8 January 2004: Down to the Bone

Meant to get this written yesterday, but since it’s after midnight, it’s not yesterday anymore, it’s today.

So, where were we? Ah, yes... Sunday. Initiations lab, session eleven.

After that intro class I taught (as recounted in Tuesday’s entry), I taught my Sunday advanced class. By the end of the advanced class my head was pretty much clear. Talking to Foxfire in the locker room about his own practice and his upcoming black belt test (March 7th! Yay Foxfire!), it occurred to me that the lightness I’d been experiencing was exactly what his aikido needed as well. Funny how these things work. Suggested some lightening techniques to him, based on my own recent work.

When I got home, I engaged in some friendship-healing email correspondence with Argus, which I then turned into Sunday’s entry. By the time I’d finished, it was time to head out to lab. The medicine overdose had completely worn off, and I was coughing, sneezing, and having trouble breathing, I was losing my voice again, and I felt sick and weak and generally wretched (physically, that is – after teaching that great class and reconciling with Argus, I was in fine spirits). I also had no appetite, despite having eaten nothing all day. I forced myself to eat two Clif Bars, knowing I’d need the fuel to get through the lab session.
I decided not to take any more medicine. I’d done it for aikido because I had to get my voice back in order to speak to the class, and because I felt it would be harder to make a good first impression if I was continually coughing and sneezing on people. In other words, for social reasons. But, paratheatrical lab work being an asocial form, being a charming conversationalist that evening was hardly a priority. I thought it would be better to do what I always try to do in lab: just bring my plain old self, unenhanced and unedited, and work with whatever it was that I happened to amount to on that day.

It was a difficult session, but only because it was physically very unpleasant for me to be doing anything, other than lying in bed sipping hot tea. Psychologically, I was fine. I gave myself permission to take it easy, take care of myself, and work with what I had. And I stuck with that, and didn’t kick myself for not being a superhero. Which represents a huge step for me. I couldn’t have done that before this lab started. I really have dropped some vanity. Damn, I’m good.

There were a couple of other lab participants who were also in various stages of being sick. Sherpa suggested working with our sicknesses in the Personal Polarity rituals, exploring a polarity like Sickness/Health. I wanted to keep working with Vanity in some way, and there was an obvious polarity between the vanity of my usual “I have to be a superhero and perform impressively no matter what” attitude, and my newfound ability to accept where I was at, so I did the polarity of Vanity/Acceptance.

The first group ritual was a simple polarity, in which each person could choose between working with Safety/Danger or Sobriety/Intoxication. I chose Safety/Danger, since that’s a polarity that’s been a major issue throughout my life, whereas Sobriety/Intoxication is comfortable territory for me.

After the group polarity, Sherpa introduced a new ritual form. We all stood in no-form a very wide circle, as wide as the space could accommodate, facing inward. Once again, we had the choice of working with either Safety/Danger or Sobriety/Intoxication; once again I chose Safety/Danger. This time, the area immediately in front of each one of us was designated as a private sanctuary zone of either Safety or Sobriety (depending on which polarity one had chosen). The central area of the floor, bounded on all sides by our private sanctuary zones, was an open zone of interaction, designated to either Danger or Intoxication (depending, again, on one’s choice of polarity).

There was much chaos and wildness and ritualized but vigorous mock-combat in the central Danger Zone. I convinced myself that, because I was all sick and feeble, this danger was quite intimidating to me. I went in and out a couple of times, trying to experience it, but not much was happening for me.

Then Sherpa had us do the same ritual a second time. This time, he encouraged us to go deeper, to avoid forcing it and to open up honestly to what he called our “point of intimacy with Danger.” It worked. The second time around seemed to be much deeper and much more honest for everyone. For my part, I realized that I’d been telling myself a story. In my eagerness to drop vanity and accept my weakened state, I’d talked myself into feeling what I thought I should be feeling. But once I dropped the story and just gave myself over to the experience, I discovered that actually I was quite comfortable with Danger. Even in my weak state, I was able to comfortably hold my own in all the edgy interactions and ritualized combats I encountered.

It was an odd sort of vanity I’d caught myself at: being so eager to demonstrate my newfound ability to accept my own weaknesses, that I fabricated weakness in an area where I wasn’t actually weak. The real vanity-dropping in this ritual came the second time around, when I allowed myself to honestly experience my hard-earned warrior chops, instead of trying to impress myself with a show of vain mock-humility.

By the end of the session, I’d burned up all the fuel I had in me, and just couldn’t keep myself warm. I was shivering and felt wretchedly ill, and my voice had become a barely-audible rasping croak.

Monday I was sick, could barely speak, and had horrible muscle cramps because my body had burned up all its food and fat reserves, and had begun burning muscle tissue. I remembered the sensation from my near-fatal bout of e coli poisoning back in ’96. It’s not something one forgets.

Those of you who envy the mutant metabolism that keeps me perpetually slim, take note: it’s not always the blessing it seems. What with schoolwork and yoga and lab and all that, I inadvertently lost about ten pounds in December, and was becoming a bit concerned about it. In the past week, thanks to this appetite-killing illness, I’ve lost at least another seven or eight, maybe more. It brings out the angles in my face really nicely, but I’m not vain enough to value that over my health. I didn’t have fifteen pounds of fat to lose – that’s muscle I’m burning; I’m actually noticing the reduction in my physical strength, and it’s probably also the reason that I’m staying sick longer than usual.

I believe that this dramatic weight loss was necessary – that it’s been part of my initiatic journey, part of what made Sunday’s aikido breakthroughs possible, part of dropping vanity and armor and over-reliance on physical power. This is the Judgment card, the 20th Major Arcana: a spiritual fire that physically transforms the body, burning away anything that might keep the body from receiving the Word.

But it’s done now. I’ve now had the breakthroughs for which I had to be stripped down to the bone like this. My mission now is to rebuild the body while integrating the new lessons into it. Tomorrow I start putting some weight back on – eating well, doing pushups.

I decided to spend Monday indoors, writing. I wrote a longish response to an email from my mom, and then tried to start on a journal entry about the previous day. But before I even started typing the entry, the cramps in my legs became so severe that there was no comfortable position for me except lying down. What was called for was one of the things my “I have to be a superhero” vanity most balks at: a day of completely passive rest. I welcomed the opportunity to drop another vanity; to be unproductive without persecuting myself over it. I spent the rest of Monday watching the entire fourth season of The Sopranos on DVD. Had a fine time.

Going to post this, eat something, and go to sleep. More soon.

“Have I carved enough, my Lord?”

“Child, you are bone.”

- Leonard Cohen, “Teachers”