Bob Dylan and Walt Whitman as Inadvertent Yoga Nidra Teachers and Fierce Grace and White Horse With One Ear (Drawn From Memory) / Black Horse Blues

Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinkin' fast
I'm drownin' in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothin' but affection for all those who've sailed with me
(lyrics from "Mississippi," by Bob Dylan in 2001)

It is said that Yoga Nidra helps us develop a deep capacity to meet any and all circumstances we may encounter in life.  Part of the Yoga Nidra practice is a welcoming of contrasts into awareness -- a splintered sinking ship along with a heart that is light and free and not weary, and eventually being able to experience them as one -- to experience fragmentation and wholeness simultaneously.

Throughout the decades, the songs of Bob Dylan have explored contrasts as they coexist as two necessary parts of the whole:

"She knows there's no success like failure and failure's no success at all."

(lyrics from "Love Minus Zero / No Limit, by Bob Dylan -- 1965)

"I've been meek and hard like an oak."
(lyrics from "Buckets of Rain" -- 1974)

"I came to a high place of darkness and light.  A dividing line ran through the center of town."
(lyrics from "Isis" -- 1975)

"Alarm bells were ringing to hold back the swelling tide.  Friends and lovers clinging to each other side by side."
(lyrics from "Tempest" -- 2012)


As many of you know, with my experience in 1970-1971 of having lived with a dearly loved man from the early December morning he arrived home from Vietnam until the following May, I am a veteran of that shattering aftermath of war, and I continue to come to terms with the depth and breadth of those life-changing months and am just now beginning to appreciate the Fierce Grace that came to me at a young age.   I thought I was alone in what had happened to me and the man I loved and who loved me.  Now I know I wasn't alone.  Never was.

Recent drawn-from-memory sequence with my PC's "paint" program -- printed and scanned to my MacBook:

 

A Yoga Nidra pairing of contrasts could be the above sequence of drawings, done in the present time of relative tranquility, with the drawing below where I faced ongoing emotional turmoil over three consecutive Augusts, dating the scratchboard drawing three times in frustration at not being able to find my way.  The third August was four months after the death of my beloved friend and veteran.  Nearly five years have passed since his death.

I like the way the drawings look together on this page and how they interact in the context of Yoga Nidra.

Walt Whitman could have been talking Yoga Nidra when he made this acknowledgement of the truth of human wholeness:

"Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then I contradict myself.  I am large.  I contain multitudes."

Boy riding home / No longer alone

... We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always -- home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country -- all of us --
facing the stars
hope -- a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it -- together

(from "One Today," inaugural poem by Richard Blanco, 2013)

(trackpad drawing by am from January 2008)

Focusing / Pier meets voyage

Thanks to Keara for her comment that reminded me that for a while I have meant to post these two videos as an introduction to focusing -- something I have found not only useful but enlightening in the past year or so.  The book on focusing by Eugene Gendlin is inexpensive,  and I feel it is much more than worth the price.

Above is a drawing I did in September of 2006 using the Appleworks painting program and my computer trackpad.  That was three months before I started this blog and became quickly drawn into the world of blogging.  Even though there are only a few blogs I read regularly, and I don't post as regularly as I did at first, blogging continues to be a source and outlet for my creative energy.

No Cat

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”

-- Albert Einstein

(trackpad drawing by am)

Antidote / "Kindness at the Crossroads"

It took me years to realize that waiting for someone else to change is not fruitful and, besides, it's unkind to all involved.

Here's one wildly creative antidote to that, with lyrics here.



Thanks to Doonesbury's Featured Video.

And to Sabine for this:

Don't go into the tangled jungle
looking for the great elephant
who is already quietly at home.
Nothing to do,
Nothing to force,
nothing to want -
and everything happens by itself.

("Kindness at the Crossroads," a computer trackpad drawing by am from 2005)

Boy, Horse, and Pelican Escaping by Moonlight

Horses were a great comfort to me in my childhood and youth, but it's been a long time since I've spent time with horses. Seeing the trailer for this movie moved me:



Take a look here on page 3 for an article on equine-assisted therapy for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on Oahu.

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the human heart can hold.
-- Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist (1900-1948)
(source for quote)

(Trackpad drawing by am)

Healing Thread

The Way It Is
by William Stafford

There's a thread that you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

(Appleworks paint program trackpad drawing from 2005 by am)

Black and White Series: Family Travelling At Night Again (2005)