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LIKE YOU by Gay Terry Like you, I was born enlightened but lost it somewhere on the way here, along with the best jack ball in the world, my Gene Marot Sully tee shirt, a silver pendent my grandmother brought me from the Isle of Man, and my mother’s recipe for poppy seed cake. I valued the ball, the tee shirt, and the pendant greatly and mourned their loss; I knew I could get the recipe from Aunt Kay. My mother insists I was a wise child, but apparently I did not value my intimate connection with the universe as I gave it up willingly to be connected to Captain Video, Theodore Sturgeon, The Beatles, The Animals (I could go on and on with this), and various sweaty teenage boys (What was I thinking!!!). I would lie in the cool grass, look up at the clouds, and let sun and wind wash over me. Grown-ups made banal comments like, “A penny for your thoughts.” When I didn’t answer, they’d persist, “what are you thinking about?” If I told the truth, “nothing,” they would snort, “Impossible to think about nothing; you’d have to be a moron.” So I learned to make things up, “giraffes,” “school,” “Dracula.” I knew nothing of the power of intention; I just didn’t want them to know that I really was “a moron.” Sure enough, my mind began to clutter up with a discomforting array of worthless thoughts. I began studying Tai Chi Chu’an in an attempt to overcome awkwardness; at age 30, I still couldn’t walk through a room without knocking something over or falling flat on my face. I didn’t go to a genuine yoga class until my daughter got involved and dragged me (kicking and screaming). But I have done a form of yoga/meditation most of my life: jumping off railroad bridges into the cool water of the Youghiogheny, driving up Three Mile Hill in Smidtke’s Chevy with the top down, allowing a big city to wrap its noisy arms about me as I walked down the street, keeping my children close when they were loud/dirty/sick/sassy, holding my dad’s rubbery hand in the hospital until he left this life--they’re all a part of my personal practice and have had as much impact as listening to monks chant in Tibet, standing in Mayan ruins, tucking a prayer in the Wailing Wall. I’ve had teachers who were wise and teachers who were foolish, teachers who happened to be dogs and teachers who happened to be “monkey-ball” trees. I’ve followed my breath to mountain tops and under water. Moments of that old Enlightenment reappear periodically but are lost again. I fragment, detach, become distracted by memory, but even when I’m most oblivious the spirit of the universe holds fast and doesn’t forget me. I trip over the stone of doubt and find beneath it, Wonder. --Gay Terry -November 2005
Pain of the Month by Gail Walsh Folks who know me hear me hankering after awareness of the bindu point in my/our consciousness - someplace we can all be together before we die. Since time immemorial yogis have respected this particularity of existence, the third eye, nestled in the brain within its world house. A person might go in there for sure, and switch the light on. And scientists have recently identified the small paired cluster of cells known as the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) (right smack in the frontal part of the hypothalamus) as the timely center of all life’s goings-on. Who would have thought? I spent many transfixed hours yesterday, on my birthday, at the Human Body exhibit at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan . The place I lingered longest was over the delicate butterfly bone, the sphenoid, which to my thinking must be the craft the SCN rides on. Teenagers were squealing and giggling with embarrassment, adults went about gasping and talking to each other in childish, excited voices. The last words on the audio accompaniment I rented were Shakespeare’s “What a piece of work is man…” and women too. A room of one’s own—that’s the sore point. Not to mention a house. Within my own space what couldn’t I accomplish? All this crowding and over-stimulation and warfare is a pain in my consciousness. Yoga gives me space but not enough, never enough. I’m still outside staring in the windows of the world house. But I’m close. Closer and closer. Wings pressed against the walls like a moth to a flame.
Gail Bentley Walsh, April 2006
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