Tag Archives: spirituality

04/03/2013

Initiation

By Tai Jimenez

As a dancer, there were certain things I had naturally and other things I had to work at. I expected there to be a certain amount of pain. While working to develop my flexibility for example, pain became a sort of daily ritual meditation.

At times, I was overwhelmed by the level of sacrifice the art demanded, but I knew I wanted to go all the way, where ever that was, where ever that led. That journey was stressful, terrifying, confusing, ecstatic, spiritual and devastating, not necessarily in that order, and sometimes all those things before lunch.

I think my failures outnumbered my successes, which made the successes more meaningful.

Now I can look back on that journey and see it as a kind of initiation process towards becoming an artist. Certain things in life can’t be gotten at without going through the door of transformation, no matter how gifted you are, and it usually doesn’t feel good when it’s happening. The struggle of the butterfly to emerge from its cocoon is what strengthens its wings and enables it to fly. The struggle is inseparable, and, as Malidoma Some suggests, equal to the gift that awaits you.

In our culture, we are taught to lead with ego, to always look cool and to avoid vulnerability because it equates with weakness, but Some also teaches that Spirit can only work with us when we are in a vulnerable state. He says, “Sometimes your not-knowing cooperates better with a process than your knowing.” These are hard words for modern people to embrace, we who want to know the outcome of every step before we take it, we who have invented insurance for our insurance, we of the homogenized beauty, of the entitled, we in the “Yes, we can,” demanding change under the guise of security.

Security is an inside joke; you can’t find it on the outside, get it? Hahaha.

Ah, what can I say? My brother is the comedienne of the family. Anyway, now that I’ve hung up my pointe shoes, another initiation is on the horizon: parenthood.

So far, so good: the little tea-pot is kicking and appears healthy. I am quite comfy in my maternity jeans and enjoy food in an almost orgasmic way. I’m talkin’ peanut butter and butter and jelly. I have boobs for the first time in my life; I have to lift to get up under there and wash. Ladies, y’all know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. And I feel a kind of immunity from the cares of the world, like I’ve just won a challenge on Project Runway and cannot be eliminated for the next round. There’s a sort of energy of respite that confused me at first, but that I now wallow in quite contentedly.

Mostly, when people find out that I am pregnant, and at six months it’s hard to miss, they are sincerely congratulatory, but then there are those others, the rainers-on-the paraders, who take the opportunity to unleash their cynicism about parenthood under the pretext of giving me a head’s up. Thanks. They complain about how unhappy they are, stopping just short of out-right blame towards their kids followed by an insincere chuckle and an awkward silence.

Maybe I caught them at a bad moment but it seems…maybe they’re missing the point? They cannot see the bigger picture and place their experience within the context of initiation. They cannot see the hope of unconditional love.

I’m not saying that there’s not an appropriate place and time to express one’s heart-ache over parenting. Of course there is. But I suspect our above mentioned cynics also lack a context for expressing grief. Maybe we don’t have to choose between the image of the new-agey, bullshit, eternally cheery positive thinker and the cynic.  Maybe we can let ourselves off the hook by honestly accepting how we feel, without resistance, without labels. By resisting our humanness, we become trapped in a prison of expectation, a maze with no center, no exit and no reward. And I only know about the maze because I’ve been there. I guess getting lost is sometimes part of it. We forget that it’s not who we are.

I often look upon the Spiritual journey, of which parenting may play a big part for those who choose it, not as a process of gaining special psychic powers or existing in some perpetually blissful state, but as a process of becoming fully human. And don’t worry. If you don’t choose parenting, initiation will find you some other way.

And then there are those, many of whom are quite accomplished in other areas of their lives, who say, without doubt or hesitation, that parenting is the best, the greatest thing they’ve ever done.

Ashe.

Here we come to welcome you, Little Big One.

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01/18/2013

Down the Rabbit-Hole

By Tai Jimenez

I belong to an on-line google group that discusses spirituality. It is an extension of a group that meets up periodically for retreats and serves to maintain communications when we’ve returned from the retreat back into our everyday lives.

Recently, one of our members went on a rant: she was frustrated with the community, with the lack of tangible progress, feeling unsupported and lost on her path. I got it. At times, I’ve felt a similar longing and despair.

It got me to asking the question of why we pursue this thing called spirituality and what we hope to get out of it.

I think what started me on my own spiritual quest was a deep unshakable feeling that something was missing. I’d accomplished a lot externally but felt empty inside and unknown to myself. Nothing in the modern world could fill that void. In a way, it’s fair to say I didn’t know what I was longing for, but something about the spiritual texts I came across at the time gave me hope. Also, I had a paralyzing fear of death that…was like…a…wall…to…living?

When I use the word spiritual, I am not only referring to elevated disembodied beings, but to an essential human part of ourselves. It is the non-physical part of us that is associated with light. So, for example, thought can be spiritual or not, but love is and all its subsidiaries: forgiveness, compassion, kindness, truth, etc.

Being spiritual, opening to spirit, doesn’t necessarily give you an immediate answer to the problems of your life. For most of us, the initial opening is more like a can of worms. The light of the opening can illuminate all of the ways we have not loved and then we have to take a long hard look at our crap. Malidoma Some likens the spiritual path to the fall of Alice down the rabbit-hole. The landings are usually hard.

I’ve been falling for some time now. Gradually, your eyes adjust. The real trick is adjusting your spiritual vision during the fwifs and fwams of ordinary life and to eventually maintain a sort of dual vision, for without the dual vision of the mundane and spiritual, you are only seeing half the picture.

The spiritual aspect allows you to see what happens in physical life from a much broader perspective. In my travels, I’ve met people who have extraordinary gifts. They can actually see beings, guides, kontomble and the like. They can travel to other dimensions. They can converse with the dead. You may or may not possess those kinds of gifts, but even without them, one can cultivate spiritual vision by paying attention to how one feels. When you have a bad feeling, you find a moment to stop. Hold onto the feeling and follow the thread to its source. The thread will most likely take you to something you don’t want to look at about yourself, but the moment you see the jealousy, self-hatred, fear, is the moment the door to compassion and then forgiveness can open.

I think we can all do this sort of detective work with ourselves but a lot of us are a little rusty. It’s like a muscle that’s softened with disuse. Plus, we’re afraid to stop, to put our frickin’ phones down.

One of the ways we can strengthen this muscle is through story-telling. Story-telling helps us to practice the art of perspective which is essential to developing the dance between the mundane vision (what appears to be happening) with the spiritual vision (what’s really happening). To tell a story, one must rise above the story itself. There are no bad stories. Just unpracticed story-tellers.

I did a divination for someone recently. I could see that he’d had some kind of early childhood trauma. He was unable to speak about it or to cry. In being unable to tell the story, he was still beneath it, burdened by it, and the water he was unable to release through tears was causing toxicity. I suggested he begin by writing or speaking his story, to let the flow of words assist the flow of water so that he could begin the cleansing process.

And if healing is a process, grieving is a practice. We in modern culture are all looking for a way to cure (end) the hurt, but some things can’t be cured forever. It just needs to be cleaned out periodically. Over time, the hurt comes up less and less, but will still come up until maybe it doesn’t have to any more, but by that time we will have accumulated another hurt. And the practice is that when it comes up, we clean it out with tears, with our story. Most of us don’t need a drug. We need a practice. Without the practice, we are not really living.

The other day a friend of mine sent me a link to a YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIuWY5PInFs. In it a woman is courageously and honestly talking about her ballet career before she is about to give her last performance. I was a mess. I hadn’t grieved my own retirement in a long while. But this time was different. I didn’t get stuck in my head. I didn’t feel regret or the need to question my choices. It was almost like I was grieving for someone else, like watching a movie. I could see a much larger picture. The confusion and fear were replaced by compassion.

And then I ate lunch.

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10/29/2012

The Best of Both Worlds

By Tai Jimenez

Now, this is hard to explain:

I got out of the shower and dried off. I looked at my arm and for a fleeting second, I saw it differently. My consciousness was looking at “arm” from another perspective. Suddenly “arm” was a metaphor, or a distillation, of physical reality, only I was seeing it from a perspective that was not physical. In a flash, I understood in a way that I cannot explain intellectually, what it meant to be physical, what it meant to have come here, to have been seduced by this density like the weight of a lover, falling asleep on top of me.

When I say I understood, that is not quite right. Understanding is parceled out in digestible chunks. Those pieces of information that you can handle and assimilate bit by bit are what lets you know that you are doing a thing called understanding. Or sometimes the understanding comes by letting go of the bits; they peel away in layers. This experience was more like a giant bird pooping inside my head, and I was like, what the?…even as it was happening.

Anyway, I spent the next two days thinking about how amazing it is just to be here. Just to be. Just to feel the wind on your face and clean the dog and hold the flesh of another in your hands. And no, I was not stoned. I thought about how we all got what we wanted in coming here and how most of us have forgotten what a delight it is to just be with it all. It’s like, we made it y’all! Let’s dance! Let’s just celebrate this!

Children still get it, though. They are still with the mystery. And dogs, of course. (Some of my many dog friends are: Chulo, Neo, Tigre, Scooby, Pearl, Disco and Rachel-Pocket-Princess, Lucy, Hudson, Cali, Lady Jazz, Mila, Molly, Buckley, Miles, other Miles, Donny, Dancer, Sly, Trixie, Rudy, Georgia and Mason, Diego, Kitara, Punkin’, Tigger, Hula Girl, Cody, Moose, Chuck Norris, Sawyer and Lonely). I am rich, rich, rich.

Dogs can help you find It. They make you be outside a lot, and It is everywhere, but for me, especially in the Wind.

And It is a mystery, not because It is unfathomable which it is, but that It brings with it everything at once: a meal so long and large and tasty that we are lucky if we can swallow one savory bite.

And I want to be with this mystery all the time. It says my name over and over again. It calls me by every name I’ve ever had, from every lifetime and then some.

And I think It comes in such little glimpses because otherwise it would just bowl me over, but oh, how I want to be bowled over.

When It calls my name, It can be scary and delicious at the same time. I seem to like that particular combination: scary and delicious. My husband was that way. When we first met, I asked him if he had ever been arrested. He paused thoughtfully and then said, “Which time?” Damn.

But in order to catch It, I have to listen really hard and sometimes, I’m ashamed to say, I’m just too damn lazy. I watch way too much tv. Watching tv is easy. It’s like a slow painless death. To adjust my antennae to It, I have to find a place where It is not drowned out by traffic, though it is there too, and sometimes, if I tune myself just right on the inside, I can find It no matter where I am. All you have to do is ask for It!

And in this terrible economic time, I’ve been quitting jobs left and right just so I can have more time to listen to It. Try explaining That to your boss! She will roll her eyes and make that face that people have made at me all my life. That face means that I am flaky. That face means I have to grow up. And there is resentment in that face, no matter how much blood I’ve given. When I see that face, it’s hard for me to feel It and I have to run back outside and shove my own face in a tree hole just so I can breathe again.

I have nothing against being physical. Well, that’s not completely true. Death and taxes, etc. But I dig it. I just want to come and go as I please. I suppose I do that in my own way. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to be able to maintain that perspective, the one I glimpsed when I got out of the shower, even as I’m focused in the physical realm. Yes, that’s it: to have the perspective of spirit when I am physical. That’s what I want.

And yes, I’ve heard it said that the physical realm is equal to the spiritual realm, so why not have the best of both worlds?

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10/25/2012

Salvation

By Tai Jimenez

and the gentle sound of leaves falling,

i think this must be it.

and the sound of the neighbor’s car arriving home,

and i think this must be it.

and the sound of the dog contentedly licking his chops right next to my seated ear,

and i think this must be it:

that invisible thing i’m longing for–

but i don’t want to be one of the masses

holding my arms in the air at the first glimpse of avatars, messiahs or alien ships.

i do not grovel for salvation.

what god would ask this of me?

i welcome Bashar to my own castle.

we open the lock together.

come to my party when you already know this.

God is a sexy slow dance in the basement.

and, with that, i take my tea inside.

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05/25/2012

Cesar Millan 101

By Tai Jimenez

In need of a bit of solace and clarity this morning, I took Mr. Chulo for a walk around Jamaica Pond. I thought we both needed a change from our daily routine. However, the new environment began to cause me anxiety. I became overly concerned with Chulo’s behavior, unsure of the leash politics in this park. Also, there were a lot of ducks and geese and I was afraid Chulo would chase one out into traffic.

He began to pull on the leash. He barked nastily at another dog. A passerby shot me a judgemental look and my anxiety grew. Finally, when we got to a quiet spot, I let him go and sat down at the edge of the  water. He wandered off a short distance to eat some horse poo, but when I told him no, he came back by my side and settled down.

I listened to the water and let my mind be stilled (more or less). I heard inwardly that I have to pay attention to how I feel. It sounds so simple, but I have never been taught to prioritize my own emotions. Prioritizing my own experience doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t do things for others, but that I should pay attention to how I feel in the doing and to make sure I honor myself, whatever the task.

I tend to spend a lot of energy worrying about whether or not everyone else is ok, about what everyone else is thinking and feeling, instead of being grounded in my own thoughts and feelings, my own truth. But now, I have to take responsibility for my own happiness. It cannot come from any other source.

Now, I know this is an obvious truth. I’ve read it a thousand times in a thousand ways. I thought I understood it intellectually, but there I was putting Chulo’s needs before my own and seeing that this is what I do with everything. I have lived unworthy of my own attention. I think this is probably true of a lot of women.

After I sat with this for a spell, I got up to leave. I felt that there was a shift of energy between Chulo and me. He was calm and walked behind me off the leash. I realized that he didn’t want me to put him first. I know this is Cesar Millan 101, but Chulo is my first dog and since I can’t afford a house visit from Cesar, I have to learn this for real, through actual self-understanding. It’s one thing to watch an edited version of other people going through this on reality tv. It is quite another to be in the hot seat yourself.

Which on a deeper level makes me think about how we learn. We can learn facts through our intellect, but the really important stuff of life has to be felt through experience. All the spiritual texts in the world can only be a guide. I remember a long time ago, I think in high-school, coming across the quote from the Buddha, “Seek no refuge outside of yourself. True happiness comes from within.” Today, I am the buddha.

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04/24/2012

Letting Go

By Tai Jimenez

April 24th,

Still feeling the effects of the new moon, new.

This morning, I sat at the altar and spoke for a long time. I am ready to let go.

Then, while hiking in the Blue Hills, I saw a snake, coiled and still. I thought it might be a sign, but did it read as shedding or death? I nudged it gently with a stick. It lifted its head and stuck out its tongue. Very much alive.

Letting go of the past, of what might have been, has been such a long deal (seventeen years, give or take). For those years, I often had the idea of letting go, but now it is ripe in my heart.

Before me lies an unknown path. The unknown path has always been there. I’ve spent a good amount of time avoiding that way, but the unknown path is all there is.

THE UNKNOWN PATH IS ALL THERE IS. Anything else is illusion.

We are forever facing it. I am facing it consciously because the path I’ve known has become too heavy to bear a moment longer.

This unknown path, maybe, it’s what I am. I, you, we, are the path, and it never ends. You never get there. But we have to keep moving forward for its own sake.

I remember that time I got high with my Auntie in California. We were walking through the woods and came to a grand vista. I got stuck at this spot, simply because it was so beautiful.

I didn’t want to leave this beauty behind, so she gently took my head and turned it toward the direction in which we were walking.

“What do you see now?” she asked.

“More beauty,” I answered, and with that, we happily resumed our walk.

I learned in that moment that the beauty never ends. It is with us in every moment, eternal, supreme, unconquerable.

It’s as though the more certain forces try to define it, to colonize it, the more opposing forces rise to free it.

So today, I let it go, not because I fell out of love or was hurt by it, but because I love it. And because I love myself.

I won’t say what it is. You can fill in your own blank. We all have something to let go of, something to forgive.

Ashe.

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04/17/2012

Divination

By Tai Jimenez

“The health of the eye depends on a horizon.”–Emerson

For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to the mystical branches of spirituality. As part of my search, I occasionally sought divinations including I-ching, tarot, palm readings, astrology (both Western and Vedic), channelling, past-life regression, Michael charts, numerology, Ifa readings and most recently, the shell divination of the Dagara tradition of Burkina Faso as taught and practiced by Malidoma Some.

I go to see a diviner when I need help from the other side. The strength of a diviner seems to be based on the extent to which they are able to become a vessel for a disembodied being: an ancestor, a spirit guide or angel, a kontomble (the little people in Dagara cosmology), etc.

I consider divination to be a kind of art. Finding a good diviner is sort of like finding a good massage therapist. Everyone has a different style. You just have to find the one that works for you.

Skeptics argue that diviners are charlatans who are only after money, but such charlatans exist in every field. These skeptics also argue that diviners say such general things that may be true of just about everyone, but so do most doctors. Even as a ballet teacher, I find myself saying the same things over and over again to different students because people tend to make the same mistakes.

I go with the understanding that even the shabbiest diviner can extract a kernel of truth from the cards, bones, shells or what have you, and it is then up to me as to what I do with that message. Of course, one should practice discernment when going to see a diviner. When you hear the truth, you feel a kind of resonance with it and it’s ok to trust that. If you don’t feel resonance, go to someone else.

Getting a divination from a skillful diviner is like being served a large meal. You can’t eat everything on the plate, but you do the best you can. Some of the things you may not initially understand and you find that the message unfolds mysteriously in layers as you become better able to digest it.

For example, one of the things Malidoma told me in a divination was that I had a weakness in nature. A weakness in nature, now what could that possibly mean? It’s true, as I said in the previous post, that I have a thing for trees. Is that what he meant? Or does the weakness have something to do with my own nature? What is my nature?

During the divination, you are free to ask questions, but at the time, I was so busy trying to grasp other things that I let the weakness in nature issue go until several months later another diviner of the same tradition told me the same thing. And yet a third Dagara diviner looked at my numerology and verified this weakness in nature yet again.

But what does that mean? I decided to start spending more time in nature. Perhaps I would find my answers there. My husband and I started taking almost daily hikes in the Blue Hills reserve, not far from where I live in Boston.

No matter how reluctant we are to make the twenty-minute drive, we are always grateful that we made the effort. We notice that every time we walk through the woods, whatever stress we are carrying is magically cleansed and there is always a gift: a tiny bird’s nest, six hawks that swooped close by, a gentle rain, a horizon, a new path. And we notice too, that the rest of the day seems to flow more sweetly after the time spent in nature.

As I started to become nourished by nature, further understanding of my divination began to unfold when my husband and I took a trip to Manhattan to look at museums and galleries. The streets were crowded. It was a nice weekend but the more we walked through the chic lower West side, the more I started to wither inside myself. Feelings of alienation and inferiority began to overwhelm me. Everyone and everything was so fabulous. I felt like a dandelion struggling through a crack in the cement, surrounded by rare and exotic flowers.

I grew up in New York City and the place holds a lot of memories for me. At night, I was assaulted by dreams of experiences in which I was made to feel small. In those moments, when I felt weak in the presence of others, I could see how my lack of strength in my own nature caused me to cower. Sometimes this energy was intentionally inflicted but other times not. I was just too easily intimidated because I was un-rooted, not at home inside myself, and easily blown off-balance, like a shallowly rooted tree in a hurricane.

Aha! So this is how the weakness in nature manifests itself in me. I could see how I built up an armor around this wound without having healed it and how the recent initial healing in nature was allowing me to see this issue more clearly in myself.

I could see how my nature is tied to the big nature of the world. And at last, I could feel some compassion for myself. Finally, I could unclasp the heavy armor encasing my heart, and reveal it without shame, naked and bleeding, because in my embrace of nature, I have begun to take root.

Malidoma says that a weakness in nature is common for modern people. During my recent visit to NY, I could see evidence of that. In a city, we are constantly told how to be, what to think and do. Walk, don’t walk. Buy this. Eat here. Don’t stop. Keep moving. Faster. Upgrade. I think even if you are strong in your nature, everyone is influenced by city persuasion to some extent.

And I’m not saying that those things are inherently bad. I like sushi and a fancy pair of shoes. I’m just saying that it’s easy to lose yourself by being swept up in a tide of fabulousness that has nothing to do with who you really are. To know nature is to know yourself. And to know yourself is fucking fabulous.

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04/12/2012

Mr. Octopus

By Tai Jimenez

Some people have asked me about Mr. Octopus: who is he? Now, the answer to that is not as cut and dried as it may seem. It’s a Pandora’s box of inquiry, bringing the very nature of existence and reality under scrutiny.

You’ve heard the platitude “we are all more alike than we are different” that people utter for the sake of tolerance and inclusion. Well, I like to ponder the possibility that we are all the same, just one big jellyfish. And as soon as I say that out loud, someone gets mad at me. They want to defend their right to be separate. To not jellyfish.

I mean, I get it. We are different, but that’s only part of the story, no? Where is the line that separates us? I’ve always been a little fuzzy on the line between reality and illusion too. In spite of this, I am a practical person. My interest in the One-ness of the Is-ness is practical. I look at the big flow and that expansiveness tends to fuel and elevate my little flow. I hope I can continue to do so in the moment of my death.

“Oh, would you please lighten up,” says Mr. Octopus.

Speaking of the One-ness of the Is-ness, maybe we are appearing in each other’s dreams and neither of us would be here if that were not the case. I’m here because of you and vice versa. Instead of pointing the finger at someone for something they did to us, we could ask, hmm, now why is so-and-so showing up in my dream? What part of me dialed him in? What was I needing when I made that call?

I’m not saying that each person is responsible for causing everything he/she experiences and I’ve heard the Abraham teachings (channeled by Esther Hicks) ad nauseam. I’m just saying that when I am able to look at people, things and experiences as not-separate, part of one flow, I expand into that flow. That is all a very round-a-bout way of saying that maybe you’ve been looking for Mr. Octopus, and he’s been looking for you too.

“Twinkles,” says Mr. Octopus.

Mr. Octopus first appeared to me as a child. According to my mother, she would find me sucking my thumb, staring intently up at the ceiling. When asked what I was looking at, I would point and say, “Octopus.” This pronouncement seemed all the more significant because, I am told, that I rarely spoke as a child.

My dog does this. Not suck his thumb, but looks at things that I can’t see but that are definitely there to him. Just something to think about.

Anyway, I had no memory of these octopus sitings except for the memory that exists from stories, like in dreams. Do you ever find yourself in a dream, remembering things, places, people, experiences,  from within the dream world? It’s as though your dream self has its own memory bank that can only be accessed there. Then one day, as I was minding my own business writing my blog, he appeared. And here’s where things get tricky, for I suppose that I appeared to him the same moment he appeared to me. Or, was he there all along, watching discreetly, waiting for the right moment to pounce? Let’s ask the octopus himself, shall we?

“So, Bubby, have you been here all along, or did you appear in my dream/life at that fateful moment?” I ask.

“Yes and no,” he says, with an ineffable wink.

See what I mean? It’s complicated. You might ask if Mr. Octopus really exists and I would have to quote him by answering yes and no. But, he is certainly somewhere, wouldn’t you agree? He’s in my mind, and now to some extent he’s in yours too. Tag, no backsies!

Let’s take an outward approach to the question of identity, for that is the simplest. He’s an octopus unlike any other. His style is old-fashioned, like the slim monocled New Yorker mascot, but not as snotty. Unless of course he’s being snotty. He certainly does have an edge that is smart, sexy, mysterious and dangerous. He’s not dangerous because of anything he does or says. It’s just that his very presence tends to stir things up, push people past their comfort zones. That sort of thing.

He is laid back and thorough in most things because he has all the time in the world. (He likes that I said that about him. Have I mentioned he’s vain?) He is completely free of the judgement of others and completely himself, that is to say, in his nature. And he is able to change his nature at will but prefers to appear as a dandy, in his bow tie, delicately sipping a cup of tea. And, this just in, he wants me to add that he occasionally enjoys a good pipe of opium.

And he is terribly naughty, but would prefer a good conversation to sex most of the time because you can have sex with anybody (his words, not mine!).

Get this: he wants me to get a tattoo of him on my right inside forearm. Oh, the cheek! It’s not just the pain of getting a tattoo in such a sensitive area, it’s his entitlement that really gets me. But if I so much as complain about this new whimsy of his, he’ll merely give me one of those irresistible winks and in I’ll cave. I’ll just spill all over myself like the big aquarium at the beginning of ‘Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo.’ We love that movie.

Now, I am familiar with the term “imaginary friend.” I have to whisper it because it would offend Mr. O to hear himself reduced in this niggardly way and I don’t blame him. People who use such terms as “imaginary friend” have no imagination in my opinion. They are not comfortable without labeling every nook and cranny of themselves and their mean little inner lives. When one is in the throes of imagination, does it not make the blood rush, the senses heighten? The imagination is real in its own place and has a corresponding ghost-like, shadow-like realness here as well.

I wonder, does a robot feel real to itself?

But I digress. Perhaps I should say that Mr. Octopus exists beyond time/space and just leave it at that. And I describe him as sexy because everything I love, everything, is sexy. It’s the spirit that makes it so. The bark of this tree is so old and weathered and sexy, I want it inside me. I want inside it. Yes! Yes! Yes!

“Don’t mind herrr,” says Mr. Octopus. “She has a thing for treesss.”

This portion of taijimenez.com brought to you by Rubifoam for the TEETH. Put up by E. W. Hoyt & Co. LOWELL, MA.

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02/27/2012

Ancestor Medicine

By Tai Jimenez

“The lessons we avoid in life will only come back with interest and the interest is pain.”–Ken Ludden

“As an artist, you can only ever express who you are.”–Qasim Naqvi

*****

“Is Tilly, my maternal mother the one I am supposed to ancestralize?” I ask.

The shells are tossed and answer an emphatic yes. I am not surprised. She is the one on the other side I carry closest. 

It is believed in most traditional cultures that the relationship between the living and the dead is sacred and symbiotic, because essentially we are them. I’ve heard one woman say that we are simply ancestors in the flesh. Birth and death are two sides of the same coin: when we are born here, we die someplace else and vice versa (Malidoma Some). Just as there are people here, hopefully, waiting to receive us, there are those on the other side, hopefully, who mourn our loss. The tears we shed are like amnion for the dead.

The efforts of the living and the dead are essential to the success of a birth/death. Both side have responsibilities. One of ours is to help them transition to the ancestral realm, as they help us to transition during birth. I think it was in Malidoma’s biography Of Water and the Spirit where I read about how a child is born into the Dagara culture of Burkina Faso. Prior to the birth, a diviner consults the ancestor-waiting-to-be-born in order to determine its purpose in incarnating.

Now, many of us in modern culture are lost, searching for our purpose, melancholic and weighted down with the burden of our undelivered gifts. Can you imagine coming here and already knowing why you came? Can you imagine being named for your purpose so that you can’t forget it? Can you imagine that your community also understands your purpose and helps you fulfill it? To the western mind, this might feel like too much pressure and a lack of personal freedom, but traditional cultures are built on community. Your life is not simply yours alone and your purpose has to do with the well-being of all.

When the mother is ready to deliver, all of the children in the village gather around. As the baby’s head appears, the children start shrieking with delight and praise. Since children’s voices are the closest to the baby’s, this is a signal to the baby that they’ve arrived in the right place. It is hard for most westerners, born into cold, sterile hospitals, to imagine such a warm, beautiful, welcome. Reading this made me weep with a profound sense of loss.

Conversely, If one is not aided by the living in their death transition, well, things don’t go so good. Since modern culture has lost touch with the true essence of ritual and grief, the kind of grief “that,” as Martin Prechtel says, “makes you look bad when you’re done,”  the dead struggle, lost, purposeless on the other side. Outside of their rightful seat among the other ancestors, they are rendered powerless to help those they’ve left behind.

As above, so below. So, as a result of the improper send off of our loved-ones, well, their world and our world, which is one world, is in a creepy place. Maybe you’ve noticed. From an indigenous perspective, we cannot begin to heal the wounds of this world until we heal the connection with our ancestors. As Malidoma says, “anything we do here without the sanction of our ancestors will bear little fruit at an unbearable cost.”

All day and night, forty or so of us perform an elaborate ritual to help our deceased loved-ones cross over into the realm of the ancestors. As part of the ritual, we keep an all night vigil. Some of us gifted with sight can see their ghosts gathering around the fire as far as the eye can see. There are so many needing help. They have waited so long. At around 3am we consult the shells again to see if the ones the shells designated have made it.

“Has Tilly made it?”

“No.”

“Is there something else I need to do?“

“Yes.”

“Does she want to see me dance?”

“Yes.”

Great. This is the last thing I want to do. I am cold and tired, but I can’t say no to Tilly. We have come this far. I approach the fire and dance around jerkily. My mind is racing the whole time.  I’m sure this is the worst dance I’ve ever done and it’s in front of all these people. I want to give Tilly something beautiful and I’m sure I’ve failed.

The shells are consulted again. Has she made it? Yes. Well, at least my efforts were enough to get her there. Mission accomplished, but I cannot forgive myself for that awful galumphing gorilla dance. Suddenly I hear something inwardly that carries a jolt and I know I am plugged in:

THE PROBLEM IS NOT WITH DANCING. IT NEVER HAS BEEN. THE PROBLEM IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF.

Damn. Those ancestors are not wasting any time. I better hold onto my seatbelt: shattering of illusions straight ahead! The words take a minute to settle into my stomach. It’s so obvious now, so clear, I almost want to laugh. It’s one of those things that you can see in someone else, but can’t recognize from the inside.

I think back to the many years I suffered a contentious relationship with my dancing. It’s true that I often used dancing to punish myself. And then I turned around and blamed dancing and everyone in it, but it never hurt me. I hurt myself and tended to attract the energy of victimization.

Now I understand why I’ve been so blocked in renewing my life after retiring from dance: even though a new career or relationship might give me the illusion of moving forward, without this new understanding it would just be the same shit, new package. In order to move forward I would have to bring all parts of myself.

Of course this understanding, though hard, comes with a gift. Now, I can peel away another layer of healing. (I suspect this goes on forever).

“Besides, the whole tortured artist thing is so last century,” says Mr. Octopus.

Yeah. This is the age of enlightenment. You gotta get your shit together.

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02/13/2012

Gun Gun, Go Do, Pa Ta Pa Ta…

By Tai Jimenez

I retired from full-time dance performance almost five years ago.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” says Mr. Ocotopus.

Sorry. I tend to belabor that point on this blog. It’s a process. Anyway, most people have to face retirement eventually, but dancers, like professional athletes, are confronted with that change in life earlier than others. The questions are daunting, like the dreaded “now what?” And the “who am I without the what I do?” and the “how fat am I gonna get?”

For the dancer/athlete, these questions tend to unfortunately coincide with the mid-life crisis, thereby causing a real spiritual double-whammy. Suddenly, this vast, open space lays before you. You feel alone, lost, and for most dancers, unlike our pro-athlete brethren, without the financial means to start a chain restaurant.

Also, probably like most, I was in a state of mourning and spiritually sick. My pain guided me to seek healing. But once I was more or less back on my feet, I still had to face the void, egads. Some vague notion of home flitted through my memory-bones. I looked to art. I looked to Africa. Something in the sound of the drum said yes to me in the places that hurt and I suspect that is true for us all.

Most recently, I picked up a drum and started to play. To my dismay, the rhythms of the mother-land did not flow effortlessly from my fingertips. Who did I think I was just because I have some Nigerian blood in me? There are no unearned advantages in life regardless of how things may appear. Not for the really hard stuff anyway, like loss or mastery for that matter.

So, here I am, a beginner again. It’s  not so bad. I like my new teacher and my husband comes to classes with me. We practice to the dismay of our neighbors. Sometimes in class, my teacher, knowing I am a dancer, will ask me to dance while he plays and I am honored to oblige. In those moments, dancing is in its right place, free from the stress, pressure and fear that I often performed under as a professional.

The teacher of this class, Wole Alade, is a spiritual being in his own right. He has shown me that the place I seek is inside of myself. I know that may sound like a spiritual platitude, or simply obvious, but it’s also easier said than done. How many of us can claim the home inside ourselves? How many of us can really sit in it and not be led astray by the seductive glamour of this world?

Looking back now,  I can see more clearly how our gift can be our greatest challenge, how our challenge can be our greatest gift, how our pain can be our salvation by pointing us in the right direction. Even the ego, that part of our humaness that so many teachers of spirituality disparage, has its role to play.

It is the very thing that brings validity to love.


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