How to Be a Flower
Our Musings on the Mud & Rising
Yoga doesn’t require you to be perfectly balanced.
In fact, it’s the opposite. Take the lotus flower for example. It grows from murky darkness, from the mud and the yuck, and emerges blossoming and brilliant upon still, shimmering waters.
// vinyl screech//
—Wait—
It’s not exactly fair to call the depths ‘yuck’, now is it? It’s there the nutrients lie. The biome for incubation, education, preparation. What are we without the unpleasant but purposeful? Do we know growth? What is the absence of pain? Contentment? Does one exist without the other.
Big debate…but let’s bring it back.
The human existence doesn’t come without some helping of discontentment. It’s in our DNA. We feel discontent when a need is not met. Our survival depends on it. And so we find ourselves- in varying degrees- of yuck. But it’s only the beginning. It’s not always visible in the posts or on the faces…whether too distracted by the grief, too ashamed by the pain, still confused about the struggle…or maybe we just don’t want to look, not yet.
But peer over the edge into murky depths and you’ll see a mother abandoned, lonely, fragile, but you’d never know it. She’ll melt into a puddle on the kitchen floor on a Tuesday, letting the emotion swell and overtake her. You’ll see she’s fragile, not like a flower about to wilt, but like a bomb, ready to harness the power with which she feels infused. She’ll cling to that power and sometimes lose it altogether. But it’s inevitable. She’ll grow. From the dark, mysterious sludge of nutrients she’ll find preparation, evolution. And then, she’ll see the mud again. But living, thank God, is forging and these days, it’s not the kitchen floor because it’s too big of a risk that teenagers who can drive will pop by. It’s in the garden, on the freeway, in bed at 9 am amidst guilt and shame and pain.
But the lessons she learns…oh it’s worth it. The understanding that it doesn’t make sense to stay covered in muck when you rise with the sun on your face. Some of the depths just have to stay back. It’s right that they do. And it’s okay to be afraid…don’t you think those flowers, still collapsed in their cage look around and say why would I leave? This womb I know, it’s all I can see. But yes, my dear, don’t you worry. You can’t see it now, but you will, you’ll feel it. You’ll know this IS for you. Trust and lean into what you KNOW is YOU.
