Fourth Form of Madness

One of my biggest concerns, amongst many, when my dad passed away last year was my mother.  My mum and dad had been together for 48 years and still loved each other very deeply and considered each other their best friends.  Forty eight years of experiences, laughs, loving and then loss.  My brother and I held our breaths the months following dad’s funeral, waiting and expecting her to fall apart.  Instead of crumble, Mum has thrived and turned into this woman I hardly recognise (quite literally because she has had a fancy new hair do done).

Mum loved Dad and their identity was very much defined together, I never really considered them individually, as separate to each other, they were “mum and dad”.  Mum played a more traditional wife role, she was the homemaker, the child minder and the one that made everything that was wrong in the world, somehow right again (or at least tried to).  For a large part of her life she also worked as a general manager of a hardware company, so she was always busy, busy doing something for someone else.  I do remember her quite often saying when I was growing up  “when is it my time?” – a question that I believe for her life, at that time, was a very valid one.  A question that she probably made me ask for my life as I was starting to shape it as a teenage girl and I am grateful for this question for it is a very important one and that it also, without me realising it, made me question the traditional role of a woman in life (but that’s a whole other blog).

So when my father died and mum was on her own lonely and drained from the preceding 5 months of utter hell, a choice was hers to make.  Lay down, curl up in a ball of despair and grief and crumble as most of us were expecting (why do we always think we know what people are going to do?) or  thrive.  Mum took the experience, saw it for what it was, an ending yes but also a beginning and ran with it.  These days I am lucky if I can schedule her in for a dinner date!  She is always going off to this club and that meeting, or dining out with friends.  She already has 2 holidays booked with different groups of friends.  My social life looks absolutely dismal next to hers.

On one of the rare nights I was able to arrange a dinner with her, we were chatting after eating in big easy comforty lounge chairs shooting the breeze about this and that.  She was giving me advice about a few situations I have going on in my life at present where I feel like curling up in a ball of grief and worry and despair in a ball on the floor.  Fearful of change and wanting to hold everything the same 🙂  I looked at her, this peaceful, shining, strong example of a woman and I did feel like everything was going to be okay.  How could it not?  I come from good stock, I come from mother’s body and spirit and I am sure her wisdom, strength and courage is in me as well.  All I need to do is listen….

Today when I was taking my dog for an early morning walk, enjoying the song of the birds and the gentle lazy, hazy feeling of the morning waking up, I was confronted with sudden conflict.   It probably wasn’t so bad but when you are cruising along in a state of peace and someone suddenly comes at you with a wall of conflict of anger – it feels like a tidal wave.  Anyway there I was enjoying the feel of the morning the really mellow vibe 🙂 pausing the walk for my dog to take a little wee on some rocks in someone garden edge that was on the path.  At that moment, the people that lived there came home in their car and were pulling into their driveway.  They paused too, to roll down there window and give me the biggest glare of pure hate.  I was a bit taken back and did the classic movie thing of looking behind me to see if anyone else was there as why would they be doing that to me.  Then it dawned, of course, my dog is weeing on they rocks that are on a public path, how silly of me, I should be hung and quartered too along with my dog for this crime.

The moment passed and I walked past them, the three of them, now out of their car and in the safety of their garage, pausing to continue the glare at me.  I smiled and walked on…. what else can you offer?  But it did remind me of another walk I took perhaps 2 or 3 years ago in the same neighbourhood where I once again found myself in the midst of conflict due a simple dog weeing.  This particular time in my life was an extremely difficult time and I had ironically gone on the walk to chill out and get close to nature.  On my walk I was comforted by the sky, the sea and the cool sand beneath my feet and the sight of dog and cat (yes she walks on the beach as well) enjoying themselves.

It was on the walk home, as I meandered along contemplating life and my place in it, when suddenly a screaming hurricane crossed my path.  My dog had taken a tiny little wee on a brick wall that lined a path.  Apparently this was her outside brick wall and she wasn’t happy.  Now a strange thing happens to me when I am confronted with conflict, I get calmer. Always have, way before yoga, I seem to have this inbuilt ability to go real quiet when someone else starts to arch up.  As you can imagine it is really infuriating to the other person but I don’t do it to anger them, it is just the way I am built.  However, a calm perspective does afford you a different perspective to someone that is full of rage and so you can sometimes see very clearly the humour (yes humour) and the inconsistencies in their logic.  I’ve learnt that one should never point these out to someone in the midst of rage, not if you value living 🙂

Anyway as this screaming vision went into full flight, calling me a F*** B**** and saying I should go live in a suburb that she obviously considered herself superior to, I did ask her why she thought so poorly of the people that lived in the suburb she was bad mouthing.  She replied because they act like animals, like me, and are crass and uncultured.  This coming from someone that was screaming obscenities at me in front of her neighbour’s 6 year old children she was standing with in front of her house with pray flags waving proudly from the immaculately landscaped garden.   The irony of the situation did not escape me, and unfortunately I did point out that if she thought it was okay behaviour to teach young people to treat other people like she was, then perhaps it was time to look up what the prayer flags were all about instead of just liking what they may her garden look like.

Hello 4th of July – she went off like a firer cracker.   It was at this point, that my cat decided to run into view, and into her garden and do a long wee in her flowerbed.  I took this as a cue to turn and leave, as she shouted threats of killing my cat if she ever saw her again.  Man that cat is brave and smart, there was no way kitty would venture that close to the tornado again.  And to be honest I followed her lead.

Then one day , as life often works, the same lady turned up in one the yoga classes I was also participating in. When we bent forward into a forward pose, I could see her behind me pushing and struggling and forcing her body to go into a poses that obviously her body, in it’s wisdom, wasn’t quite ready to go as far as she pushed.  I felt so much empathy and compassion for this lady at this point as I felt her struggle and saw her competitive, hard set mindset.  And I wished her every best on her journey and wished some softness and nurturing her way.  Perhaps that is the best we can offer.

I was on a plane recently and I am not much of a sleeper on planes, so I flicked through the movie selection on the entertainment centre.  I love movies always have, to lose yourself in someone else’s vision, creation is quite a nice treat once and a while, particularly when they tell a story that is everyones.  Anyway there was a modern day take on Snow white and the seven dwarfs, Mirror Mirror.  Oh goodie a fairy tale my favourite as there is usually something there for everyone and they operate on so many levels and speak to so many parts of us.  This was no exception.

I love the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, not just because it has a strong chick lead, which thankfully this movie played up even more 🙂 but because it so nicely tells the story of the growth of consciousness hidden within a common experience or life as some of us like to call it.  Snow white, the feminine, and central character gets flung out of the castle by her wicked, self-centred step-mom who is as conceited as she beautiful.  Step-mommy could be seen to represent our attachment to the external the aesthetic, representing aesthetic beauty, fleeting with all it’s beguiling ways,  but not the beautiful which is eternal.  This is a little tricky as it seems it is Snow White who is getting flung out into the external, but actually she is getting flung into the internal as she has began the journey of the hero and this is always internal.  The white, the pure, the seemingly nothingness of the colour gives the clue that this is the inner world and yet she is always depicted as a dark haired women, darkness covering the top of her head, perhaps hinting at the darkness that invariabley must travel with pureness until they negate each other or as some like to say, become one.

Then come seven supposed dwarfs, details on names are not important as you will find that these guys have been renamed many times over the ages, but the concepts behind them are eternal, unchanging.  Some say they represent the seven deadly “sins” that we all must befriend when on our journey.  Me, I never did care for the world “sin” it conjures up a whole lot of guilt complexes over events that were always going to happen ie. the knowledge of your bodies mortality.  Me I have no problem with Eve biting the apple, and thus I prefer the word chakras.  The dwarfs could be seen to represent charkas (let’s not get into the debate of how many there are in the body – arguments over metaphysical structures always become a little boring after a while).  These little, or not so little guys, are the path of Snow Whites journey.  Her feminine influence and her pureness (love in it’s eternal form not romantic), courage and strength of character (surrendered “will”), tames them all one by one and they all work in harmony together. Snow White (or individual consciousness) and the seven elements that belong to an eternal consciousness, the collective.

Now to the pesky prince that she is attracted to :-).  In no way, and let me stress this again, is he her saviour or her reason for breathing.  Yes breathing is important, very important, but there is something that comes before breath, something that hangs around long after breath has ceased.  This relation between the two is an important one, to add balance, for one to be able to see the presence of the other and therefore to bring it into it’s very existence.  These two, no matter what their individual abilities and nature, are equal.  Any bias to the contrary is just plain ego and dare I say cultural influence.  When we speak of feminine and masculine here we aren’t really talking to the external representation of the sexes but forces, energies that although very different, are very much the same, that will always attract to each other if reduced to their purity, or returned to the unfettered.

Now once these two kids come together, Snow white and the prince, or if you like, ida and pingala, they form an unstoppable duo, yes better than batman and robin. As they move through their  journey entwined or at least indistinguishable from each other, they can overcome any obstacle.  It is through this union which occurs within Snow White, but is played out nicely on the outside through her relationship with the prince (because let’s face it is hard to represent the internal in the external), that Snow White is able to conquer her self created fears (yay) and over turn her somewhat beautiful but hideously ugly step-mom (the aesethic and the dogmatic ethical) with the eternal (or the abyss where dogma is not welcome or even rates an invite) .

As I said I love a good fairy tale, but this depiction, Mirror Mirror, was even better as it ended with a Bollywood style song and dance. I think Snow White’s journey should so fittingly end with lots of song, dance and joy.  Don’t you?