by
Marlin Eller
He sat cross legged in a corner of his room, his
back very straight, every sense keenly alert. The small ornamental bowl of Rice
Krispies sat in front of him making its Snap Crackle Pop. The yogi who had
taught him this pose had told him that the best preparation was to eat Rice
Krispies.
"You must pay attention. If you just pour
on the milk and eat, you never hear your cereal. But if you pour on the milk
and incline your ear, you not only hear snap crackle pop, but you also find
that the sound slowly recedes as the cereal becomes ready to eat. Listening to
the chaos fading away is an essential part of eating your Rice Krispies. The
snap crackle pop first catches your attention to draw you away from external
noise and then diminishes, leaving you calm enough to eat. How much better off
we would be if everyone listened to their Rice Krispies.
"Your mind is a bowl of Rice Krispies,
every synapse and neuron snap, crackle, popping away. You must listen to your
mind. If you don't hear the dance you will not understand. You must close out
the outside world and listen intently. Hear the Snap crackle pop. Hear it fade
away leaving you completely calm, not moving, not thinking, only hearing and
hearing nothing. When you can do this, when you can turn off the mind chorus
and leave the senses alert you will be ready to do urdahaasana."
His conscience went carefully over the surface
of his body weaving a web of awareness. Every small patch of skin is connected
to every other patch of skin. Any contact, any touch at any one place will
cause the whole network to jangle. The wear and tear of life breaks down this
web of awareness. His mind restores the web. The slightest pressure on his body
can now be detected.
After completing this careful and delicate pass
over his body his conscience retreated to the center to wait. The spider sits
in the middle of the web, non-moving. Her senses Hyper-extended along silken
strands waiting days if need be for the touch, the contact. This is
urdahaasana, the touch posture, literally the mosquito bursting posture.
He sat cross legged in a corner of his room, his
back very straight, every sense keenly alert. The Rice Krispies in the bowl in
front of him had gone soggy nearly three days ago when he heard the first hint
of contact.
Hummmm... came the buzzing in his ears. A
mosquito had entered the room with a sound as deafening as a fleet of bombers.
He did not budge from his center. Sound is nothing. Sound is sound. Sound is
not contact. Yesterday some flies had entered the room. They came through the
window like some pack of deranged bikers terrorizing some small placid town.
revving the engines, riding up and down the streets, waking people up, making
noise and threatening to land at any minute. The mom and pop groceries snap
shut like a mouth. Nothing worse than having a fly land in your mouth. But in
the long run they are harmless. They buzz around for a while and then in a
two-stroke flurry they leave again through the window. This time however, it
was a mosquito.
Suddenly the roar in his ears stopped. It had
landed. Was this it? His eyelids flickered and he almost blew the posture. He
had been using his ears.
"Your ears will guide you and tease you and
entertain you. They will claim to know where everything is, but when the sounds
stop...your ears will startle. Your ears depend on sound and if you lean on
your ears you will surely fall when the sound stops. You must feel the web give. Listen to your ears,
let them entertain you, but rely on touch."
He closed his eyes and felt the web. There was
no movement, no contact. A false alarm. It had landed elsewhere, on the ceiling
maybe. Then the roar came back. The first division was airborne again, but this
time the web was set. This time he waited for contact. And this time, when the
noise died, it happened.
The troops had landed. He felt the company of
six small legs pressing into the upper part of his left forearm. The company
slowly made its way across the inside of the arm to the thumb side, being
careful to step over the hairs so as not to make any more noise than necessary.
The success of the mission depended upon its remaining covert to the end. There
in the cleft behind the elbow they would make their entry. The hypodermic
proboscis sunk into the flesh and began to make its withdrawal. "Oh my,
this is that sweet AB Negative stuff you hear so much about!"
The spider had other plans though. The web was
jangling this time. No mistaking it. He felt the seventh point pushing down
into the muscle tissue. The Brachia Radialis, eh? This was going to be a piece
of cake.
He had spent years isolating muscle groups
across the body, knowing where they were, what they felt like, and how to
engage them independently. A wicked smile crossed his lips as he ever so slowly
tightened the muscle fibers that would hold that invasive proboscis in the
deadly embrace.
Was he excited by the contest or did he simply
race his heart to bring it to a swift conclusion? The contest was really over,
for being unable to withdraw, the mosquito simply continues to inflate until it
is burst by the blood pressure. When he felt the warm splat of blood on his
arm, he relaxed his pose and opened his eyes.
He enjoyed a brief moment of elation as he
slowly and carefully got up and dressed. As he sat back down to eat the Rice
Krispies he knew that this feeling would pass when in the days to come with
every scratch of the massive bite on his arm he would recall the lesson of the
deadly embrace.
Ah, at what price comes all knowledge.