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Practice was slow and a bit ponderous. If you are sad, do NOT listen to Sigur Ros when you practice. That’s my lesson for the day.

More Freeman:

You need the ability to take a stand and see what the results of taking a stand are, and then you need to see that even that was just a stand and that there are other stands. The passive or lunar mode makes a context, but the active or solar mode allows a single viewpoint.

The theory of Hatha yoga is that this is reflected in the body, the breath and how the muscles are patterned. The idea is that eventually these two different modes connect. And that’s the game.

Just seeing that it’s a game intellectually is a pathetic state; it’s eternal pathos. That’s what the existentialists see; Sisyphus rolling a rock up a hill. Having the game insight and then reducing it to a nihilistic theory is just another game.

The nice thing about realizing that it’s all a game via yoga is that you can let it go, which is freedom. The mind creates, constructs and dissolves religious practices, but the joy is the fact that it’s free, open. There’s nobody in there; no player who’s suffering.

The insight into the game is seeing the nature of awareness as it is. That’s the ecstatic joy. There’s no cognitive process involved at all. Yoga is the endless pouring out of infinite radiance from this mysterious core, deep in the body.

And today, let’s have one of Berryman’s Dream Songs. I had a total crush on Berryman’s poetry for many years, and still love the Dream Songs to this day.

Dream Song 29    

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
so heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of.  Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late.  This is not for tears;
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.