Alive

“I will not let you die”.  This is what my inner voice said to me this morning, sweating like an ox in hot yoga.  I was holding the tree pose facing the mirrored wall noticing how curly my hair was in full body sweat when I heard the words.  It isn’t important for me to state why (or how) I was dying.  I knew and so immediately understood the significance of the declaration.  So real the personal battle I didn’t even try to divert my thoughts to alternate queries like “who of my clients need I be strong for today?”  I knew I was speaking with intention, directly to myself.  As I held the sweating pose I dared eye contact, trusting the instructor’s direction to breathe only my own pace, and found myself appreciative that I looked back and willed breath and life.

I stood beside myself this morning and am glad for it.

~DocBrock

A Good Day to Die

July 11, 2013 –  There is only one thing to say of today: I am surprised I am yet alive.

There are numerous evenings, when Ron and I, sitting with our glass of wine, toast that it has been a good day to die, which of course, makes it a good day to live, and vise versa.  This end of the day philosophizing is a registering between us that we did good work, experienced a specific joy, one of us had a break-through with a client, or simply that we learned something new that was interesting and is useable.  We share many of these toasts and we are grateful for the declaration that life is good.

Today, however, for me, was something different.  Today wasn’t about the richness of doing; it was about the richness of being.  Most Thursdays I spend the day entirely alone (until Ron comes home, of course).  So today I was alone with “The Mother”, which I treasure.  And, for whatever reason, She chose to grace me with a communion that has continued all day as the sweetest sup.  From awaking onward, through whatever work or play I did the day was simply too perfect, too beautiful, brimming with a heightened sensory awe.

It felt as if I had become enveloped, saturated internally as well as externally with an incredible visual and auditory clarity.  Granted, I am by nature a very visual person, and I do tend to hear things, but this day was more than “being visual” or “auditorily inclined”.  Every tree leaf, every billow of every cloud, every bird song; the cardinals, the redwing blackbirds, even the little twitterers on the clothes line, they along with all the greens, pinks, lavenders and yellows of my garden, everything I saw and heard, filtered through my eyes and ears but registered through an easy breathe that whispered “how simple and grand is life today”.  Crossing senses, it is as if everything I heard and saw was magnified in slow perception so that nothing was missed yet all was ingestible.   In the immensity of this sensual awareness I kept thinking, “This is the kind of day people die with abandoned joy, satisfied and content”.

I felt no fear, nor did I wonder if I might get hit by a car on Riddle Road or have a severe reaction to a bee sting or anything dramatic.  And it wasn’t that I wanted or hoped to die, although certainly I thought if I did, it would be quite alright, and was confident that it would be an easy passage. I experienced no grand intentions or resolve.  Rather, this state of sensorial clarity was, I suppose, simply a cellular communion with a summer day.  I am glad for it and end it knowing it is a good day to die which makes it a good one to have lived.

~DocBrock