Transformation

Lately, I'm thinking about transformation.

Before I begin, though, I'd like to apologize for my spotty blogging over the past year. It's my intention to write more frequently now that I've finished the second draft of my novel - YIPPEE! Even though I have much more to do with that project (revisions galore, dipping my toe into the "next step" of publishing and getting it into the world, for starters), I have ideas for new projects and new ways to communicate. And one of the things I've really missed is blogging, which is more a form of journaling for me and allows me to connect more fully with YOU. 

And so we begin again.

Last weekend, I was in Ojai at my twice-yearly yoga retreat. My teacher Julian Walker calls them "transformation retreats" and, after 18 of these events, he has structured the 4-day/3-night weekends to allow participants to explore the inner depths of their personal journeys. The interesting thing is, sometimes we don't know we're actually transforming... and it takes a long time to recognize it ourselves, though the other participants can see it in within us.

Because I missed the last retreat in October, I hadn't seen many of my dear yoga retreat friends for nearly a year. In that time, I've finished my novel (twice, really, since I did a major revision for the 2nd draft), I changed my nutrition and got real about my physical form (I'll write a separate post on that one of these days), and I stopped allowing myself to believe the stories I'd made up about myself. You know the ones, about being "too old" to learn things, "I've always done things this way, so I'll continue on this unproductive hamster wheel," and other ridiculous ideas that our minds use as propaganda to keep us from pursuing our dreams. 

For me, this new thinking has resulted in a different-looking body, a strong will to forge ahead as a bonafide writer, a kick in the pants of what I thought being over 40 was supposed to look and feel like, the exploration of hobbies I've always wanted to try (singing on stage, for one), and a "what the hell?" attitude toward creating and living the life I want.

The transformation feels intrinsic to my well-being and I hardly notice it now. But when I first rolled up to retreat, fresh from my regular role as a mom who has to get shit done and live in the regular world, as my friend Evann shared with me later, I didn't seem the same. Yeah, I looked different, etc., but she wondered, "Where is Erin? Is she still there?"

Which reminded me that, even with transformation, we can still put up our defenses to deflect others' judgments. Sure, I was sparkly and self-confident, but I still wanted everyone to see me and LIKE me. It was seamless.

Over the course of the weekend, as I practiced silence and meditation and being in community with other people who are as committed to finding their best selves, I found myself again under the new layers I'd added to my "self." When I dropped under all of it, I knew again that I was so much more than even the transforming self I'd worked so hard to create. 

Once again, I knew I was infinite and I didn't need anyone to tell me that. 

I guess the thing with transformation is, we're really just stripping back the layers and finding who we already are. It's ironic to me that our most magnificent selves are the naked, vulnerable ones. 

Here I must quote Mary Oliver (yet again), from her brilliant poem "The Journey":

...and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company 
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

And that life is your own.

A Poem for Monday

Sometimes change happens because outside forces cause us to change the way we live. Other times, it happens from within, like a light that gradually bursts out of our bodies like a wildfire. In the midst of contemplating the very nature of change in my own life, I dutifully went to Monday morning yoga.  And I was rewarded by this poem, which my teacher read at the very beginning of class:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life. 

Rainer Maria Rilke

Sweet Dreams

I went to my yoga retreat in Ojai last weekend, as I do twice a year.  After four years, I've observed that each retreat seems to take on a sweetness of its own, a shared thread that binds each of the participants to the others.  This one seemed to take on the shape of a tempest in a bottle, a little spark of lightning housed in its own vessel. By the time it was over, my feelings of sadness and bittersweet desire to go back in time were overwhelming. 


But I also recognized the glorious special-ness of retreating only once in every 6 months. If it were more often, we might take it for granted or remember each step of the process so well that we react to it like adolescents who recite every line of a favorite movie.  There are things that you cannot predict, no matter how many times you've done the same ritual. The alchemy changes, the mood shifts, the emotion hits you in ways you didn't expect, your age and experience brings you up the mountain with new eyes each time. 


And then it is over.


Prospero's monologue from "The Tempest":


Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.


(Thank you, Julian Walker.)

Dawn Patrol

This morning, I woke up at 5:15 and gathered myself together, took a tall gulp of coffee, and headed to a morning yoga class. It was a level 1-2, so it blended vinyasa flow with stronger poses like crescent and (my favorite) half moon, culminating in inversions and (another fave) handstand.  


As I lay in savasana just after 7 a.m., two things came to mind.  The first was a poem by Rumi:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want. 

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

The second thought I had, laying there in the Tiffany blue of the room, bathed in the soft tapestry of skylight and candlelight, was I'm not an early morning yoga person.