So… do we remember this from last July?
“Tomorrow I reluctantly part with my 67th year and take on the 68th. It's the aesthetics of the new number --two even digits?-- that gives me a mild sense of foreboding.”
Well, the first half of my year (counting from July) was in fact full of strife. Three major falling-outs rolled through the biograph with thunderclap intensity. Plus the usual vexations: car repairs, economic mis-steps, health questions. Those were minor compared to the fractured friendships. As of this date, two have been reconciled, but the third may be a total loss§. There’s no gallic shrug around that. The aleatory nature of trust is a lifelong lesson.
Honestly, these kinds of experiences are neither unfamiliar nor unexpected. Back when I was all growed-up —in a PhD program and acting like I knew something— my futureself busted up the party with this Vision: I was a Gyrovague, dressed all in white (🙄)and ever-wandering.
. My spiritual ‘job’ was to piss people off, then hang in there with them (“steady as She blows!”) holding the mirror until they settled into equanimity.
Like all tantras, this is dangerous, but extremely efficient. Yes, yes - tantra is generally identified with mahasukkha, great pleasure - but I also work with Mahakrodha (one of the epithets of Vajrayogini) :: the Great Anger, which produces that other —red— bodhicitta†.
Men, by definition, are full of this stuff. The endocrine equivalent is testosterone and contributes to the ability to focus, find the Enemy, and the will to destroy. That’s the raw (primal) form/expression.
In women’s bodies red bodhicitta is almost always in a more refined state as we are the natural factories of the white bodhicitta (oxytocin) that modulates the expression of the red. In our bodies this red/white admixture trends to creative expression; or it is sublimated into a neural burn that eliminates the physiological cause of samsara: fear. (Sorry guys, it’s only ‘ignorance’ for Kshatriya princes who wish they were Brahmins).
More on this up the EEpiphanies road. For the nonce, class over.
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As I was saying. . . the second half of this 68th year is less fraught, though equally demanding. After the detonations of the summer, I spent September-December cultivating what I hoped would be a retreat space and its guardian. That process took all of the time, money, vitality I could generate - and turned out to be a dead end.
But on January 6 —exactly my half-birthday— I was standing in the house I would lease for the rest of the year, which features a sala (living room) with a skylight ceiling.
It probably leaks. But do I care?
Greece produces an entirely different version of the yogini you know&love. Almost all of the background fear I ‘enjoy’ as a Texan and Latinamericanist dissipates and a quiet clarity steals through me. It is where I can access what y’all might call ‘altered states’ most readily, but there is no less work involved. In other words, ‘altered’ does not mean blissed. It just means that the range of my awareness is dilated. This guides my path through the Sanctuaries and deepens my meditative practice. When the Inside is as ample as the outside, we’ve struck pay-dirt {{glint}}.
Once I return to Tex-Mexico, an extended retreat period is still on the calendar. It will be a weekly cycle: some days in CIR (closed intensive); otherwise writing and other forms of money-grubbing for the following six months.
† Bodhicitta … the funny thing about this wiki definition is that it entirely leaves out the question of bodhicitta as a substance. I call it ‘buddha-pop’ and it is semi-physical (molecular), corresponds to endocrine flows and in Tibetan/Chinese medical systems is treated as a fluid. But yes, it also coordinates with the development of compassion and compassionate action. Shabash!
