Braiding Ritual Awareness
I’ve been reading Ram Dass’ memoir Being Ram Dass that he wrote alongside his friend and fellow soul traveler, Rameshwar Das, after his stroke. If you’re familiar with the teachings of Ram Dass, or the documentary Going Home (2017), you know that while this time presented a challenge for a variety of reasons, it seemed to offer an even greater opportunity to live vibrantly in what he called Loving Awareness.
Ram Dass says, “Loving awareness is the soul. I am loving awareness. I am aware of everything, I’m aware of my body and my senses and my mind, I’m aware of all of it, but I notice that I’m loving all of it. I’m loving all of the world.”
Cultivating Loving Awareness right now seems monumentally important, but somedays it feels nearly impossible. Those are the days where I’ve taken in too much news, lost the thread, forgotten the dharma. Those are the days where I search for another way to remember.
In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweet Grass, she opens with Skywoman Falling, a story about the intertwined existence of humans, animals, Mother Earth, and what comes to pass when we all come together. “Like a maple seed, pirouetting on an autumn breeze”, Skywoman hurtles downward from a place where only darkness was before. She sees nothing but water and then many eyes gazing upward. One by one “in a wave of goose music”, the geese come together creating a hammock for which she can fall upon. Flapping their wings, hovering above the water, they know they cannot support Skywoman for much longer. A turtle approaches and offers his back for her to rest upon. Understanding that she will need land for a home, the animals recall hearing of mud at the bottom of the water and go looking for some. Those familiar with the water – the Beaver, Sturgeon, Otter – dive into the water but return gasping for air. Many try, some not returning at all, until the little Muskrat volunteered and kicked his way downward. The animals, having been eagerly watching for the Muskrat, saw only bubbles. What rose next was his limp body. The Muskrat gave his life to help Skywoman and succeeded, for in his paw was a clump of mud. The turtle gave instructions to place the mud on his back, and Skywoman knelt to spread the mud with her hands. She rejoiced for this kindness with song, spreading the mud across the turtle’s back with her feet as she danced. From a small clump of mud, the whole of the Earth grew. “Not by Skywoman alone, but from the alchemy of all the animals’ gifts coupled with her deep gratitude.”
Skywoman had come with seeds, which she scattered across the ground turning the world from brown to green. Some of the seeds were flowers, trees, plants for consuming and medicines – all to be shared amongst Earth’s inhabitants. When she fell from the sky, Skywoman was pregnant, and held on to an understanding of the “Original Instructions”, which asked simply, when given the gifts of the world what will you give in return? Your gifts and dreams are the answer but use them for good. Use them to honor those that came before and those that are not yet here.
“She did not work for flourishing in her time only. It was through her actions of reciprocity, the give and take with the land, that the original immigrant became Indigenous . . . becoming Indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.”
Braiding Sweetgrass shares that one of the first plants to grow on Earth was sweetgrass . . . “Breathe in its scent and you start to remember things you didn’t know you’d forgotten.” Sweetgrass is grown by putting roots into the ground, not seed. The planting of sweetgrass becomes a ritual itself, connecting root to hand, across years and generations. The work of creating and sustaining life is itself a ritual, a ceremony, to be celebrated with each other, to be tended to as a community. In our asana practice we root down to rise up. We create space in the body to make space for Prana. We find peace in the ritual of movement so we can remember to remember, both the dharma and the thread that connects us all in Loving Awareness.
A blog post by Amy Frances