Saturday, May 31, 2014

Yin and Yang Every Day

Everything was happening at once! Just climbing the steps out of the Long Island Railroad Station to 7th Avenue. Now that's an energizing experience! Sounds everywhere, different volumes and pitches, calling to me, repelling me, hammering, caressing.Walking west on 34th and up 8th Avenue brings more, more of everything. There are so many people! Traveling up- and downstairs, the people themselves are more varied than the sounds. Some are in business garb, dark jackets and slacks or skirts, light shirts, business shoes. Other are wearing jeans that were bought WITH the tears and holes in them. Still others have put what looks to me like random clothing - nothing matches anything. I love it all!

Everyone, everyone, has a cell phone. They are CONNECTED - to a person in another location, doing something very different from what these people are doing. That distant voice or text is attached to a being who is not experiencing New York City's 8th Avenue at 7am.

What about our connections to the world immediately around us? Are those connections still strong? Do we actually SEE the people around us, SMELL the aromas from the carts and out through the the open doors of the delis and bakeries, do we FEEL the pulse of New York City so much that our pulse aligns with it?

Attached here. Apart there. I love my Facebook connections and LinkedIn colleagues. I love talking to high school friends who live across the country, and I feel as if no time or distance is between us. We have been given the opportunity to connect and be close again. We've taken the challenge.

How many souls touch our each day on the streets of New York City? What lives are momentarily connect? What if one of those lives would have enriched ours, touched us, or made us feel safe in our own bodies again? Better still, whose life might We have touched, given a blessing, helped to heal, fill with laughter?

The Port Authority Bus Terminal is hopping. I love the excitement of people traveling! I like to watch them, guess where they're going, imagine why. My bus is ready to board. The ride to Lenox is smooth, unharried, and very pretty. I am blessed to be on a bus with considerate souls - nobody is screaming into a cell phone; nobody is blasting music; nobody is eating a noxious-smelling breakfast. At Lenox, we leave the bus and hop on the shuttle for the 3-minute trip to Kripalu.

The Berkshires are as dense with trees as NYC was with people. There is an absence of sound that is as powerful as the cacophony that I left four hours ago on 8th Avenue. The quiet has a sweetness to it. The whole invironment invite me to slow down, REALLY do nothing. The vast countryside surrounds me and the lake below is shimmering and very, very still.

New York City and the Berkshires - Yang and Yin for sure. I'm blown away by sensation in NYC and drowned in quiet a few hundred miles north, here on the steps of Kripalu. I couldn't or wouldn't want to be in either of these places exclusively - too much and too little. The notion and realization that my home is Long Island and THAT is balance.

Standing on my front stoop or sitting on my back patio I am completely comfortable. It feels right. The quiet of the morning is interrupted by a lawn mower, weed whacker, or (UGH!) leaf blower. That's fine with me.

It's nearly summer, and I've just endured a long winter. I loved that too. I need cold and hot, cool and warm.
We spend our time in a state of flux, from yang to yin and back. Embrace everything around you!
As the Taoist tell us, this too will change.

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