Tag: soul

La Petite Mort

by Raquel Rios, posted in Uncategorized

When I was giving birth to my son, I remember feeling that in my pain I understood famine, war and death. It was as if my mind-spirit left me and traveled to all of history. I experienced human suffering. I shared this feeling afterwards but in the telling it was impossible to communicate what I had experienced. How does one explain the feeling of famine and war while giving birth to a baby?

Pain is boundless agony and insight associated with Great Death and Birth. When I refer to Great Death, I refer to the type of death that reverberates, a passing that stops time and changes history. All death and birth is transformational. It is the dissolution and creation of new life. In the moment of labor and birthing we cannot know the greatness that may lie within and therefore, we simply labor and bear fruit and this process is our connection to the infinite.

Our response to a Great Death and Birth blossoms into a new approach to living. This is the gateway to consciousness. All human beings experience a Great Death and Birth while living and often, more than once.

When I was in the hospital, I was tense and exhausted. I was forced to surrender to a painful experience. I had not understood until that moment how much pain and suffering love would bring me. Yet, like my ancestors before me, I was to become part of the great wave of evolution.

The Great Death of my husband was similarly haunting except more complicated and fragile. The struggle to grasp the meaning of love with loss is overwhelming. There is ravage on the body and soul, time extends beyond limits, and what evolves out of grief is harder to see.

When a hero speaks of a Great Death, a death to be remembered, they speak of a death that transforms life.

When an artist speaks of immortality, he creates to alter reality.

When a lover speaks of La Petit Mort, he refers to falling into an altered state of consciousness.

I have experienced Great Death and Birth and feel like a moving river now. Or, perhaps the river is moving me. My ears are still under water and the sound is muffled but the sun is shining over me. My thoughts are paralyzed, it’s the constant bobbing. My arms and legs are adrift.

This is Bardō.

In the Age of Face Covering

by Raquel Rios, posted in Uncategorized

“The eyes are the window to your soul” William Shakespeare

For women, the eyes are especially telling and even more so in an environment that requires face covering. Now, women (and men) all over the world are covering their face to protect themselves. The impact of this visual landscape is mesmerizing. In New York City, for example, where eye contact is a rare commodity, face coverings, however chicly designed, have increased that concrete jungle feeling. As I walk the streets, covered appropriately, I ruminate about this strange new setting. I find myself thinking about things like trust and spectacle, instability and ambiguity, fantasy and cravings, drowning or keep swimming, waves of disbelief. I think about how as each month passes we adapt and contort ourselves to keep on living. Some people I pass appear to have accustomed themselves to this dystopian-like setting. For others, they give off that cagey feeling. Then, back in the privacy of our homes, we pull off our coverings and try to breathe. We hope to calm the chatter of the street and find that soothing sound of heart beat. Some days, it beats too fast to be soothing. Other days, we can hardly hear the beat and we wonder if we are in fact, dying. What may be dying, exactly, if it is not our body?

There is only one solace to all this. That perhaps it is time. That we will be forced to look up at each other, out of our technological devices and fall back into the eyes.

Soles of our feet, soul of society

by Raquel Rios, posted in Uncategorized

Our legs down to our feet mark where we stand and where we’re going. The sole is the bottom most layer of everything. It is the place where calluses grow. There is nothing wrong with a callus, only that it is there and it may mean it’s time to move differently.

Smooth the sole. Appreciate the leathery feel, worn over time. Then lift your feet high so blood runs through your body. Your soles are not to be left unattended because they are the foundation of every journey.

The soul of society is like hundreds of soles crossing a border, migrating to new territory, challenging one hundred selves to explore, to better things, for curiosity or to ward off adversity.

The soul of society will always be one hundred plus feet, standing or walking, running or skipping, dancing. The soles of our feet, like the soul of society, feel like a very private matter and yet, our intimate dance moves us universally. It’s like listening to a fine cello piece or contemplating a painting; each born out of one but touching everybody.

I sometimes dream of a body with amputated legs after some undefined war. I wonder how it is that we can learn to survive with such pain, the sole stripped away. Then I’m in awe at how human beings are so clever. We design makeshift feet, we invent technological devices that help us move ahead effortlessly. But what about the soles of our feet? What about the soul of society when the leathery wear and tear have been pulled off and we are left with metal frames, clever gadgets and send buttons? I wonder if we are fully aware of the purpose behind movement and speed and the role of the soles of feet.

Different parts of our mind-body are working. We’re finding that the soul is dispersed evenly. It’s a new revelation, perhaps, for many, that the soul is not bound by the soles of feet. It’s like magic, really. The ability of the soul to morph into anything, so free.

I’m becoming more accustomed to this floating feeling but it’s still scary. Here we are recreating life and our way of living. I do miss standing steadily, even if it is illusory. I massage my soles after running. I love that anchored feeling even now when I know that my feet are growing old and will die.

I will say that the soul of society needs our care and attention. We should treat it like a baby. Our new soles are so soft and supple, unable to stand. It needs nurturing, discipline and a lot of love. We are a hundred plus heart beats scattered about now, but we are one when we are listening.