contagious

Perhaps there is no one here now. Perhaps all have gone. That's okay. I've been quiet from this place. I've been busy-ing myself, pre-occupying myself with activities far from this medium. Yesterday, working away at a final project required for graduation from my massage program, I stumbled back to "The Journey" - this writing process I began over 2 years ago and I caught its contagiousness. I had told myself that my final project took precedence over writing my blog entries - on top of accumulating hours of internship bodywork and working as a counselor and visiting friends near and far and teaching and walking and running and preparing food and eating and sleeping and dreaming and buying a new car after trying and trying to repair old June, after all of this busy business, somewhere along the way I found myself back on my cushion. And the cushion has helped me to remember how insane I can be, part of a bigger and larger insanity to be sure, but insane all the same.

This morning I was reading Kabat-Zinn, 600+ pages exploring the importance of returning to one's senses, returning to a ground of mindfulness and awakeness. I found the poem here by Mary Oliver and it captured for me the essence of this relentless call to wake up, to notice the noise that beckons, beckons, beckons - to see the ways that the Collective Unconscious seduces me to return to a sleepy walk through my living and to stubbornly persist at waking up. Not so different from the call I answered over 2 years ago when I began this blogging, in part to mark my own journey from one way of living to another.

Wakefulness is just as contagious as sleep. Knowing this buoys me. Others are clearing sleep from their eyes each and every time they follow their commitment to the process of mindful living, whether it be to the cushion, to the synagogue, to the temple, or to the forest and fields.

Good morning.

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice -

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations -

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

throughout the sheets of clouds,

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.

- Mary Oliver