A Southward Tide

Poems, essays and excerpts. A favorite quote or two. An observation. A compendium of imagery. A dream analysis.

Tag: Christianity

May 20, 2014

Kriya and the Eternal Quietude

I’ve been meditating. At first sporadically, then regularly and now sporadically again. I believed once I became a regular meditator then the desire to go within, to experience the soporific bliss of the quiet mind, would never leave me. I believed I would never stray from the path of spiritual enlightenment. But challenging my mind to shut up has proven to be much like physical exercise, on/off and sideways in binging frenzies. I wish it were not so. I wish I enjoyed routines and was less of a commitment phobe. Or that I was an early waker, a start-the-day on the right foot person, someone who did not forget important diurnal details like being grateful. I also wish I was less susceptible to my emotions. So be it. I am nothing but what I actually am.

We’ve started a bi-weekly group meditation practicing Kriya Yoga. On Mondays we meet at a yoga studio, the door open to a landscaped courtyard. In the dimming purple light, we enjoy the tired squawks of the island’s host of green parrots. On Thursdays, we meet at my mother’s surrounded by hundreds of my father’s orchids. Over the stereo comes the voice of the guru directing our breath and focus – up along the chakras, through the crown of the head, the base of the spine, mantras slipping softly through the blabbering particulars of the mind. Somehow this brings it all together and forgives my daily discrepancies. In the group, my meditation practice thickens into subtle shades of oblivion. Each time these friends and strangers coalesce with mats in hand, I am amazed. Why do they keep coming? Somewhere in the space of silence we become threaded together.

My father was a classical music aficionado who had also filmed some of the great performers and conductors of the past century – Karajan, Arthur Rubinstein, Menuin. In his last days with cancer, a friend threw a private concert in his honor at our house, with a harpsichordist, cellist and contra-tenor. At dinner, the contra-tenor asked my father what the most beautiful performance he had ever heard was. Later this contra-tenor would sing a cappella at Dad’s funeral. My father answered that it was the sound of silence in an ancient 10th century monastery, monks in genuflection, heads bowed to the great final prayer.

1 Comment
March 5, 2014

The Temptation of Eve

On rare occasion, I attend church. This Sunday morning, a young blond man educated by hard-bound textbooks from his local evangelical college, tertiary sources at best, gives a passionate sermon on the temptation of Eve by the serpent. He does a good job. He really does. But for me, it is not enough. It is never enough. These literal interpretations are unsatisfactory; the biblical stories are elusive, deep pools of meaning that leave much to be gleaned, much unsaid, and yet the sermon only offers one possible explanation. I wonder, could there ever be a scenario in which Eve refuses the forbidden fruit? Attempt the experiment a billion times over and she will always say yes. Why would she not? She is like an innocent child yearning for adulthood. At fourteen years old, I made a series of life decisions which put me on a path of certain destruction. But to do it all over again, I would always pick the forbidden fruit, I would always choose the fall, I would always seek the promise of greatness down the dead ends of the midnight hour. Only in our older age do we covet innocence, do we seek back the serenity of the garden.

These are some thoughts I have during the sermon.  How did Eve have a choice? Original sin represents the first act of free will. Eve fell before the fall. Eve fell at birth, the first millisecond that her brain began making neuronal connections, her impeccable genetic material coding itself into human form.

1 Comment