{"id":8645,"date":"2024-09-19T13:45:13","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T17:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/?p=8645"},"modified":"2024-09-24T01:25:30","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T05:25:30","slug":"on-grasping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/on-grasping\/","title":{"rendered":"On Grasping"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cSo,\u201d I say to God, \u201cGod,\u201d I say.
\u201cNow that it\u2019s the end of retreat\u2026
How do I keep it?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cKeep it?\u201d<\/em> says God, says She.<\/p>

\u201cYou know,\u201d I say, \u201cthis emptiness, the pleasantness of it, the fullness\u2026
Now that I\u2019ve found it\u2026
all the practices,
the teacher and the teachings,
the chant,
the other seekers,
the retreat center,
the dancing trees,
the silence and the good air,
the food and the coffee (well not exactly the coffee but that the coffee was made).
How do I take it with me,
you know, after I leave, go back to my life?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHmm,\u201d says God, says She. \u201cThat\u2019s a very good question.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThank you,\u201d I say.<\/p>

\u201cOf course, there is no answer. Only the question,\u201d says God, says She.<\/p>

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d I ask.<\/p>

\u201cSTOP grasping! Stay inside the question.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHuh?\u201d I say, turning red because God is rolling Her eyes.<\/p>

\u201cTake a breath,\u201d says God, says She, pointing Her finger at my chest, pressing it there, a little too hard.<\/p>

\u201cGo back to the emptiness, the fullness, the coffee, yada yada…
Feel into that very deeply
and then just\u2026STOP…right in the middle…
of the desire<\/em> there,\u201d says God, says She.
\u201cYour yearning to keep it.
Listen from inside the flame of this desire<\/em>.
Let the rest fall away.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cBut wait,\u201d I say, \u201cHow? I mean, how do I do that?\u201d
I\u2019m wanting something more, something tangible, you know?
A YouTube on desire or a website for candles, Goddammit.<\/p>

\u201cThey\u2019re metaphors,\u201d says God, says She, sending a thin spray of spittle onto my cheek.
\u201cAnd those things you want to keep, they\u2019re conditions, temporary, not the real thing.\u201d<\/p>

And then God takes a deep breath and closes Her eyes.
I can tell She is struggling to stay calm.
There\u2019s a long pause, and more uncomfortable pointing.
And I\u2019m afraid I went a little too far, you know, with all the questions.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s just This<\/em>,\u201d says God, says She, the pointing now pretty intense.
\u201cLive in it, right here.\u201d Rapid pointing. \u201cThe desire<\/em>, all shimmery.\u201d<\/p>

Another pause, and I\u2019m not feeling the shimmer but the pointing is becoming fainter now, more like a caress.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s what we take from retreat,\u201d says God, says She.
\u201cWhat we give to others.
Sparked by the teacher, the practices.
We keep them as memory, but we must let go of them too.
What remains is simply desire<\/em>, live in that.\u201d<\/p>

Right then, God\u2019s lecture brings me back
to the silence and the dancing trees and the teachings,
and I can feel that desire<\/em>, warmish, less intense, but present nonetheless.
And then I feel my grasping like a claw.
For a second, they argue right there inside my chest,
the warm desire<\/em> and the grasping claw.
Then, both at the same time.<\/p>

\u201cSurely you can feel it?\u201d says God, says She.<\/p>

Her caress amplifies the warmth there in the center of my chest, the bony part.<\/p>

\u201cKind of,\u201d I say. \u201cIt\u2019s hard.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIndeed.\u201d says God, says She. \u201cIt\u2019s practice.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Terri Leonard is an iRest facilitator. She wrote this prose poem while on retreat with Kathleen Knipp and friends on Bowen Island in July 2024. It was inspired by Cynthia Rylant\u2019s book of poems, titled, God Went to Beauty School.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cSo,\u201d I say to God, \u201cGod,\u201d I say.\u201cNow that it\u2019s the end of retreat\u2026How do I keep it?\u201d \u201cKeep it?\u201d says God, says She. \u201cYou know,\u201d I say, \u201cthis emptiness, the pleasantness of it, the fullness\u2026Now that I\u2019ve found it\u2026all the practices,the teacher and the teachings,the chant,the other seekers,the retreat center,the dancing trees,the silence and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-blog-no-email"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8645"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8673,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8645\/revisions\/8673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathlessyoga.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}