Befriending Groundlessness

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
...the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again
and fall apart again.

                             -Pema Chodron

Transitions.


That's when things fall apart. 


Life is mostly transitions...



and then sometimes,
we get to rest in between.

I spent last weekend at a big, 200-person campout. The shared intention was to make a recording of Ahlay Blakley's gorgeous songs of wails. She embodies the use of song to expand "one's personal capacity to participate in the collective shift towards life-affirming conditions". She invited us along to bring forth her vision. We accepted and were forever transformed. I'm not kidding. Shifts started and they will continue, like tectonic plates, influencing everything on a deep, subtle level.

Those giant plates that oversee (or under sea?) all of earth's geography are not static. Nothing is actually ever still, but in continuous metamorphosis. 

And yet we humans still crave stability, security and predictability. The brain is said to be a prediction machine, but we can't seem to program it to accept continuous change. Instead, we panic and cementify, clinging to the obsolete and uncomfortable.

Did you notice I made up a word there? How was that for you? Start to notice what arises in you when you encounter the unfamiliar.

Anyway, I want to share some of Ahlay's lyrics, to offer you a mouthful of the feast prepared for us:

To love what death will touch.
To love what could abandon us.
Is to accept these rites of grief.
Is to open up to vulnerability.
Nothing ever stays the same.
Nothing ever stays the same.
Nothing ever stays the same.
Everything is change.
Everything is change.

If you ever chose a friendship, partnership, pet adoption or parenthood, you know that the risk of giving your heart away is tremendous. Without this willingness, life is lived at a distance.

Because of our various degrees of trauma, this quality of a distanced life may be the best we can tolerate. With support and willingness, many folks can learn, through practice, to endure the breaking open of their hearts, and find a deeper satisfaction and truer sense of safety.

The only way through fear is through it.

…and we’re not meant to do this journey through the fire alone. We are pack animals, and need to be held as we unpack all that we carry, ancestrally, and through our lived experiences. (another made up word??)

Here are Ahlay’s lyrical words:

I don’t know if we were meant to carry

So much grief in one body, yet-

We are not alone We are not alone We are not alone We are not alone We are not alone

We are not alone We are not alone We are not alone We are not alone We are not alone

yet Ahhhhhhhhhhhh

We need to hear this again and again. You might remember the wisdom of the yoga sutras, regarding the pains (kleśa) which include the illusion that we are separate, or alone. Singing these words, over and over can begin to challenge our deeply held contrary beliefs.

Another song speaks to ancestral material. When I learned the song, I thought it was for someone else, but got to recognize myself in the themes. We all have family stories that bring us shame. There are undoubtedly tales we never got to hear, but felt the room shift, as young ones, and knew that secrets were skulking in the shadows.

Ahlay’s work is to help us bring out all the skulkers and welcome them. They are part of how we got to be here, some of us by privilege and others by persecution. They are our parts and we can’t rest until they are brought into the circles that define each one of us.

Here’s Bloodlines

There are songs, singing in my bones

I can barely hear the notes, they are older than I know.

They sound like the ones I’ve not brought home yet

The ones I’ve not yet named

The ones I’ve pushed away.

How can I be whole until all of you, all of you I have claimed?

Why deny this lineage, it’s why I am alive.

Yay da dai dai dai dai

He dai dai

Hi yai yai yai

He dai dai

Hi yai yai yai

He dai dai

Yai yai yo

Drawing on her Jewish ancestry, Ahlay combines tradition with her present need to connect and express from her heart.

While this album has just been recorded, and therefore not yet available, you can check out Ahlay’s other work here: https://ahlayblakely.bandcamp.com/album/spells-from-the-unknown

I hope you’re singing, alone or in a group. The vibrations that your body knows are ancient, and beyond words.

Maybe it’s time to start a song circle in your town!