For those who receive my newsletter or follow me on twitter or facebook, you'll know that I had plans to go to Bali in order to become a Wu Tao Dance teacher trainer.
Had.
Past tense.
Needless to say, the desire is very much there but reality didn't exactly sync up with my plans.
I got to the airport, rip roaring and ready to go. Upon handing over my passport to the gate agent to check in to my flight, she spent some time flipping through my passport and looking at all the pages. I have been extremely fortunate to be able to travel to many far flung places and my passport bears the trace of many incredible journeys. The thing I didn't know, however, was that my passport was incredibly full of these stamps. In fact, too full. Indonesia requires at least one full, empty page of your passport in order to get the visa upon arrival. My passport had no empty pages, only one half of one page. The amendments pages were wide open, but lo and behold, they cannot bear any stamps of entry or exit.
So here I am, in Brooklyn, and not in Bali.
One of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned (and am still learning) is the lesson of surrender. Water does not freak out if a stone is in its river path - it just flows past it. The water does not get all frothy and begins to plan how to threaten litigation. Nor does it scream for acknowledgment in what a hard and unfair time it is having because of the stone in its way. It just flows, and there is a mighty lesson in there for me.
When it became clear that there was no way I could get on the plane, I dragged my deflated, soggy self off to the side to regroup. I had a choice to make and I knew that I had to accept that this trip wasn't happening. The question was, how do I salvage the plans, tickets and financial commitments I made with as much grace and ease as I could muster.
Fast forward to 24 hours later. The airlines overrode my non-refundable, non-transferable ticket and let me change the ticket within a certain time frame with some annoying yet affordable fees. Michelle, the incredible woman who created Wu Tao, said that she would return to Bali within my dates so my training could happen. As unplanned as this was, I must say it has worked out incredibly well.
I went to the park yesterday to literally dance it out. The photos below are of me dancing the Air Dance, the first of the five Wu Tao dances. It is correlated to the season of autumn, the action of letting go, and the emotion of grief. I stretched, breathed, moved and surrendered to the dance, knowing that at the end of the day, I have my health, my wealth and am surrounded by so much love and support that it is impossible to quantify it.
In this unbearable moment of the election, of the fate of our nation and of our world and the billions of people who live upon it, I want to plant the seed of surrender. What can you let go of in this moment and surrender to the reality of the relationship, situation or state of being? Surrender has some unpleasant connotations in our society, likely because we have lived in states of war for millennia, and in a state of war, surrender is death, dishonor and eradication. If you feel this way, I invite you to let that thought go. What can you let go of in order to lighten your load? What are you willing to surrender to, to give up the fight and give permission to whatever it is to simply be?
Sending bright November blessings to you all. Here's to accepting, flowing and surrendering to the tides of our lives so we can move forward in grace, peace and ease.
Photos below taken in Fort Greene Park on November 5, 2016.
