My common ground with a French rat.
There is a scene in Ratatouille in which Remi - food-connoisseur chef-extraordinaire rodent - is attempting to guide Emil - his rotund brother, whose brain might be as moldy as his food - in experiencing tastes with passion and awareness as opposed to mindless eating. When Remi eats strawberries and cheese, the tastes are displayed like fireworks in his consciousness, full of light and colors and excitement. Emil's tastes, on the other hand, are but a dim flicker of berry and chevre monotones and squiggles. There is an awakening... it's just not nearly as pronounced.
So, today, in my pre-asana meditation, as our teacher gently guided us to be aware of the new awakenings occurring in our minds and bodies, I have to admit I felt more like a fat rat than a connoisseur. There were dull flickers of waking, but no fireworks yet.
I'm not, actually, all that confounded at this. My body seems wholly foreign and alien to me at times, so a lack of momentous awakenings seems less about an absence and more about me becoming fluent with my own body's language. I know where my knees and my hips and my heart and my spine are - but I don't know what it is to live in them. How to use them without thinking, without translation through my brain. It's a fascinating revelation - 26 years in one body and I have yet to really become acquainted with it. I am WELL-acquainted with the parts of it I dislike - those have received all sorts of unwanted and negative attention from their own worst enemy. Yet, I am still unable to use those or any other part of my own body with the comfort and ease that should evolve from using something relentlessly for two and a half decades.
How is it that I don't really know my body? How it moves and what it likes and what it dislikes and what it needs. My mind acknowledges and analyzes these concerns in an external, logical sort of way. I can recognize and see these issues occurring and being meaningful. The internalization of that information, though, where my mind stops analyzing and my body becomes aware down to its fingertips and toes, that is where awakenings become enlightenment. I think.
'Til then, though, just a fat rat on a mat, working on my fireworks.
So, today, in my pre-asana meditation, as our teacher gently guided us to be aware of the new awakenings occurring in our minds and bodies, I have to admit I felt more like a fat rat than a connoisseur. There were dull flickers of waking, but no fireworks yet.
I'm not, actually, all that confounded at this. My body seems wholly foreign and alien to me at times, so a lack of momentous awakenings seems less about an absence and more about me becoming fluent with my own body's language. I know where my knees and my hips and my heart and my spine are - but I don't know what it is to live in them. How to use them without thinking, without translation through my brain. It's a fascinating revelation - 26 years in one body and I have yet to really become acquainted with it. I am WELL-acquainted with the parts of it I dislike - those have received all sorts of unwanted and negative attention from their own worst enemy. Yet, I am still unable to use those or any other part of my own body with the comfort and ease that should evolve from using something relentlessly for two and a half decades.
How is it that I don't really know my body? How it moves and what it likes and what it dislikes and what it needs. My mind acknowledges and analyzes these concerns in an external, logical sort of way. I can recognize and see these issues occurring and being meaningful. The internalization of that information, though, where my mind stops analyzing and my body becomes aware down to its fingertips and toes, that is where awakenings become enlightenment. I think.
'Til then, though, just a fat rat on a mat, working on my fireworks.
posted by The Tigress at
12:17 AM
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