What is Your Orientation?

Given the current social/political climate I wouldn't be at all surprised if you took this to be a question about your sexual preference(s) or the gender you identify with. 

As a faithful reader of this blog I want to personally say to you that I support you in whatever your choice(s). Good on you! I have friends who are just like that. Have a nice life.

But, hold on. There are other kinds of orientations. 

Have you heard about Feng Shui? It's the ancient Chinese philosophy about the flow of energy. Let's put it this way: you don't put the china hutch just in from the entrance to your home. It's like that. Where things go. What works, really.

How about geographic orientation? Which way is up? Getting close.

The orientation I'm pointing to is toward the Earth itself. More specifically, with the Earth. What works?

In my professional capacity let me quote my teacher, Dr. Ida P. Rolf: ''Rolfers make a life study of relating bodies and their fields to the earth and its Gravity field, and we so organize the body that the Gravity field can reinforce the body's energy field. This is our primary concept."

"This is the gospel of Rolfing: When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through. Then, spontaneously, the body heals itself."

In a nutshell then, when you live aligned with the dictates of Gravity you live easy, relaxed, effortlessly upright, strong and present. That's the very definition of health. Certainly a prerequisite for top performance and fullest creative expression. Oh, yes. It feels good. It lasts. It reinforces itself.

If you want to get all Ultimate and Real on the question of orientation, hear what Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche has to say in The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion — Shambhala Publications:

"Shunyata is basically the realization of nonexistence or emptiness. The more we realize nonexistence, the more we can afford to be compassionate and giving. Usually we would like to hold on to our territory and fixate on that particular ground, and once we begin to fixate, we have no way to give.

But when we begin to realize that there is no ground, that we are ultimately free, non-aggressive, and open — and when we realize that we are actually nonexistent ourselves — we can give. We have lots to gain and nothing to lose at that point. We are not — we are no, rather.

The experience of shunyata is also related to devotion. You begin to feel loneliness and aloneness at the same time. With shunyata, what you have heard and what you have experienced become part of your conviction."

From Joseph Campbell:

""The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature." 

— From: “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living" (Copyright © 1991 Joseph Campbell Foundation), p. 148"