Earth Etude for Elul 26 - Refuge From Numbness

by Anonymous

In Genesis, G-d calls out to the Human, Ayeka, Where are you? However, where do we find Earth’s call for Humanity? How do we reconnect with our first potential soulmate, ADAM to ADAMAH? Amidst the stress, heartbreak, and numbness of daily life, how do we connect our little body to the body which is our Home?

One of my spiritual practices in this daily chaos has been a dance practice called 5 Rhythms, except I don’t go there to dance. I go there because amidst the music and the evening darkness, is one of the few places where I can simply let my body “tell the truth” and move how it wants to move. Sometimes, I do dance upright. More often than not, I sit or lay down, and let my body move itself. I turn towards the somatic intensity that is always rushing through me like electricity, with nowhere to go.

On the eve before the 17th of Tammuz, I arrived late, exhausted, numb and overwhelmed. I tried to dance, making my way across the giant open room, trying to find the beat of the music inside my heartbeat. On the other side of the world from everything and everyone I know and love, I collapsed on the floor, finding comfort in the clear boundary that is its surface. I let the waves of my body’s energy take me, my body convulsing as usual, like a stray wave which has forgotten its part of the ocean. And then something inside of me did remember and I cried out to Mama Earth, "Please hold me, I do not know where I am going and I can walk no longer." I begged something inside me, bigger than me, "Please wake up!"

My body convulsed in even bigger waves, then my legs began to spread out, the soles of my feet reaching out with my toes curled inside. And I felt my (cis-male) body, as if in waves of orgasm giving birth. Or, attempting to give birth. I let out a deep guttural moan, drowned out by the music. And I remembered myself as a tiny wrinkle of an ADAM/Earthling, held inside the AH of ADAMAH/Earth. I cried and I screamed, some more. And the waves gushed forth from the deep. You might say, G-dess opened up the flood waters.

Dozens of people danced around me in the darkness, each dancing their own dance. Then I rose up, perhaps as if lifting this little newborn me from the waters and holding him high. Or perhaps, as if lifting water and pouring it over myself. This Moshe, pulling another little Moshe from the waters, again, over and over again. I nuzzled him back into, forward into, life. I poured water over myself, over us, over, and over again. Dozens of people danced around me in the darkness, each dancing their own dance. I was surrounded by people but they were dancing their own stories in that evening’s darkness. The only real witnesses were, me, Mama Earth, and my Self. And now you.