So fun to teach a class for an old friend today at the Lotus.
I knew that NYC student and friend and editor/publisher D was coming so I blended in some Kirk Franklin favorites since we long ago discussed our love of his music — it was one of our first conversations — and she actually told him about my class when they had a meeting. [And I didn’t realize there was a new album this year and am downloading it even as I type.]
Having taught on New Year’s Eve in NYC from 2002/3 (I can’t remember when I started, but I know I taught on New Years Day, too) until 2009, I felt so ensconced in that tradition that I wove in one of my favorite elements into today’s class: a little fire ceremony that I’ve often used at workshops and retreats (in Guatemala and Italy, off the top of my head) that always creates a little MAGIC. (Seriously — it just does something; I won’t describe more here but trust me.)
Drinks afterwards with an SF author I’m glad to know and an editor (Faulkner onward), and now home, sweet home. [I loved the tapas restaurant but it was a miracle of synchronicity that we arose from paying the check just as the mariachi band started; trumpets would have been directly behind my ears.]
Given the holiday schedule, now that relatives of Val and Clark are assuming cat-feeding duties I realize with delight that I have no appointments until 2012.
Granted, I have INFINITE things to do –– like a screenplay draft that would be sweet to hand my Oscar winning producers when we meet in January — but nothing that requires moving my Platinum Parked car.
Tomorrow, perhaps a game of Transformation with Susan.
Lots of designing and envisioning 2012 videos and books and projects. I have a January workshop at the Lotus I want to re-imagine, plus we’re going to film it as an 8 week course. I have an awesome course I’m creating for the DAILY OM (which has like a 2.5 Million person mailing list). I’m finishing up the children’s book and writing the new play and on and on and on …
And of course, still a few Xmas gifts I have to put the finishing touches on.
But — praise the Lord — other than taking Belle for walks around the top of Telegraph Hill and of course to her beloved beach, I can more or less, stay put.
I find the paradox of my situation –– that I have nothing to do and everything to do –– fascinating.
For a while I was obsessed with Nisargadatta’s I AM THAT — beyond genius — and this quote comes to mind:
“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows.”
Right now, I have NOTHING to do and EVERYTHING to do — and it’s freeing and fascinating and weird.
Sharon Salzberg –– a great human, and not just because she endorsed UPWARD DOG with enthusiasm –– wrote in Lovingkindness that “‘I am nothing’ does not mean that there is a bleak wasteland within. It does mean that with awareness we open to a clear, unimpeded space, without center or periphery–nothing separate. If we are nothing, there is nothing at all to serve as a barrier to our boundless expression of love. Being nothing in this way, we are also, inevitably, everything. ‘Everything; does not mean self-aggrandizement, but a decisive recognition of interconnection; we are not separate. Both the clear, open space of “nothing” and the interconnectedness of “everything” awaken us to our true nature. This is the truth we contact when we meditate, a sense of unity beyond suffering. It is always present; we merely need to be able to access it.”
Now I have never been able to meditate for more than 10 breaths without conking out and falling asleep, so I register this more about my own freedom in this moment: there’s NOTHING I have to do, yet EVERYTHING I want to do.
Bliss, indeed.
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