Verticles

My old cohort, colleague, covener and friend Anne Hill wrote a great post the other day about getting up again. She is a dream interpreter extraordinaire. She teaches about dreams, writes books and articles for the Huffington Post about dreams. Anne knows, better than most of us, about (as someone I love always says) "giving up" on consciousness in order to lie down and enter dreamtime. (There always is some kind of surrender involved in going to sleep, isn't there? As a kid I begged every night to be allowed to stay up just a little later, didn't you? I find I still want to stay up too late, even when I need the sleep.)

Anne also holds a black belt in Aikido. She knows all about how to fall, but also how to get up again after a fall. She gracefully embodies the idea of "fall down once, get up twice." Her post is excellent and provocative, well worth reading.

As always, Anne has me thinking. I tend to tilt against life; maybe that's part of my passionate engagement with all things. I tilt against the weather, against the things I'm "against." Even with all that I love, there is an angle of intent involved. When I see something beautiful, I tend to fall into it or at least towards it. Some kind of beauty-inspired gravity pulls me irresistably. I sense the gravity and go with it. Sometimes I push, another form of falling into, though definitely not as graceful.

Perhaps the truth is that I'm rather impatient. But whatever the reasons for all my tilting, falling and pushing, yesterday after I read Anne's post, the thought came to me, "Well. No wonder I metaphorically fall down so often! No wonder I have to say to myself all the time, fall down once, get up twice." Hmmm.

This morning I'm meeting a friend who is going to take me into one of my favorite spaces on earth, the interior of the U.S. Capitol rotunda. I used to go all the time, sit around, meditate or whatever. But since 9/11 I've only been once.

Needless to say I am so excited. It's like seeing an old friend after a long separation. I'm going to try to remember NOT to lean into the experience, I'm going to try NOT to tilt, fall or push. Maybe I should do what one of my spirit guides always suggests: Stand up straight, put your shoulders back, lift your chin, suck in your gut and walk tall into the experience. Yeah. That sounds right, right? I say yes.