Resend: The Wk of 5/28/26 Tiger Strawberry Tiger

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I had a couple of weird experiences in meditation this week. This one day, right when I closed my eyes, it felt like I was falling through deep space. And it continued. It was a scary feeling, but I stayed with it. Tried to relax. In moments I could shift it to more of a feeling of exhilaration, and then again, the terror. While falling I remembered this line from a story that I believe I first heard Pema Chödrön tell:

“There’s good news & there’s bad.

The bad news is that we’re all falling through the sky with no parachute. 

The good news: there is no ground.” 
(Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche)

This feels like a pretty good description of what the experience of life feels like to me (in waves) at the moment. Last weekend was in fact so strange, emotionally charged and unexpected that I said aloud: “Wait, is it a full moon?” Nope, but at the time, we were a week away from one. Now, this coming week, there is indeed a full (“Blue”) moon in firey Sagittarius that peak’s at 3:45 a.m. (CT) Monday morning.

I’m not here for an astrological update, I’m just pointing it out in case things feel a way in your world. It helps me if I know specific larger “weather” influences out there such as collective energetic weather (report: it continues to feel pretty nuts, like a vice grip slowly tightening) or astrological. Physically, it’s getting hotter here in Texas and that shift can bring in some extra edge. There’s an exact yogic concept for this that is escaping me, but it is similar to Sakshin, or witness consciousness, where one mentally zooms out to observe their experience from a distance instead of becoming lost and embroiled in it.

The other meditation adventure happened today (Wednesday May 27th). I’m feeling emotional terrain lately that feels new to me, with lots of varied topography, and a hint of familiarity. I could feel two forces trying to pull me both literally up and also down. It’s like an apprehension about the unknown future was trying to get its claws in me, and so was this downward moving, old, fearful, worried, heavy something-or-other. And I had to focus hard on being seated exactly where I was in that moment in order not to get yanked off into either scratchily-uncomfortable direction: up (future?), down (past?). I then saw in my mind’s eye, tigers above me and tigers below. I felt myself on a cliff’s edge and saw strawberries growing from the branch to which I was clinging. Where did I get this image from? Then I remembered. It’s from a Zen parable or koan (which i believe I also first read in a Pema book): 

It’s a story of a woman running away from tigers.

She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there. She climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass, so she looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.

In that meditation I felt like I was living that koan. And in this weird feeling day(s) I’ve remembered to look for strawberries (my cat is an easy one). Finding some bright spot of life, even when the overwhelming feeling is threatening. I’m not saying this is easy, nor is it some cure-all. But it did rescue me a few times from rolling down some worrisome thought-holes. In case your week is feeling like mine is, I hope you remember to regularly search for something delightful and alive. I hope that you are reminded that there is an abundance of goodness in every moment, even if it feels like things are falling apart. I’m glad I was reminded in the silence to look for, in this precarious & finite life, strawberries.

I have this sense that we are each in our own ways being called to deepen. Maybe even to learn to relax (aka:Trust!) under shakier & shakier circumstances. Like, it’s easy for me to relax fully when lying half on shore, my lower half buoyed & threaded by ocean waves. But could I find that same level of ease on a floaty, half a mile from shore? Perhaps our capacities are being stretched. 

That’s my little fruit-flavored life-preserver for the week.  Grab a hold if you too need one.

Ek 

ps, see some of you soon:,

Thursdays, 3 PM FLOW, and…

also  4:30 pm Flow & Chill at Flow Yoga North Loop (5501N Lamar Blvd)

(**always check Flow Yoga North Loop & Westgate online class schedules for last minute schedule changes. Also, last minute sub opportunities arrive throughout the week that I cover).