing, mystical experience yesterday. I want to share it with you here, in the form of an email I sent my spiritual teacher. Her response follows.

I have been experiencing some sort of wild awakening. I don't know how to fully explain it, except that it is definitely a mystical moment. I have been contemplating my upcoming workshop, "Tapping the Nectar of the Goddess," and through various contemplations and explorations I have realized that my inner guide resonates NOT with Kali, Durga, or any other warrior goddess energies, but with beautiful, fertile, graceful and generous Lakshmi. I know that I have been afraid of this part of myself, the part that is beautiful, charming, graceful, and motherly. I have also been afraid to put my creative energy toward creating wealth instead of art. But I'm getting a different insight about that.  I'm wary of asking for wealth and prosperity or good luck. Still not comfortable with that, will need to contemplate that part of it some more. As I walked, for miles today, I had insight after insight after insight. Everywhere I looked I saw and heard beauty. I saw bees drinking nectar. Trees shimmering. The random radio station I was listening to played song after song about Lakshmi and Sita...I have been crying. I almost couldn't teach, it was so overwhelming and powerful. It's been hard to keep both feet on the ground. And yet I have felt my feet on the ground even more fully than ever.

One of the realizations is that Lakshmi has been WAITING for me. I thought for sure I was a badass, like Kali, not some wimpy girly girl like Lakshmi. Turns out I am perhaps mistaken. It has made me laugh out loud, and I've been reflecting back on how you used to talk about the Divine as waiting for us to make ourselves available.  It feels good to love all these parts of myself.

Her response: 

Good Morning Liz,

I just read a south Indian poem yesterday and in one verse it says,"I cannot be away even for a moment, says the Lady on the flower who dwells on your chest." (This refers to Lakshmi)

Lakshmi teaches us how to be vulnerable, open and available to the blessings of the Divine, while also teaching us that we are utterly dependent on the Divine.  In truth, she teaches us the asana of surrender.  She teaches us have to love all of the Divine's creation and to be serve the Divine by loving all that the Divine creates. 

In Christian terms she teaches us the Greatest Commandment, "Love God and love neighbor."  She is the love and also the channel that love flows through.  She grasps at nothing; she allows love to flow and she advocates for all.  She is the highest servant of love.

It sounds like you are in a good and holy space.

Trust your instincts.

So, this all came about through contemplating the very spontaneous, arresting title I came up with for the intensive I'm leading this weekend: "Tapping the Nectar of the Goddess."  Words are important touchstones and provide clues on how and where to go deeper in our reflections and self-study. In this case, I thought: "Hmm, of all the words that stand out here to me -- Tapping, Nectar, Goddess -- the most alluring word is of course Nectar. But you can just go straight to the nectar, you 've got to go to the Goddess first." So that is where I went, to the highest. And it turns out that Lakshmi is she who is both the nectar and the giver of it. And so on. She is the goddess of prosperity and good fortune, too, and she is beautiful. She is the lotus, and the lotus giver.

The night before yesterday I did a little chant to Kali, the goddess I thought I most resembled cuz she's the coolest and scariest, and the chant I did came with a warning that basically said, "You can chant this, but watch out." Sure enough, Kali Ma gently and lovingly (not her usual style) nudged me toward Lakshmi. Every time I googled "nectar" and "goddess" I found story after story about the milk of human consciousness, about amrita, the nectar of immortality, and how it comes from Lakshmi. Damn it! Then it dawned on me: This is who I am. The uplifter of all humankind. The encourager and the supporter of others. Motherly. Nurturing. All the things I know I am yet somehow don't revere or appreciate. And guess what else she is? The Goddess of Fertility.

Shitfire! That's me!

So I googled and cried, googled and cried, tears of realization and profound joy. It sounds silly now as I write it, but it felt really amazing. Everything was vibrating. I woke up yesterday and I walked Bodhi to school, all the while thinking of Lakshmi and the nectar, and (as I sit and type this the chills/goosebumps start again) everywhere I looked I saw flowers, bees...I taught my class in a mystical state, and what do you know: my class size, which has been very very small for many months now, quadrupled in size. Right? I know, next week it'll be back to nobody or just one student, but for the day...wow! Talk about prosperity! And then later, the evening class had over twice as many students too! The afternoon class students got the superbuzz, which was good because I knew all of them quite well, and the evening students just got a taste of the buzz, which was fine because most of them were new to me.  In both classes students had breakthroughs.

Whew!

Oh, and in my afternoon class, I played my Pandora Krishna Das station, and quite randomly a significant percentage of the songs explicitly addressed Lakshmi. I got a kick out of that.

So I haven't totally figured out how to incorporate any of this, except that it's clear we must learn to listen and answer the call of the Divine within us. Like Rumi says, we hear knocking, but it's from the INSIDE. And we need to know that the mind is gonna love to distract us from the Truth with pretty and satisfying images of who we think we are. But who we really are may be something wholly different from who we or anyone else may think we are. In fact I can almost guarantee it. And the self-acceptance may bring a lot of tears.

A LOT of tears. But tears of joy, friends, tears of joy.

So we'll see where this takes me. So far I know that I've had enough of the nurturing Dark. I'm moving into the nurturing Light.