Like a Trussed-Up Turkey...

This practice is tapas. It is the fire, the comittment that burns away impurities in the psyche; that burns away ama, creating ojas. It works better if you let go into the pose. On day 38, two days away from the milestone of the 40-days to end an old habit, and on the way toward 90 days to create a new one, I am very, very, very far away from mastery of the pose at 1,000 days. This is very hard. 40 days are symbolic, like Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness. This whole year has been the 'Shadow Work' I "skipped over" in my magickal training, and the practice of Bound Lotus has taken me into the shadows as well.

In the evening, after cooking more rice and lentils, I sit again. I'm anxious. My mind wanders off to think about likes and dislikes: of people, food, music, postures and the very thoughts I am having. I am attached to believing that my problems are created by other people. But regardless of what they do, I can choose how I react.

This is a hard lesson to learn. I feel like the little chickpea in Rumi's poem: 'The Chickpea to the Cook'; "smack me with the skimming spoon, boil me some more", I wish I wanted to say, but I'm at the stage of complaining to The Alchemist about boiling in his crucible even though I threw myself into the fire with the practice of Bound Lotus. Yet I know I have to do this Work, because a part of me is still languishing in the dungeon of my mind, hidden from view. There are so many little broken souls here...and not all of them are pieces of mine. Some belong to other people, but I'm the dark queen who has hung them up to rot.

Like the Sumerian myth of Inanna in Bolen's book, I am knocking at the gate to the underworld. I have nightmares, recurring dreams of a rat I can hear rustling around, unwanted thoughts, impulses, anxiety and depression. I feel as if the 'real rat' is the betrayal of myself I've done for so many years...

In my dreams last night, I found the rat. She was in my meditation room under my prayer shawl. I couldn't kill her. When she ran into the bathroom I was ready to beat her senseless, and grabbed her fat little body. Choking her with my hands, I narrowly escaped her long red tooth, before waking. Is this rat me? Am I like the 'fly' in the ointment toward my own healing? In my book on dream symbols, a rat symbolizes gossiping, judging others, and letting things gnaw away at you.

If this is the problem I have identified it. Anger, bitterness, resentment, rage toward almost all of the men in my life...AND most all: myself, but my feminine side. Some part of me wants kill her off. The compassionate, kind side is the one that was manipulated and hurt. This work is so hard, and it isn't pretty. It would be so much easier to just cook some more, or read, or do some other kind of yoga, or call someone. I hate this practice. I'm scared of it. Two more days seems like 1,000.