hanumatopoiea harrumph

In three prominent aspects of life where anyone could wish to be happy, peaceful or prosperous, I was body-slammed yesterday. First from the front, immediately following on the left and before that wind had even completed being knocked out of me, from the right, until I was flat on my ass staring up (and/or looking in) thinking, “I mean, seriously? You couldn’t have like, EASED that a bit and spread those out over a week, or like… over the course of 2010?”

I’m pretty sure everyone’s familiar with that downward spiral when one big, bad, negative thing happens and suddenly every other minute disturbance in your life piggybacks onto it. It’s like an instantaneous pity party Evite gets sent out to all of the things that may be less than stellar within your daily existence. So not only are you dealing with the Huge thing (or in my case yesterday, three Huge things) you also get the garnishes all up in the mix, such as “oh, AND my lower left hand kitchen cabinet’s veneer is peeling, this zit on my chin has taken up permanent residence, plus no one ever asked me to my senior prom… “ and so on.

What was so nice about yesterday (and believe me I am stretching it here because nothing about it felt anywhere remotely close to nice at the time; if nice is Manhattan, yesterday was Point Nemo) was that I didn’t take part in the spiral. Make no mistake, it was there; I saw it coming. I felt it whoosh over me, the pain, the emotion, as one thought after another jumped in to take hold and dig that stiletto into my heart and mind for an excruciating rip. And instead of letting the wave take me over, instead of fighting against it or trying to block it out, I rode it.

I left my office at 6:30, exiting into bitter, freezing February rain. (I mean, again, really?) Instead of going to the bar (didn’t even consider it-- yay) or to the freezer section of my deli (bypassing the urge to catch up on the entire season of “30 Rock” via nbc.com with New York Super Fudge Chunk as my one night stand…DID consider that one) I went to my yoga shala and to a Hanuman kirtan.

Hanuman is the Monkey god. I don’t practice Hinduism other than occasional pujas (ceremonies) and kirtan (devotional chanting) and I have but the most basic knowledge about some of the gods and the reasons they are around, etc. (From my mother’s perspective: I’m Ghandi, from a Hindu priest's: Sarah Palin.) However whenever something if offered within the walls of where I practice yoga, I know it will be authentic, and then, pure, if you will.

Wikipedia told me people pray to Hanuman for peace of mind and strength. The timing couldn’t have been more appropriate. Strength is usually my strong suit, so when that one day out of every 175 comes along when I am losing it, and I don’t want to turn to vodka or ice cream and sex is not an option, I’ll try Hanuman. At my yoga school, on one of the most miserable nights in a while, in a room of only a dozen people, probably more than half of which were followers of Hinduism, I find a girlfriend of mine from an entirely different social circle of friends. Synchronicity: this was the Thumb telling me I was in the right place.

We chanted. I let go. And I have a volatile relationship with that amorphous phrase “let go.” Because really, that is like, THE most difficult thing to do when you are in the grip of something you should be letting go of. Quite frankly, many times letting go happens involuntarily—when you reach the point that is simply so painful that you cannot hold on any longer. This is most often the way people get tracked on any path toward self-realization, we don’t want to “let go” until we hit bottom. Until we are forced to surrender.

One of my dearest friends adores the phrase “surrender.” So much so that he wants a tattoo of it, on his chest, backwards so that he can see it in the mirror when he’s shaving. To him surrender is opening, a release. That word does not work for me. It sounds hard. It sounds like your ass being whooped sideways by three Huge things on a lonely, cold, February evening.

Maybe I’m just a masochist, but that’s what it took for me to surrender. Yet the surrender, the letting go is only part one of two. Part two is grace. And grace only shows up in emptiness. It only shows up when there is something to fill. When you are not grasping for it, but you are open to receive it. When you say “ok, I have no vodka/sex/ice cream/way to fix the veneer on my kitchen cabinet. Ok. Ok. That’s ok.”

So I let go, into a realm I am familiar with, but nowhere near expert in. I let go of control, and I sang like no one was watching me. (they weren't) And in the interest of brevity (sparing you my poetic espousing outlining the details of my metamorphosis,) the me going in and the me coming out?... two very different people.

When one of the other ladies asked me afterwards what the exact wording on the last sanskrit chant was, I told her, “I don’t know, I just say what I think it’s supposed to be.”

I didn’t have to be perfect. I didn’t have to be right. I did not need a future home depot agenda already mapped out for my kitchen cabinet or even a solution to any of the three Huge things. I just needed to surrender and say, “Hanuman, I’m out of options, I’m going to let you take it from here.” I don’t know why. I don’t know how. But Hanuman got it right when I, sure as sugar, couldn’t.