Wilderness in me ...

Gray Timber Wolf 16
Originally uploaded by Steve J T (feeling totally flickrd!)

THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess … I pick things out of the wind and air … I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers … I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me … a snout and a belly … a machinery for eating and grunting … a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me … I know I came from saltblue water-gates … I scurried with shoals of herring … I blew waterspouts with porpoises … before land was … before the water went down … before Noah … before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced … yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under the armpits … here are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and blue-eyed women … here they hide curled asleep waiting … ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird … and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want … and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

~ Carl Sandburg


I came across this poem today and, interestingly enough, it reminded me of something an AA member shared just this week in terms of gratitude for what was given to us by G-d: "We have been entrusted by G-d with this round ball of life he created, that revolves in perfect timing with these other round balls of light, the sun and the moon. How could we ever doubt that G-d cares about us, or that we are better than anyone or anything ... we are just animals that walk upright, no better than the small bug that G-d put here too out of love."

I needed to hear the words of this poem and the sharing of this AA member to remind myself of who I am and where I came from and my place among beings. The pure perfection of it all.

I got up quite early this morning. Perhaps that is because my dog was not here to interrupt my sleeping with her 4am pawing to go out and so I slept straight through until 6:30 and feel incredibly rested. After praying and making coffee, I knew I had plenty of time before '
the day's appointments to listen to a Tara Brach podcast. This one was on "Equanimity". It was one of the Divine Abodes of Buddhist teaching, along with Loving-Kindness, Compassion and Joy. She shares how this is the hardest of them all to master on a regular basis. Equanimity is about pure, loving, ego-less presence. In Kabbalistic work, it is operating from one of the "universes" known as Briah. Where there is not an identification with "self" but rather with the "One-ness" of All. For me, it also feels like the "state" of being during the practice of Impersonal Movement when we have done "Forgetting-Remembering" ... I can feel myself drop into this space of no longer feeling "me" , just a being-ness in the space itself.

One of the greatest barriers to achieving equanimity is the daily trance that we each fall into of reacting to people, situations and things. It is whenever we are in the place of "You/I/Life should be different". A tremendous moment of clarity and sinking in for me.
She spoke of that when we are willing to notice and be aware of this place of reactivity/trance, and offer what we are experiencing the attention of loving presence, then we are moving into equanimity.

I feel like I am having more than just glimpses of this. I am less inclined to be in trance and to stay in reactivity or to want to push unpleasantness away these days. I have much more of a willingness now to open my eyes and to even find compassion for myself or others in these places of fearfulness, anger, disappointment, frustration, greed, jealousy, defending, protecting.
These are the qualities in Carl Sandburg's poem of all of the animals that occupy his being.

Equanimity, I am understanding, is loving the wildnerness in me. It is being aware of when I want to hide in a cave or show my fangs or fly away or guard with my ferociousness. And just being tender toward the animal that I am at times and the loving human I know I can be.