As in the lyrics of the Led Zep song: "I don't know how I'm gonna tell you I can't play with you no more..." At least for now I can't ask the shadow emotion of grief to come out to play...I need to balance it with the human talent of Radiance. I need a few timeless moments of bliss. I awoke with what appears to be a mild case of Strep throat. My upper palate is swollen and a little blistered, the back of my throat raw and veiny. It is slightly difficult to swallow. I'm coughing a little for the first time in a while. Last night I watched my abdomen go completely flat from all of my trips to the bathroom. Something is clearing out, to put it bluntly. All these crazy attempts of the body to thwart the healing energy of this practice. No matter. I'm STILL going to do Bound Lotus. So ha ha ha!
I feel really tired. Ugh. Really tired. I called a friend and asked them to send Reiki. Then my phone rang, and it was someone I hadn't seen in years! We talked about mutual friends and past experiences. I told her about my little episode with the flies last fall, and we laughed. I'd been doing an intense mantra practice with the planetary mantras, much like the ones Saul gave in his workshop, but these were mantras with the seed syllables that intensify the practice. Also, each planetary mantra has a specific number that is chanted, and is begun on a specific day connected to the planet, and in a new moon phase. So the Saturn mantra for Shani is begun on a Saturday. You can chant these mantras anytime, but to do the strict yogic practice is much, much more potent.
The example of Saturn is not by accident. Saturnian energy is a taskmaster, giving life lessons with no sugar-coating. My personal lessons I was given were no exception. Just before the end of the practice, three flies awoke me one morning with incessant buzzing in the window. Eventually I killed them. Then I felt bad. I'm no Jain Buddhist nun, but still. Over the next two weeks exactly 50 more flies came to the window like something out of "Amityville Horror", or so I hear, having never seen the movie. Until the last few, I killed them all quickly. Then, one, and only one, came beyond the windowframe and into the room. It attacked me, and bit my neck, leaving a hickey-like mark. I was pissed.
The next few, I was rather savage and brutal about killing, going so far as to stab a few with a dagger, since the rolled-up newspaper wasn't doing the job. And there were exactly 54 total, as many as the number of beads on a half-mala. I know because I'm a tad OCD about stuff, and I kept count after the first three. The last one came in three weeks later after the rest, on a sunny November day in 2008. This one, unlike all the others which only came into the bedroom, was in the living room. I was sitting on the floor reading when I heard the tell-tale buzzing, and I got up and found the old rolled-up newspaper, strolling casually and calmly toward the fly. I heard myself say out loud, "You know you're gonna die, it's just a matter of how quickly you want to go." Ick!!! But...I killed him quickly, and I once again felt bad for doing so.
It made me think that, in my small apartment classroom with flies as the vehicle for the lesson, I was learning how easy it is to get into a murderous mindset, even if it is just flies. I mean they are just flies right? But what if each of those flies repesented someone in a concentration camp, and I were a Nazi? To get stuck in the mindset of killing is easier than most of us would allow given the right circumstances to create the impulse. If, for instance, my evil Phantom of the Opera had succceeded in destroying me by helping me to kill myself, as he periodically tried to goad me into doing, and if it could be proven that he did, would my family try to have him murdered by the state? My father, I know, would not. But he would also be honest with himself and say that he would have fleeting impulses of seeing the man go to the electric chair. My point is that we all have impulses toward destruction. Maybe mine are only toward flies, for the time being, but who is to say that if I ever have to sit through a jury trial for a multiple rapist that I'll be able to vote an unequivocal 'No' for the death penalty. These aren't questions that are easy to wrestle with, but sitting in Bound Lotus everyday seems to leave me with nowhere to run to but myself and my Self, which sometimes has a rather wild energy. This is, after all, the most difficult Kundalini Yoga practice there is...and, over-achiever that I am, I chose it. Or did it chose me?
A friend told me, upon hearing the story later, that I sounded like Dexter. Since I don't watch TV I had to be filled in on who that was... Needless to say, I was mortified to find that I have the capacity to be a serial fly-killer. It was a hard lesson in accepting that there is some form of unrestrained darkness in each of us, and I'm no exception. I told my friend who called me day that last November was rough in many ways, and I never thought I would ever hurt a fly. She laughed and said, "You could make a list and start it with: Number 1: I never thought I'd hurt a fly...and then I killed 54." Ew. But it's true. We all have parts of us that are dark and cruel, whether we want to admit it or not. I'm not better than that man who hurt me so many years ago, I just choose, most of the time, to ignore the impulses to cause pain and suffering, to lash out and attack back. It is a choice, and I think of this as I sit for Bound Lotus and squirm in my seat at the realization that I am not always compassionate.
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