hanging out in the mist-ery of morning mist
My fingers are cold, burning from the morning air. My feet are throbbing in longing beneath my fluffy socks to be freed from the weight of my kneeling posture, but right now it is the greatest surface area to body contact. The swirling sounds of droning music travels through my ear phones, amongst the occasional heavy thud thud thud of runners getting their Saturday morning fix. The golden light begins to cusp over the edge of the trees on the other side of the lake. And my mind begins to be busied by awe, as I start to feel myself drawn into the center of rā’s rays.
Today, there’s a swirling movement below the range of my gaze that allures me. There’s something emerging out of the darkness of the water body. The moving being holds weight and buoyancy. It carries itself and is being moved. It feels to be a familiar march, that the sluggish tufts of movement almost seem like there’s a longing to stay, and a knowing they need to go.
I’m beckoned by the mystery that expands into itself. Smoking and spiralling into being, held in mid air. My eyes try to track where it starts and where it ends. With no such certainty. There’s a slippery gaseous boundary between this mist-erous mist and the temperatures of the air. And I am hypnotised.
Like me, it too is reaching to touch the light. I notice I have begun to pour more weight into my front body, as if to say “take me with you”.
As it reaches the open warmth, it dissolves into union. Like it knew all along.
The dark and cold air that rests at the skin of the lake, sits. Aching.
I turn to face the back of my mat. With tender hands, I offer it my painful question. A few actually. Those ones that curl our collarbones inward, and frustrates our baffled mind as it tries to figure it all out. I stand to my feet, palms open to the grass that today presents as the space before the question. With a wider acknowledgment of wonder… Where do these questions come from?
I turn to the front of my mat, who is also reaching in line with the raising sun. Shining so sure. So true. Inspired by the mist, I let my music roll, circle and spiral my body. Into being in the space between.
I have been spending a lot of time being at the Beacon Yoga Centre (Ashram) recently. My mums says it's been my clubhouse. Over a weekend workshop, we were asked “why do we meditate?” Almost immediately I heard the words ‘truth’ and ‘knowing’ from within me, amongst introspecting muttering within the group. But she asked it without wanting an answer back. Without needing one. But to invite us to hang out with the question, and notice the vastness in the mystery.
I’ve realized this month how rest practices for me have often had an intention to connect with my Knowing. That Knowing that breaths, alive in every cell. Which yes, and. There is something that is beginning to become restful in the freedom I touch into when I lovingly smile at my mind wanting to attain the answer. All answers. And wanting to get it right too. Where I have been aware of that desire and playing with holding the tender mystery of sitting, being, dancing, singing in the longing, in the not knowing.
Here is a wide open space where I notice my Self spread out and exhale into ‘oh, you mean I don’t have to have it all figured out?’. Met with a homeopathic drop of curiosity that allures me into being alive. That keeps me in devotion. That beckons me back to my practice and encourages motion.
If the question is here and the answer is here
I’ve been invited recently by a special friend to hang out
here,
in the space between.
** (I imagine if you are reading on a mobile, things might be a little warped, hopefully you can still gather the picture. And/or I invite you to read on a laptop) **
In that place, things have started to feel more smooth, like crossing lanes and no tyre hitting the safety bumps.
When I am too much in the question, I feel suffering. It is dark and cold. When I am too much in the answer, I am blinded by no inspiration for new. We can only get so close to the sun before we too dissolve.
So maybe I am finding rest in the cloud of unknowing, and remembering the radicalisation of being a person here. That in my conscious choice to hold these hard questions within myself, I am choosing to be a person here. I am choosing this life, this experience, this challenge. Perhaps the very reason I am here. Maybe you too.
I enter this place between where my urgent rush to know rests, and my longing opens me instead of contracting me. A place where in that wide open space, that which I originally was wanting to attain, attains me. Us. You. Where what we’re calling out to connect with, on our knees in pain, collarbones back, cheeks wet, reaches its rays back to us.
My belly presses against my right thigh, squatted down over my foot at the back of my mat. My left leg is extended long, toes pointing up, tasting the sun in all its knowing. Skandasana. My right hand comes to nest into the wet grass, joining my body via the inside of my bent leg. My left hand is reaching, up where the air is a little warmer. The openness of the shape, 1 hand in the question, 1 foot in the answer holds me in the middle.
But my gaze gets turned to the dancing figures on the far end of the lake. There’s many of them. Gathering themselves, welcoming each other in an encompassing aerial play. I’m almost sure they’re smiling.
They are so beautiful.
She is so beautiful.
I let out an exhale, and swirling mist puffs in front of my nostrils. It swirls around the space in front of my face and then unites in the mystery of the dancing figures.
Salty water begins to stream down my face.
Oh.
I am.
