Being The Observer

Yesterday was a great day for me. As usual, when I have a particularly interesting ACIM lesson, I find myself with the opportunity to practice it in real life. Sometimes several times before I get it right.

My daughter and I were loading my car at Home Depot. We were very happy. I was slinging bags of organic compost and manure into the back while she was loading the flowers we just bought to plant in it.  I went around to the passenger’s side to throw a bag of extras in the seat, when the wind caught my door and it touched the car next to me. Here’s my mistake. It sounded so gentle that I didn’t bother to turn around and see if there was any damage. The windows were down and we were laughing because cow poop is hilarious to a seven year old.

As I was pulling out, I heard “Well of course it doesn’t matter to you, because you drive a piece of crap!”  I stopped, and said “I am so sorry, I didn’t know I did anything, is there something I can do? Do you want… (here’s where I was going to say my insurance info) when I was interrupted with “MY SON WITNESSED THE WHOLE THING! YOUR DOOR HIT MY CAR!!” I looked over at her about seven year old son, and smiled and apologized again, when she screamed at me “JUST GO YOU IDIOT! YOU’RE BLOCKING TRAFFIC!” That’s when I realized that I didn’t actually do any damage, so I left.

For some reason I thought the whole thing was funny. Reid said ” Did she just call you an idiot?” And I laughed and said “Yes she did. I feel sorry for her because she’s probably having a rough day. I hope her day gets better.”  when Reid said “I feel sorry for her son. He has to live with her.” And we laughed.

Later a friend called and I relayed the whole incident to her because I thought it was so funny. But after hearing myself talk, I realized that it wasn’t really funny after all. And it reminded me of a Beatles song. I don’t know the title, but in the song John Lennon is describing a day in which he is experiencing everything as an observer in a dream.  There’s a line in it “And though the news was rather sad, I just had to laugh. I saw the photograph.”  True, he was seeing things from the detached “observer” point of view because he was stoned. But nevertheless, it made me realize that I was there (for an instant), I found joy in a person who was attacking me. I didn’t pull over and make her show me the damage, and argue with her and think that she was a jerk, I just smiled and blessed her, and wished a better day for her.

My meditation of the day was something like “Let me see things with new eyes.”

Trance Postures

When my friend Dena invited me to a “Trance Postures” gathering, I was psyched. It sounded like the perfect combination of two of my favorite things to do. Yoga, and shamanic journeying. It was better than expected. In a nutshell, Trance Postures are an ancient and little-known practice where body postures are used to guide what are known as shamanic journeys: special states of trance or meditation through which we can access our inner selves or, as the shamans say, ‘journey to other worlds’. When we make this connection, there is a heightened ability to heal ourselves and others.

According to Belinda Gore, Ecstatic Body Postures “Great beings who inhabit the realm of spirit that we call the Alternate Reality have been around for thousands of years, helping humans through our journeys here on Earth; and hunter-gatherer and horticultural peoples around the world have documented their presence and preserved the means of access to them through their artwork on cave walls, in totem poles, in delicate gold or silver work, or in simple pottery. Their images have been perpetually in front of our eyes”

Sometime in the 1970′s a group of anthropologists took it on themselves to decipher these mostly clay documents, study cultures that still practiced forms of this “yoga”, and experiment with their findings.  The same postures were found in sites all over the globe dating from around 700 BC- the 14th century. How odd. Anyway, the point being that this ancient information is now available to us again, thanks to these curious scientists, and I felt very privileged to be directed through these postures by a modern shaman last Wednesday night in a Brighton Michigan basement. And the best news of all is that I don’t have to wait till she comes back and I don’t have to go make an appointment with some other medicine man to experience this intense of a journey again, because according to our local shaman, it is as safe a practice as yoga, and I found a book that explains it all. See you in another dimension!

Anger

Why does getting angry feel so good? Ok, not actually getting angry, but expressing anger. It might be because I am a Taurus. Maybe I was just born to derive pleasure from blowing up. But I am on a spiritual path! I’m supposed to revel in the ecstasies found in deep meditation. Not in the super-human, tv-hurling strength and energy a good fit provides. These are two diametrically opposed types of pleasure, and sometimes I feel that I am two different people, the real me, and the ego-me. It’s a little obvious which me enjoys going on a rampage, and which me enjoys quiet contact with the Divine. But which me enjoys the run in the woods and other pleasures that are both good for the soul and good for the body? And does my ego-me try to trick the observer-me into thinking that she is the real-me? Yes she does. I found this out when I tried to fire her the other day.