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I hiked fast and breathless up Donner Canyon today, noticing nooks for picnics or reading, crafting or sitting quietly. (All summer I didn't notice them, and haven't looked for sitting places since the dragon tree at Santa Cruz or the backwoods trail I led the Ling Ducks on when we went for picnics by the river. Now I do. I thought about Josh or Ben, or Rumi and Hafiz, but I think tomorrow I'll do the day long hike I've been thinking of: Mitchell Canyton to the sea. Well, not the sea. There's no sea in Walnut Creek. But looking at this trail from Eagle Peak, the light hitting it just so and the light coming in golden through the leaves, it looks like it should lead to the sea; like an all day hike with a walking stick and measured steps.
Tomorrow, I'm doing that hike: red backpack, 2L water, apple and pomegranate. Another day, I'll climb to sit, but I still want to talk about today.) Today I was up early. I've been waking up early, rested at last. I passed October in nightmares. Not....worried or afraid, but overcome by gruesome images. I'd wake up 2 or 3 or 4 going "again?" and then go upstairs to sleep with grandma, Soleil tucked between us in bed. Last week I re-started yoga, suryanamaskar, dhyan, and since them my sleep is short and deep; peaceful and aware. I wake up early. 6:30 or earlier and doing yoga. I came to the mountain but left fast, before the light had even changed from sunrise to warmth, before the creek started to exhale or the grasses to breathe. (Yesterday, they did. Yesterday I was on the mountain for transitions: sunrise to warm, warm to day, and felt the mountain breathe, stiller and fuller and more than still.
This morning, I rushed on and off. Met another biker, a middle eastern man on a l33t mountain bike with a baby's sit on the bike, and exchanged huge, joyful smiles. Then mom and I went to Berkeley. I had Scottish Breakfast tea and thought of Shweta, then the Russian tea I normally get: how this was smokey and low, like cedar burning or Krysia's church lit in song. We sat in the temple (Bhagawan Nityananda's) and made offerings. Well. I did. I can't speak for my mom. I made offerings, remembering Mark on the Ganga before Shiva's dark night, reading from तंत्रसार about ritual and offering the Self to the fire of consciousness; walking home in that conscious Light and stopping at the हौरिस्चंद्र घाट, watching the pyres and touching this लीला, feeling dissolved and merged and alive, remembering the poem I kept rereading on Friday in the rain: Bismillah, Bismillah, offering your self, your name. So, like that and this strong open, stillness & joy inside: आनंदा or अनुभव or लीला or joy. This rush and the sudden, intense space inside. Vast.
That's how I came back to the mountain this afternoon, rushing up and across Donner Canyon, feeling my heart and breath full. I ran across and down. Mostly I ran down. After the second waterfall, I lost my step and fell. It wasn't falling. Falling happens suddenly, and the earth is there where it wasn't before, and your limbs are where they weren't before. There wasn't any break, here. I fell, consciously, and landed on my side how they taught us in Yongmudo (well, almost; I bent my elbow to land on my forearm, but it was thick earth padded with leaves and so ok) and watched my right foot hook around a stump, felt my hip slide around it and down. In my head, another millimeter or a slightly harder fall, and I would've dislocated my hip and been carried out on the back of some rescue squad.
I fell without falling? What does that mean. Landing, I saw Nityananda's face and this question -- Is it worth it? (This लीला; this combination of delight and pain and the awareness and consciousness which is both subsumed and beyond) -- and my immediate answer, Yes, which coincided with the landing, feeling the space grow in my hip joint and not follow through. I stood, and ran again. Also in joy.
I think about that, and abidance. I have a strong preference for walking alone on mountains. It's meditation, centring, balance for me. And this exuberance at running, that joy. I've sat in the evenings the past 4 nights reading ecstatic poems, joyous and immersed in that state. Meditating is getting better. I like noticing that there's no difference now between these states. I spent a lot of October luxuriating and oscillating in these in betweens, these तुरिया (that's bleaching the word), establishing there. Nice to enjoy now, the resting, luminous between.
(I did a giardia test Friday: I'm still clear.)
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