Charque has been doing some
bike workshops recently to get people used to riding hills and to being part of the traffic flow on their bikes. He stresses high seats, in order to give you maximum torque for climbing hills. I call him the High Priest of high seats! But he's right. We do, after all, live in Pittsburgh. You won't go far without finding a hill or two in your way. But then, our Bicycle Guru will also take you through the science and dynamics of traffic flow. Furthermore, he has just discovered there is the official
Bicycle Drivers' Manual for Pennsylvania, put out by the state. You are subject to and protected by regulations, just as you would be in a car. (He could have written the manual himself. Maybe he did in another incarnation!) You are part of the traffic flow on a bike, as much as in a car. You can learn to take up your place in that flow without fear. Or at least you can practice! The mantra is "I am a vehicle".
One of the novel things about travel is getting used to traffic flow in another city or another country. Rome was very interesting on that score. The traffic didn't stop for pedestrians. You just walked out into the traffic, keeping your eye on the drivers and they on you. You just kept moving and they would weave around you. If you got scared and stopped.......Well, an English girl (not me) did just that and got badly injured. My own big freak out was not in Rome, but on a very busy Paris roundabout or traffic circle. I was on my bike, following Charque onto the roundabout. Because the traffic coming onto a roundabout has the right of way in France, you quickly get
pushed to the centre of the roundabout. Of course, then you have to get out again when your exit is coming up, difficult even in a car. Charque boldly makes his hand signals and pulls out across the traffic. I am beginning to panic! But then as Luck or the Big Universe would have it, there is a gendarme out there monitoring the traffic. He sees me and he sees my dilemma. Neither of us, presumably, wants to see me endlessly circling the centre of this roundabout for life. He holds up his hand and stops the traffic and I ride out. I suppose that the moral of this story is, when all else fails, trust and look for a miracle to happen! That too is part of the flow.
The problem with this injunction to join the dance or the flow is that you get fearful, self attacking and depressed. Then you want to back out of the whole thing (although maybe not on a roundabout in Paris). I was looking at the word "depressed" recently. It means literally "to press down upon". What else do you press down upon but yourself, thereby lowering your
energy, your activity and your sense of joy in yourself. There are a lot of other "press" words that play their part in this process (for any others of you that are word nerds!) "Oppression" is when you feel others pressing down upon you, governments, systems and the like. "Suppression" might be similar. "Repression" is again when you press down upon yourself because you are ruled by beliefs that won't allow you to express yourself. You might hurt or offend someone and you're not allowed to do that. You might be breaking rules. You might have something bad or evil in you. So you learn to repress. "Compression" isn't always helpful either, but has its uses. Come then to the healing parts of this word family like "expression" where you are able to let it all out, and "impression" where you are willing to make a mark or experience one. Expression is freedom. Impression is influence.
After I started thinking about all this depression/expression stuff, along comes Edward Snowden. He's the young computer whiz and whistleblower who has divulged top secret government information about the NSA's (National Security Agency) data collecting programme called
Prism. Thanks to him, we now all know that Verizon is passing along our phone calls to the government, and Google, Facebook, Apple et al are passing along our online information. Not Twitter though, which is interesting (being recently initiated into the workings of Twitter, or at least trying to figure them out). Some are accusing Edward Snowden of being a full-blown narcissist, totally unconcerned about the safety and well-being of others, including his own home country. Maybe! Others see him as putting his life on the line (which he most assuredly is doing) in order to get this information out to the public. If that is true, then he needed to get this off his chest as much for his own sake as anyone else's. Otherwise, he lives (and dies) with a guilty conscience.
Buddhism speaks of "right-thinking" and "right action". To me, that means living according to your own internal values and not saying or doing anything that
puts you in conflict with these values. To not express in that case would then suppress, oppress and depress. I prefer, without further evidence to the contrary, to see Edward Snowden as following his conscience over whatever contract he signed with or oath he swore to the
NSA. My father once wrote in my autograph book when I was a child: "Follow your own conscience. Though it be but a gleam in the darkness, follow it." (Author unknown, but my Dad "tweeted" it to me in the medium of the time!)
Jane Roberts' Seth once said that "existence is larger than life or death. Life and death are both states of existence." Joining the dance does not necessarily ensure physical security, which is what scares everyone so much about it. Fear is at the root of oppression, suppression, repression, and often very real fear about physical security and survival. You have some soul-searching to do before you join certain dances. The Chinese ballet dancer,
Li Cunxin, who defected to the USA, and whose story is told in the 2009 movie
"Mao's Last Dancer", did not know for a long time whether the Chinese government was imprisoning and torturing his family as a result of his actions. Nightmares of what he might have put his relatives through continued to haunt him. You have to be able to live with the consequences of your words and actions and come to some sort of unified consciousness about what you are saying and doing. Sometimes this is obvious and easy;other times not. Edward Snowden, at least in an interview, seems
pretty clear about what he has let himself in for. Ultimately, I think, the energy welling up from within is stronger than the fears from without, and you come to a deeper feeling about the realities of life that gets closer to Seth's definition of "existence". You choose to go as far as you can without the backfire being more costly than you can deal with. But, in all of this, you follow your own conscience. "Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? (Part of the
Mock Turtle's story in
Alice in Wonderland, also known as
The Lobster Quadrille.)
