Shiva wave rider

I believe one major shift in who I have become out of the challenges I have faced is that I genuinely hope for a life of balance (rather than all systems go) and for a life that is person-centered (as much as I am still in full concentration mode if you come upon me at a coffee-shop). I see that to strive is to create stress and to make me into a mess of a person, full of anxiety, of the wearisome of livin' "on the edge" and the worry and weight of the world. I still seek to see myself in the system of things, to re-position myself and put what effort I can towards creating the change I am capable of producing at any given moment. I am much more likely however, to see that change as the present conversation I am having rather than the futuristic (perhaps) realization of my present-moment churning big ideas that keep me from fully engaging in the conversation I may be having. 

I also have stopped believing that the waves of life are ever going to calm into a placid sea nor am I sure that I'd want them to. Rather, my focus is on riding the waves as they come instead of getting continuously pounded by them. I've been using the name "shiva wave rider" lately as it suits my perspective towards living. 

Shiva and surfing.....

Shiva in that everything is created and destroyed in an instant and that everything changes. While I still look to "SUSTAIN" on my arm during tough times, I think the change is in the expectation and thus the orientation of my life.  I believe it is feeling the water, the tide, the waves and making from the heart decisions rather than listening to the "logic" of my mind and its little voice telling me to "push through". Why try to swim out to sea and struggle in the middle of the white water when I can just go with the tide to the side, watch the water for a break in the waves and finesse myself past the break zone? 

It is life as a dance rather than an endurance race. Balancing flexible (thinking) and relying on the firmness of the ground and finding strength there. With less hurry but no less urgency and no where to "go" but being fully "there".... . I breathe a full inhale and exhale and leaning forward into the "dancer" pose just as I would paddle in to a wave and find the board beneath my feet to ride in the wave - perhaps the most beautiful dance between humanity and nature . I do this over and over and then over again. 

Is this not life? 

Note in the picture - a self-portrait for a class at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies - the dancer standing on the yoga sutras surrounded my medicine bottles. This is my life. I ground myself in what I believe in and the wisdom of the ages and take the experiences and objects present in my life as they are - the medicine bottles- and just try to find the center. 

Admitting my qualms with T.S. Eliot re: the man behind the poetry, I admit my love of the "Four Quartets".  I believe Mr. Eliot had come to some conclusions at the end of his life as he writes of Krishna and the fire and the rose and the dance. And so, here I conclude with one of my favorite lines of poetry:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. 

Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.