Today I’m thinking about dead leaves, Kali and inner warrior spirit. Possibly because it’s Sunday and I created a gospel-inspired devotional playlist for this morning’s yoga class,

or because this month I’m living in a yurt in Ojai California and I get to fall asleep to the chanting coming from the ashram down the road,

or because 2012, the end of the Kali era as the yogis call it, is asking me fully commit to what will remain in my life, and what will go.

Like the dead leaves being blown off the tree after last evenings’ wind storm, many things that lack “juice” in my life seem to be falling dead to the ground. And it’s time to stop raking them into lofty piles only to be scattered around the yard again.

Oh soul, light the match! Set fire to the fallen. Like a slow, controlled burn. Clear space.

“Be like the warrior”, I hear an older version of my voice say in my head, “devote yourself to what is worth fighting for”

Love. Peace. Spirit. Truth. Relationship. Health. Family. Love.

“and know when to surrender”.

Even if doing so makes me afraid. Even if it makes me question all that is my life.  Even if I’m unsure of what any of it means. Even if.

From the yurt, I chant with the comrades down the road,  “Kali-Durge Namo Namah” . I call the name of the Goddess Kali.

Kali means “the black one” and is the goddess of time and change. She is presented as dark and violent-she strips us from all the ego illusions of our lives- the many mundane aspects of life we allow in, but slowly dry us up. When Kali energy comes to us, it’s usually in the form of raw change, as she’s not one to “candy-coat”. She requires us to remove the masks and the armor. To wake up from the sleep of unexamined habit. Burn baby burn.

But despite her ferocity, Kali is a loving mother, and in the end, she always helps us do what we gotta do to set our souls free.

Hmmm, freedom.

Virginia Woolf once wrote, “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out, and then I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in”.

Locked in.

The film The Dhamma Brothers, about inmates on death row in an Alabama prison who do a one-month silent meditation program called Vipassana, teaches us much about being locked in. Vipassana technique does not offer guidance in meditation, nor specific teachings, but simply the space and quiet for the inner teacher of intuition and self knowing to emerge. One inmate shares his experience–growing up with poor role models and a lack of tools to rightfully navigate daily life– he ended up on death row after murdering a man. Meditating, he shares, connects him with a sense of inner peace of his penalty, as he realizes mourning his actions, and meeting them with forgiveness is what gives him a stronger sense of freedom than when he was out in the streets as a “free man”.

Ironic, during his incarceration, he finds liberation.

Peaceful warrior.

Are we teaching our children to grow up numb to the mystery found within ourselves? from such a young age, we show children to not trust the knowledge of their own body. We tell them when to eat, when to sleep. We force them to hug or kiss relatives even when that child’s body is saying, “no thank you”. We hover over them and watch their every move in the name of “protection”, strapping them in car seats–literally cutting off their peripheral vision and preventing them from seeing the full picture of the moment, framing trampolines with netting–so they learn no sense of self within space; stuffing their bodies in helmets, knee, elbow and wrist pads– so that falling down has little to no consequence,  losing the lesson of cause and effect. We tell them to “cheer up”, to “stop crying”, and to “calm down” when they are in moments of free expression. We respond to their love and learning with stickers on a chart, grades, rewards and punishment. In the child’s desperate need to please and be accepted by the adult in charge, he loses his intrinsic curiosity and wild sense of Self.

I think about all the freedoms I live with-  yet how I sometimes too feel locked in, imprisoned. Less now than before but it still creeps up on me. All the energy it takes to uphold importance. All that caring.

So I take time and space for myself and for my son. To untie the knots of status quo and tap back into nature- on the outside, and on the in. And when I do I can enter each day as my yoga.

It’s pitch dark outside the yurt. I let my 9 year old go outside without a flashlight to pee. He asks me to go with him, but I don’t. “Go on”, I whisper. “You’ll be fine”. He’s mad at me because he has poison oak and he misses his friends and his dad and cats and the comforts of our home back on Martha’s Vineyard. My work here is to know this too is okay.

Today I stand in the mountains with my feet wide apart, firmly rooting my heals into the earth, breathing bravely. One knee is bent deeply, as that same foot points forward towards the rising sun. My chest is open, arms spread across out from my shoulders, and my eyes are closed as I breathe deeply and feel into my inner warrior. As I inhale and lift my heart towards the sun, I clasp my hands behind my back and bow my upper body on the inside of the bent knee. I let my head drape towards the earth, as if all thoughts could spill out of the crown of my head.

Humble warrior.

After my yoga practice, I grab a bucketful of dead leaves and take them into the yurt. I open the wood stove and throw them into the fire. I do this so that I remember.

I will follow my inner spirit faithfully. This is the utmost form of worship. This is the warrior. Kali. This is devotion.

Today is my prayer.

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