SHəˈnanəgənz/ (love these upside down əəəəəəəəəəəəəəəəəəəəəəs)

Shenanigans:

(def) a form of Silly or high-spirited behavior; mischief

I have to tell you, yesterday I was feeling shenaniganish. High-spirited. Downright silly. The energy was deliriously fun. Light. Playful. Happy. And completely grounded in reality, in the here of the only thing that exists. Now.

In my yoga class, as the teacher guided us in a short meditation, I found myself smiling, deeply smiling. You know the kind of smile that reaches up from down in your belly? The kind of smile that smiles you, where you know you are being smiled.

Sometimes spirit feels deep, beautiful, loving, compassionate.

Sometimes it feels like a pixie wanting to spread general mirth and silliness.

Sometimes it just laughs and laughs and laughs at the insanity of the ego’s circular substantiation of itself.

For some time now, I’ve felt like it’s so hard/wrong/inappropriate to be happy, playful, even shenaniganish in the face of so much pain and suffering in the world. You know what I mean?

This is a place of ‘stretch’ for me. Most people that know me see me as pretty serious. I can so totally be that.

I can also fall into this place of playfulness, and when I do I lap it up like a kitten given milk. It feels decadent and free.

Compassion, forgiveness, love, understanding, acceptance, fierceness, enough-is-enoughness are being called for, again and again. Yet, maybe, just maybe, what might bring some of those lovely things more available to us all is a bit of old-fashioned playfulness. Humor. Yes, even shenanigans – that high-SPIRITED behavior, or behaviour for all my canadian readers!

Just a thought… a thought that floated away with another belly smile.

Today, September 30th, is Rumi’s 803rd Birthday. I came across this glorious, rapturous, wondrous line on twitter from @Jenmalen:

We should split the sack
of this culture
and stick our heads out.

What if we were to do this…together?

Split it right open.

Stick our heads out.

What would we discover out past all the beliefs this culture holds?

What would we create together? How would we be together? Who would we be?

What would fresh innocence of our true nature reveal to us?

Split the Sack

Why does the soul not fly
when it hears the call?

Why does a fish, gasping on land,
but near the water,
not move back into the sea?

What keeps us from joining the dance
the dust particles do?

Look at their subtle motions
in sunlight.

We are out of our cages
with our wings spread,
yet we do not lift off.

We keep collecting rocks and broken bits
of pottery like children
pretending they are merchants.

We should split the sack
of this culture
and stick our heads out.

Look around.
Leave your childhood.

Reach your right hand up
and take this book from the air.
You do know right from left, don’t you?

A voice speaks to your clarity.
Move into the moment of your death.
Consider what you truly want.

Now call out commands yourself.
You are the king. Phrase your question,
and expect the grace of an answer.

~Rumi

(An Excerpt from Rumi: Bridge to the Soul Journeys Into the Music and Silence of the Heart by Coleman Barks)

“When you go out next, take a look at the dirt at the side of the road. Blonde dirt, ochre red dirt, black dirt, brown dirt, yellow dirt, clay white dirt, green dirt. Then, look inside your house. Most everything in it came from the dirt first. Our Mother is everywhere: metal, plastic, paper, glass. Don’t tell me you have no ideas. Dig.”

~Tending the Creative Fire manuscript, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

…

Last Thursday, I painted with Chris Zydel, (@wildheartqueen for you twitteraties).

Chris leads Process painting. Beautifully.

…

The Process began with picking my paint colors and brushes.

For me, this process was about digging. The painting I did didn’t come from the top of me. My head. It came from someplace deep down in the darkness, someplace where the paint flows like honey, like blood, like dirt…I guess that would be mud.

As Chris said right from the beginning, it’s not about the painting, it’s about the process, about what’s happening within you as you choose colors, choose brushes, face the white paper, become the conduit for seed to sprout from the dirt, and for the mystery to come to life as creation.

At the very root of it all, it’s a big mystery. I didn’t know what would come out on the paper. I don’t know what it is or even what it means. It just came out. It’s as simple as that.

I noticed, as I painted without a plan and without a story, that it was fun. I had fun simply watching it all happen. I felt playful as the color changed the paper from white to painted. It was spontaneous. Joyous. Innocent.

It was a lot like the painting I did as a child at pre-school, where long tables were made from saw horses and wood, long tables that held clean white butcher paper.

Back then, I just LOVED to see the paint flow onto the paper. That’s the part I remember most. The colors. The mixing. The colors mixing and turning the paper from white to painted to creation.

…

Sometimes, what is flowing wants my mind to join in, so the creation can have meaning, can be shared with words, can have a different kind of impact. Sometimes, there’s no invitation to the mind to join in. I like those times. They’re empty. Nothing here but dirt and digging.

…

I could try to make something up about what it means, but why?

Dirt is where it all comes from.

I just dig.

Spring is here in the Bay Area in all its beauty. The other day, a friend and I were sitting outside on her balcony that overlooks her garden. We were enjoying one of the first warm days of the season. With the sun’s warmth heating up the landscape, the fragrance of spring was in the air. There was something else in the air as well…Innocence. As we looked out at the tender shoots of green making their first appearance and the myriad of blossoms peeking out into the light, we were swimming in a sea of Innocence.

On Sunday, I noticed Innocence again as I meandered through the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Cherry blossoms, California Poppies and many others all were making their debut in Spring, 2008′s show. When I feel innocence in the air, and in myself, I feel a fresh awareness in the moment.

No matter how old we get, we still have this fresh awareness available at any moment. It’s this fresh awareness that allows us to experience the vibrancy of life, quivering with aliveness. And, when we tap into this vibrancy of life, we can feel our own vibrancy, our own innocence, which can also be felt as wonder, discovery and a simple joy inherent in life itself.

When I realize this natural sense of wonder within, I awaken to the fluidity of the Now. Wonder invites me to participate with life, allowing me to remember that I am no different than that cherry blossom peeking out for the first time. I, too, am life blossoming into wholeness.

What do innocence and wonder have to do with creativity? Everything. Engaging with the flow of life is creativity, the life that you are and the life that you are swimming in in each moment. If you are not seeing with fresh eyes, you miss all that is right here now. You can’t tap into everything that is available for your new creation, your new vision, if you have your mind made up and your expectations set. When you feel a vision wanting to be born from within, allow it to move as it chooses. You are the vehicle of this creation. Feed it. Nurture it. Love it as it finds its way. And, feed, nurture and love yourself as you carry it into being.

Every day you are creating…but not by yourself. You are creating with the world around you. Innocence and wonder bring you back to the freshness of what is here in each moment, a freshness that knocks at your door, ready to teach you what it has to offer.