The problem is always contraction.
The solution: to relax open, to spread open.
You go fast to avoid the contraction,
You hold your breath from the contraction.
The breath-holding makes it feel like there is a .
flock of birds trying to break out of your chest.
We call that anxiety:
Contraction, contraction, contraction.
We lock the bad in
(stagnant swamp water)
And the good out
(the fresh spring of Eros)
Because of contraction.
Our nervous system locks
and the emergency messaging comes in:
“Get the hell out of here”
“Don’t move”
“Beat the shit out of *that*,”
“destroy all incoming—”
From this contraction.
Our muscles hurt, our hearts are
clenched because we contract
We contract because our muscles hurt and our
hearts are clenched
You get the idea.
It’s circular, a merry-go-round
we might call samsara,
If we wanted to get fancy.
And because of that, we don’t have room
We don’t have vast open space.
We kick people out of our interior
by judging them
Out of our lives by asserting, asserting,
asserting all the things
That, were we not in contraction,
Would just keep moving along
With nothing to see.
We can’t even make it into our birthright,
The inner world where we can decipher what
that feeling is
What is ours and what is theirs
We have to rely on the auto-responders
of reactivity:
“I want this”
“I don’t that”
“I can’t register that”
It reduces us to simpletons
Pushed and pulled by invisible forces
Angry at politics, craving love, not noticing our
neighbor’s ache.
This cramp is what we mistake ourselves to be
When in fact, it’s the thief and the imposter
That (irony of all ironies) cares only about the
preservation of itself
At our expense.
Punch line:
You’re host to a misery-making cramp that,
Identity thief that it is,
Passes as you (even to you)
And spends your last psychic cent,
Bankrupting you and then blaming you.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad,
If it weren’t the source of suffering,
If it weren’t so pervasive it becomes the swamp
water we swim in.
This is why it is no small thing
This is why it is not trivial
When I say open and supple is the way
Open and supple can receive the world
and release the world
Like good healthy breath
Or the tides on a beach.
This is why I say
The real revolution
will be fought
On our backs
With legs wide open