The Great Ebb and Flow

All throughout my life, I have vacillated between being shy and being social, between being self-confident and being self-conscious. I feel like this back and forth swing is more or less out of my control but in reality, it's just an aspect of myself I have yet to master. There are times where the frequency is very slow with months passing in between cycles and there are times, like recently, when I go back and forth between extroverted interactions and solitary introspection with only days in between. When I'm out on my own, thousands of miles from a familiar face, I feel an internally driven social pressure to go and make friends to ease the uncomfortable bouts of loneliness that can arise from my introspective times. However, I'm learning to embrace the fact that all parts of the cycle have lessons to teach and that all aspects of myself need to be understood in order to continue growing at this fast pace.

That being said, I swung back into my social self today. I was in the Vodafone store and provided advice, free of charge, to a frustrated English girl who was trying to unlock her phone. She is very nice (and cute to boot) and we walked around town together for awhile before parting ways. I'd read up about Perth and familiarized myself with some of the sites. When I come into a new city, I like to be armed with this knowledge so that I can then aimlessly wander around to see which of them I happen across.

I came across a store called Didges We Doo and saw a sign in the window advertising free lessons. I talked to the shop owner, a French woman, about the nuances of didgeridoos. There are different types of wood used, different lengths, different tones, different styles, and of course different artwork on the outside. Most of the pieces in the store have been crafted by her friends, local Aboriginal artists. They have to obtain a special license to go out into the bush land owned by the gold mines to look for a tree that makes the best instruments.

She showed me some of the pieces that came from exceptional stock. Some of them are truly massive. The largest one caught my eye immediately and is indeed quite hard to miss as it towers over the didgeridoos next to it. I would estimate it to be about 10 feet tall. I inquired about it and she said she was almost certain that I wouldn't be able play it. Just like Locke, I don't like people to tell me what I can't do and combined with the allure of a difficult challenge, I knew I had to try and was as confident in my ability to do it as she was doubtful. As she was taking it out, knocking the light fixtures in the process, she said that in 15 years she's only seen four people who could play it, being: her son, a Tai Chi master, a Reiki master, and a drunken Navy Seal. Not that I didn't believe her when she said it but she was right, it was very difficult to play. I tried a loose exhale, a tight exhale, changed my embouchure, buzzed my lips, flapped my lips, etc. I tried for awhile without success but then, I found the resonance for just a second. It took me five minutes to find it again but once I got it, I sustained it for several seconds. I wouldn't say that counts as being able to play the thing but I was smugly satisfied nonetheless.

Michelle the shop owner was busy but very patient in answering my questions. However, once I mentioned my interest in sound healing, she really opened up, saying that most people are interested in didgeridoos for decorative or musical purposes but that part of the original intention of the Aboriginal people was to create an energetic and spiritual link to the source through the vibration of the instrument. They understand the value of the low pitched drone on an energetic level and fully grasp the healing properties of it. I explained to her that many of my friends in California are sound healers and that was the only context in which I'd heard the didgeridoo. She was surprised by that and I told her about my healing experiences in the Sapphire Portal at Burning Man. Michelle practices sound healing and Reiki as well.

The Aboriginals treat their sacred knowledge as a closely guarded secret and don't share or speak to many outsiders about their spirituality or the philosophies behind their traditions. I came to Australia hoping to connect with the world's oldest indigenous group but I've been starting to see that it might be more difficult than I had originally anticipated. In addition to their caution with outsiders, much of their knowledge and community has been destroyed and forgotten. Michelle has connections with some of the Aboriginals and I'm looking forward to speaking with her to learn more about them. She also might be able to point me in the right direction to help me find the deep experience that I'm looking to find in this country. I'm going to the shop tomorrow afternoon for my free didge lesson and I'm 99% sure that I'll end up buying one before I leave Perth. I have over a hundred didgeridoos to try out and choose from. I expect to pay between $400-600 AUD for it. I will be taking it with me everywhere I go, playing it several hours a day, and expect to have it my whole life. They are expensive but I think it'll be one of the best purchases I'll ever make.

I've just finished reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac and it used a different set of words to help me remember some familiar ideas. The characters are traveling across the US but "their real journey was inward; and if they seemed to trespass most boundaries, legal and moral, it was only in the hope of finding a belief on the other side." The characters are on a unconventional spiritual journey of sorts, always trying to find IT, as one of them words it. IT is something that I'm fascinated with as well. It's familiar territory to the professional athletes, artists, and musicians of the world. It's walking the line, the tightrope of being right there in the moment, doing what you're doing to the best of your ability. It happens during rock climbing when your hand reaches to grab the next highest rock as fast as it can let go of the previous, scrambling quickly like a spider, with all parts of the body moving independently yet acting as one, pure motion without thought. It's the martial arts and flowing finesse of Bruce Lee, tightened and relaxed, close and distant, in all the right places at all the right times. It's the sound of a swaying jazz musician's saxaphone or the mad rhythms of a drum circle. The beauty in the global, underlying dance of a drum circle is that it's not being lead by any one drummer in particular but is created in the coalescence of all of them together. Actors flow into their roles, yogis into their asanas, painters onto their canvas, freestyle rappers into their lyrics. It's familiar territory to the professional athletes, artists, and musicians of the world and rarely known territory to the scientists. It sometimes requires a complete absence of thought and the logical mind to drop into this flow. It often requires a strong talent and familiarity with thought and the logical mind to be able to explain the experience afterwards.

I have dropped into this flow for seconds, minutes, or even hours at a time. It provides such a beautiful existence during that time that the rest of my time is spent thinking about it and trying to get back there. I'm ready to start experiencing that flow for days at a time without falling off. I want to start channeling IT into artful expressions of human ability with my writing, speech, social interactions, and everything else that I do. However, I will need tremendous discipline to achieve this goal. It will require the full and total unabridged focus of my entire being and all other priorities must be placed aside for this experiment. My body will be in line with a raw diet and hard physical labor doing fruit picking during the day. I will sweat my toxins out in the heat and my muscles will grow strong. My mind will be in line by doing yoga and playing the didgeridoo. When my spirit is given the energy it needs by aligning the body and the mind, it will follow suit automatically. I'll have to sustain this discipline for several weeks without lapses in order to build up to the level I want to reach. When I'm there, I'll be able to walk the line and flow into any activity I choose with grace and skillful precision. It's going to be intense but I've been waiting to run this experiment for years.